All You Are Gonna Need

A box of raw emotions. Explosive.
Bring your armor and shield along.
No, a fire extinguisher won't do, you can't extinguish these flames.

Timidness, shyness. Protective doors you can only pry open.
Bring your toolbox along.
No, you can't barge in, these doors are not meant to be broken down.

Then I'll want to run away, flee, escape.
No, a horse won't do, you need something which can fly.
Maybe a dragon with golden scales will do.

An armor, a shield, a toolbox, a dragon with golden scales.
No I don't ask for much.

Recycling Life Truths

Browsing through my own writing in a slightly grouchy mood, I found the following and had to re-post it.

"Friday, September 2, 2011
A Season of Change
It's September, that time of the year again. Time for things to change. Why September you may ask; it may not be so; yet I have seen year after year as July eases past, and August starts marching in... the colors start changing, the colors of life. Soon September is twirling around things with gaiety as I attempt to dance to it's tunes."

So true for this year as well, the changes knocking on my door this year are going way beyond house hunting worries. As usual I shall quote the poem which gave me heart at a tough time last year.

"Memory is a tenuous thing. . . .

flickering glimpses, blue

and white, like ancient,

decomposing 16mm film.

Happiness escapes

me there, where faces

are vague and yesterday

seems to come tied

up in ribbons of pain.

Happiness? I look for it instead

in today, where memory

is something I can still

touch, still rely on.

I find it in the smiles

of new friends, the hope

blossoming inside.

My happiest memories

have no place in the

past; they are those

I have yet to create."— Ellen Hopkins"

The Waiting

The waiting. It's the waiting which gets to you in the end. The waiting for the storm to break, to wash away the dirt of nothingness. 
The tears shall come with the rain but you will have to wait for it. You cannot escape the wait.
As it stretches eternally, you brace for impact, 
To be broken down, torn down, to be dissolved into rain water.
And to wait again for the seasons to change.

“If pain must come, may it come quickly. Because I have a life to live, and I need to live it in the best way possible."- ― Paulo Coelho

Is Being A Good Girl Ruining Your Life?

Have you been a good girl all your life? Did you spend your school life getting good grades, participating in the required number of extra curricular activities, behaving yourself at all the right moments and obeying all the relevant rules; basically doing everything which made your teachers praise you, your friends parents green at award nights and your parents glow with pride. Well girl sorry to say you haven't important lessons about real life besides the fact that you may have missed out on a  lot of fun! You are in grave danger of wasting your life moping around about how your life turned out despite you following every rule in the book of success, hence I shall take it upon myself to forewarn you.

• For one you have turned into this thin skinned delicate maiden who faints every time anyone in a position of authority directs any criticism at you. A lifetime of being praised all the time will definitely make you unprepared for reality where despite your best efforts things will go wrong and you shall be blamed for it. And you shall not be prepared to face the harsh reality that "you were responsible for something going wrong", the requirements for this stomach turning experience need not even be someone hollering and hurling abuses at you, a slight frown, a stern word or even a raised eyebrow shall be enough to send your chin quivering. 
• Did I say something about "despite your best efforts"? Well yes, its time you realize that you have turned into a monster of a perfectionist and well the only life your ending in the pursuit of a myth called perfectionism is yours alone. Doing one's best means just that, doing what you can given the resources. It does not mean that no mistakes will happen, it does not mean you can magically make the day longer by working all the time, your life is as short as everyone else's and while you are wasting your's pursuing pointless perfectionism, life is slipping past faster than you think.

So what shall be done now to end this circle of slavery because you are so high on the drug of being called a good girl? Well stop being a sissy and Woman Up! Develop a thick skin and take your life into your own hands. Stop wasting it trying to do what you have been taught in your convent education as the right thing to do, remember as always with everything in life, balance is the key. Hardworking, sincere, responsible can very well be the qualities used to describe a slave. Smarten up, use your brains about when and what to waste your breath on, accept life and yourself with your imperfections. 

A very smart, handsome and charming man called Rhett Butler once said,“Until you've lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was or what freedom really is.” ― Gone With the Wind

So free yourself of the shackles and do what feels right, write your own set of rules and use your personal moral compass to make sense of all the direction which were written down for you. Make your own mistakes, write your own story and then you can tell the world what being a good girl really means.

