What makes an year

An year is made of

• Change, above and beyond everything else. Seeing it, gritting your teeth against and finally accepting it for the inevitable fact of life it is.
• Decisions, no matter how big. The ones over which you ruminateand spend sleepless nights thinking about, or the ones which happen in the blink of an eye, leaving you with a "holy shit I did it!" kind of feeling. The ones which, no matter what the outcome, are always the right ones. The ones which lead you to now, this moment.
• Love, third but never last on the list. Big love for small children. Affectionate love for the goofy pet. Troubled, oft-tired sibling love. Surprising surges of love for parents, during those moments of realization of how much they do for you. Sweet, constant love for friends. Mad, passionate love for the other half your divided soul. Sweet, comfortable "let's do this for a hell of a long time more" love for the same.
• Friendships, old and new. Surprising discoveries about both.
• Happiness, from simples joys and big achievments.
• Sorrow, from inner realizations or senseless outside violence.
• Anger, at wrongdoings, mostly to others. At helplessness, mostly your own. 
• Family, constant. 
• God, and the untenable link he has over everything we do, unfortunately. Sigh.
• Nature, beautiful, the sea, the beaches, yellow flowers in the garden and blue, blue skies. Sunshine. Waves. Lights over a lake at night.
• Work, hopefull something you like. If you're lucky, something you suddenly discover you like.
• Booze, in high-to-moderate levels.
• Realizations, preferably about yourself, generally not too complimentary, but usually very revealing.
• Art, in any form.
• Books, in every form. From vampires to Jamaican plantation slaves. Never discrimate!
• Food...healthy, unhealthy, the whole lot. 
• People, strange acquaintances, those you never want to see again, hesitant friends, instant dislikes, confusion, struggle, always very interesting.
• And contentment, hopefully, that this year's been OK. 
• And hope, that there will always, always be something to hope for.
• And a quiet sense of achievement, because you've come through 365 days of your life again, unscathed (almost).

Good new year's :)

Making it count

I just stumbled across a blog post by a friend -- a good friend, in fact, someone I haven't had a nice. long jaw with in a long time. She says that she "stumled upon" her life's passion, and goes on to say how nice that is, given that so many search for what they want to do for so long. This kind of reassured me.

Because I logged on because I was feeling decidedly maudlin, the sort of gigantic rain-cloud-suddenly-above-my-head feeling that I don't usually allow to settle on me for too long. Any number of reasons are behind this, I know; new work hours, change, and overall, a general feeling of being chronically unable to make good decisions and get my shit together in a constructive way.

My editor at work has the most interesting desk--she travels extensively and has a miniature totem pole-like thing sitting next to a colurful creamic bowl that looks like something Machu Pichu would have in abundance. Around her desk are little inspirational quotes, printed out neatly and pinned to the spongy fabric of her workstation. One says, "If you think you can, or think you can't, you're right." This has, for some reason, been haunting me over the past few days.

Perhaps the greatest fear we have is that, through our sheer inability to make use of it, our much-touted potential will go waste. Because everybody obviously has greatness, that much you have to believe...we may not all be created "equal" but we surely all have potential...even the child with Down's Syndrome or the torso-only beggar who drags himself through the streets of dirty Colombo. It's always just a case of tapping that potential, which in turn would depend on the tools one has to do so.

Some of us have hardly any tools, but strive and find more. Some have, and make maximum use of. Others, just are. They don't seek, they don't maximize, they "go with the flow" (ye grand excuse) and "hope for the best" (ye second grand excuse) and watch while Life takes them wherever she wills. At the end of the day, these people, who are really cowards in pretty clothes, can always say that things happen for a reason and that if they didn't make up to all they could have been, well that must be Karma, no?


 

A little something on Love

I write a lot on Love :) Most of these rants are induced by some form of heart pain/break, and are usually long and melodramatic affairs consisting of how the right person can harm you beyond all repair. They're very complicated. Sometimes though, in quieter moments, I sit and wonder what life would be without the needle pricks of love -- without the sunsets and the laughter and that inexplicable feeling that poets rave about and 80s rockers keep wailing about. Without love, we'd be fine. We'd be happy, self-strong and confident human beings, sure of our place in the world. Without the doubts and fears Love brings, we'd be good. But we would miss out some of the finest feeling humanity has to offer and the soul can experience.

