For a special friend

Creepy though that may sound, this is for a special friend who turns an year older today. You know who you are, bitch :)

I decided against a Facebook post because it seems like personal wishes should stay that way, personal. And I have become progressively bad with mailing cards, with age.

I think I have always been blessed when it comes to people. Almost a quarter down my life (holy CRAP) I can safely say that I have met a wide variety of people whom I have loved, liked, avidly disliked and just been plain amused by. This post is dedicated to, however, someone who I consider to be a a bit of a twin soul. I must say we're quite different, and that often the world is viewed in a very different way by the both of us. But, there is something uncanny and yet, comforting in having someone who knows exactly WHAT you mean, without requiring the footnotes. Complete understanding is highly under-rated.

Time has fled and it's been more than an year since we last met, and much has changed. People, places, circumstances once familiar are now basically shelved under "Hey remember when...?". And yet, a sister of the heart remains that, regardless of the time and space that comes between.

A sister of the heart remains a sister of the heart.

So happy birthdays jangi :)

Searching for meaning

When the title for this post struck me just now, it put me off writing it :) It sounds as abstract as it means and ensures the few 100-300 words following to be those of a person who is-at heart, it seems-beautifully, agonizingly, aimless.

The thing with people who have set aims and goals in life; It's difficult to hate them, or even envy them. It seems unfair to hold something against these perfectly settled, destination-oriented, busily tired out individuals because I know how they got there. They had a calling, they felt the need to be someone, they took the difficult, fraught decisions to get on the path to there, and now they're on their way. They may be far from it, they may even be suffering through exams, heartache, insecurity, no income, anything, everything, but they're on their way.

Which make me wonder WHY I feel aimless. There seems to be a set goal in most lives, at least, like, a rough arrow in their minds pointing SOMEwhere. My arrow, whenever it blinks on (It's neon, and switches off when I get distracted by pretty things) points one way..then another. Then it blinks, flickers a little, does a circle, wavers, wavers some more, settles for an easy choice, and then switches off.

As prophesied, this post is naught but, bunkum. 

The Grateful Alive

I wonder if it's general maturity or hearing others' woes that makes one realize what one should be grateful for.
Maybe it's a combination.

I know I'm grateful that I have love in my life, and I don't mean the platonic or filial variety. I mean the angry, biting, desperate, grieving, ecstatic, dizzying type.

I know I'm grateful for having parents who don't hover. Like space ships or mother hens over their chicks, asking if they're done eating, wondering why they're still not home, touching, stroking, placating. GAAAAAAH!!

I'm grateful for having opportunities. To eat, to learn, to read, to blog when the mood strikes :)

I'm grateful for the time I have in life; the time I create without the pressures of whens and when it's dones and once that's overs.

I'm grateful for whatever friends I have made, and will keep, in any realm of life-school, college, work. I' thankful for my lifelines- FB, Skype, mobile.

I'm grateful, I realize, more that anything else, for being able to be grateful for these things. For being able to rejoice in them instead of seeking out all the negative things in life, circling them in Red and marking them "THIS IS WHY MY LIFE SUCKS."

I'm pretty sure that when the next wave of contentment with life strikes, this post will have an extension. Till then, we must all brace ourselves for the inevitable depression. It's life. It imitates any natural cycle.

Eating bad fruit

I think that giving someone you don’t particularly like, a chance, is very difficult to do. It’s an expense of emotional energy the point of which you always doubt because at the back of your mind the questions linger and pop out at your consciousness;

“Would she do the same for me?”

“Is he just using me, like always?”

“Is this just going to be another time when I bang my head and mutter ‘Should have seen that coming, again!’?”

It’s like eating bad fruit; you have to have a certain degree of rare courage to eat a bad fruit, spit it out, and then calmly pick up another one and proceed to peel it. I want to check the fruit, re-check it, poke at it with my knife, hold it up under the harsh glare of the fluorescent light in the kitchen. I don’t want to eat the bad fruit again, and feel that bad taste in my mouth again. I don’t want to feel like a fool who gets had, over and over again. The fool who the not-so-foolish and the hopelessly cynical turn to and gloat at, “I told you not to trust her again”.

But I always think, life is so short and so full of mistakes. I am so full of mistakes. My soul is contaminated as it is with my personal failings and embarrassing little un-Christian habits. Why darken another corner of my soul with a grudge? Because that’s what holding things against someone does. It discolours your heart a little. It taps in to your being’s well of negative energy, and draws forth.

So much easier on the breathing then, to let in. Not trust, maybe, not even get too close to. But to let in. To not just be civil to on a superficial level but find it in your heart to stop clutching at a dislike and to genuinely allow that person in to your space. I won’t be best friends, I won’t even let you be best friends, but I won’t hesitate to talk honestly, to help willingly and to genuinely take joy in the good that comes your way.

I will always doubt but I will not let that doubt get the better of me

. I, in fact, am trying to be better than that.

Escape

People could want to escape from any number of things, I imagine. The nature of life and reality is such that, unless you have reached that higher state of being where you can see The Truth for what it is, you are always faced with people, places, situations, decisions, encounters you want to run away from.

I used to think that taking to the bottle because you're father was an alcoholic was wrong, fundamentally. One must be strong for oneself, one must develop and all that. But what a load of crap. Escape is all we do. We help others , we groom ourselves, we hit the gym, we study harder, we smile brighter, we date the radicals, we drink more, we smoke up a little more, we take up healthy lifestyles, we develop superficially esoteric tastes, we become "better" people. But we're always trying to escape. It's always the escape hatch that we yank open, finding the rusted key somewhere deep in our cowardly, broken souls, bolting through so fast that whatever is behind us pants to catch up.

But it always does. It follows, and it bides its time carefully hiding in our shallow subconscious mind and...POUNCE. 

Then there is, no where at all, to run. 

Strength of a woman

Went to watch the original Mr. Lover Lover last weekend, Shaggy live in concert! Not only was it entertaining but also highly amusing to see Shaggy sidle his slimy way up to the local ladies! That might be the cynic in me talking. Anyway, when he started playing "Strength of a woman", he asked the aaalll independent women in the audience to raise them hannnds!!! And there were shrieks and raised hands of course.
Made me think of this idea of an independent woman. With years of feminist ideology backing us, every educated, open-minded woman should ideally be an independent woman. But what strikes me as ironic, often about myself more than anyone else, is the sheer effort women put in to being independent, of men. If we strive always to "be our own woman", then there is an invisible thread that is still pulling us mentally toward the Alpha Male who in the end decided our fates as human beings- woman, mother, sister, lover, wife, colleague.

Now, the really admirable ones are the women who have grown in spite of the invisible thread. The well-balanced, non-extremist women who, yes admittedly, need and have men, but are alone in their strength and don't depend on a sort of male crutch. Those are the admirable ones. And having in a few in my life isn't just helpful, it's downright inspirational.

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Triskele/The triple spiral

"She'll take you too a hiiigher plaaace..." You know you wanna sing along ;)

On a related note, this symbol is the triskele, a neopagan symbol for the three stages of the woman : maiden, mother, crone. There's more to it than that, as it is apparently a Celtic and pre-Celtic symbol as well. Must do some digging.
If I ever get a tat, this could be it. The strong woman, har har har ;)

The Gurgle Syndrome

Social ineptitude is arguably a sort of wide-spread disease. You see it in a wide range of individuals in the geek-nerd-sheltered spectrum. I see  it in a whole lot of people I know, but have never actually been affected by their ineptitude because of my strong Social Butterfly characteristics.
However, what is worth further research is the effect an uncompromisingly awkward situation of a personal nature can have on a usually highly socially "ept" ahem individual.
Like how a Social Butterfly (SB) can be rendered a blundering, silent, boring, morose wall ornament in a singular situation. True story. Said SB could frantically construct amusing little comebacks, little anecdotes, small jokes, intelligent word sparring in the HEAD, debate it again MENTALLY and finally produce from the vocal chords a sort of...gurgle. Or even like a moronic statement that manages to be moronic, offensive and completely non diverting all at one go. It could be seen as a rare feat of sheer awkwardness.
Obviously, the extraneous factors should be taken in to account here-such as the reactions of the other individuals in group, the willingness of the said individuals to interact with SB, the location of the interaction etc.-however, it can be safely hypothesized that at least a good 80% of the resultant stunted  communication is purely the fault of the unadulterated ill mental health of the said Social Butterfly, SB.

Obviously more research is required in this regard. I'm just hypothesizing here. I could be wrong.