Never forget, poets and 80s rockers are always right :)

Base Realizations

Base realisations are those where you realise that, despite and in spite of all the various layers of civilization you pile on in life, all the morals and ethics you claim to subscribe to, all the fantastic notions of being better than at least a few other people in the world, you are - at heart - a rather pathetic, base human being. Selfish, self-motivated and convinced that the world and all its inhabitants revolve around you. Determined to see the world from only your point of view and cocksure of always being the wronged, the injured, the victim.

And of course, once you realise that you have all this time been trying to convince yourself of being a bettr person, you feel less human and more worm-like. Like a lowly, earth-living worm, who deserves the monstrous boot that will soon come and crush it underfoot, and grind it satisfyingly in to the wet, clammy, stinking earth, where it belongs.

That day

Forget the raucous rabble

Screaming slogans

Burning bras

Walking naked for

Support.

No one listens;

They only smile

Indulgently, at the little

Women, and their play.

It’s when you look

Straight in the eyes of the

Smirking passer-by,

Mis-direct the bust-aimed

Roving appraisal

And still the glancing

Hand.

It’s when you refuse to bow

To fear and fallacy

And third-party rules

Denying the right to

Your own life-choice.

It’s when you stand when

All would push you down,

Use your voice, your brain,

Ask for books when handed

Pans, reject convention

And grab hold of Change.

It’s on that day when Fear

Turns his ugly leer

Away from the darkened road, the

Lonely alley, the dancing shadows

Preying on your mid.

And it’s when the wrong is

Not “your mistake”, for immodesty,

Immorality, or simply, insolently

Being there, wrong place,

Wrong time.

Then, when your head is held

High above what they deem

Necessary,

That day, the woman walks

Free, among the rest.

Put a little tolerance in yer heart :)

“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”

Carl Sagan

Being you

I've been thinking of writing for a while now...what with new jobs and life changes and adjusting yourself to where it takes you, sometimes writing simple things become a bit of a task. But today, busy Friday that it is, it's just hit me that I have to write about being yourself, and being happy about that.

It seems like every inspirational quote and FB meme begins with some variation of "Be yourself and be happy" etc. etc. etc. and many convoluted, motivational twists on it. But that's not technically what I'm ranting on about. It's about being comfortable with yourself.

As someone who isn't entirely comfortable with myself, but is getting there, I have always envied people who don't need other people -- in the most elemental sense. Theses are people who are so comfortable with their own personalities (and idiosyncrasies) and so devoted to their life purposes that, although they enjoy healthy relationships,they don't seem to depend on them.

Although I firmly believe in the power of harmonious relationships and values relating to family, friends and love, etc., somehow I become increasingly aware of the fact that dependence for happiness, stability and SANITY more than anything else, depends on the self and how the self is prepared to handle Life. And this is not a spin on a feminist "I-don't-need-a-man-to-make-me-happy"ideal, it is stick-up-in-your-face fact. It means that even if you surround yourself with good, kind, loving people, you avoid the latching-on that humans are so prone to. This seems to translate into avoidng expectations, but I think expectations are fair, and human. What IS silly is to always the need the reassurance of another body to feel complete, or happy or safe or important.

This would mean that your're happy with yourself and your rationalisation of life, and that you count on yourself, not because you've lost faith in humanity but because you've come to the understanding that

a. You don't need to justify yourself to anyone
b. There's no one really better than you
c. What better person is there to deal with your mental well-being, than yourself!

Phew! So, like my strong women friends say, take a walk by yourself, enjoy music on your own, do your work well and without constantly needing approval, achieve what you have to because you want to and not because you owe it to someone else and, if you have balls, big ones, do something really crazy, like watching a movie by yourself or heading out to a dinner for one a at your favourite place :) Who knows, in your travails through your Self, you might surprise yourself ;)