P.S. I have not touched upon the extremely sensitive topic of how a good girl is supposed to behave in front of the opposite sex. We shall leave that one for another day I guess. ;)

The Color Of His Love...

She worried about her red nail polish which had chipped while opening the can of diet coke. Her nails gleamed brightly matching the cherry tomatoes in her low cal salad. But her mood wasn't as bright as she stared at the guy her parents had chosen for her, a perfect astrological match, heir to millions.
She had found the love of her life early in her 20's, perfect in every way except that he earned less than her father; way less. She had been told ever since that marriages were not built on infatuations and fantasies of romance but on solid foundations of financial stability and equal status. She had given in eventually after all her parents had always thought the best for her and break ups happened around her everyday.
But right now listening to the strange voice she yearned for something more familiar. And mostly she hoped her parents were right and the color of his love would fade away like the color of her nails. And she would be find a new way to repaint them with new colors.

Is Intelligence Really More Than "Brain-Deep"?

They say beauty is more than skin deep, then it must be true that intelligence is more than "brain-deep"?

For most of my life I judged people by their intelligence level (mind you not the marks obtained in exams by cramming pages of tuition notes) but genuinely smart people and thought they were better than the rest and me better than the rest of the shallow people who judged people by their looks. But if you are wiling to learn, life has its own ways of showing you the way and I realized no matter how good looking, smart, rich or famous you are the people most important to you and the people you cannot live without are people who you love because of what they feel in their heart for you. It's the warmth, the compassion, the kindness and the connections you feel from the person which charms you forever, not the looks, not the brains and not even the money.

Then indeed if beauty lies in how beautiful your heart is, then intelligence must be related to your heart as well. It would be difficult to imagine a happy, heartless human and what intelligence lies in leading unhappy, frustrated lives. If all that everyone wants is happiness and satisfaction and escape from suffering in life, then having a highly analytical brain, legs like a supermodel etc can be of little help most of the time. I am no genius, heart, brain or even skin wise but I believe that the answers to these eternal questions does really lie within.

Our 20's shall indeed be spent chasing after a lot of things, money, education, career, love, marriage etc but I hope we shall make some decisions at least which will be more than "skin or brain-deep".

Can You Tell Black From White?

        I miss the days when I could tell black from white and life came in these many shades, when I could differentiate lies from the truth & right from the wrong. Now life & people seem to come in so many shades you can hardly tell what color it is, like the swirling colors of oil spilled on water it all seems different when seen in a different light. The only litmus test left is the what you feel in your heart and that gets tougher to read day by day.

     They say in the stories, you must listen to your heart to win the game of life. But all I see around me is intelligent, educated people listening to their fears and insecurity. They want to bribe fate into letting them win this game only no one is sure anymore what victory is or what's the prize.

     Life now always seems to come with a catch. It's mostly kind to me giving me what I want only to show me loopholes I never thought of. Then it asks me again and again, "Is it worth it? Really? Are you sure?"
The thing is I am not and never will be; all I know is that I rather fail at things I really love, knowing that I gave it my 100% but it was never meant to be than succeed at things I don't & make my life a living hell no amount of money will be able to buy me out of.

I will try and live the life I truly believe in and hopefully be able to tell you how it turned out. I can try and insure you from the risks then but in life playing safe can sometimes be the riskiest. 

What If All I Want To Do Is Breathe?

It seems to me every decision I am required to take now will have consequences in epic proportions. How I wish to make my money, how far I want to educate myself and who I want to share the rest of my life with seems to be questions which suddenly have a deadline attached. Like you spent 25 yrs of your life preparing to answer these questions which then are supposed to decide how the next 25 will go.

There are things you want to do, and things you think you should do and then there are things which people will give you endless advice on. Now is the time when the world shall get decided into those who are settled and those who are not. The have's and the have not's.

But what if all I want to do is breathe and breathe in peace.

To read to my hearts content, new world's unfurling in my imagination;
To write, to create with words what is my own which neither be bought nor stolen away,
To cook, the smell of the spices & the colors on my chopping board intermingling in a colorful riot as I sail away on another gastronomic adventure,
To tie my laces and set off wandering by myself, exploring markets and lanes new to me in familiar cities,
Or to even be flown away or driven away to another new place, a new hill to be climbed, new beaches to watch sunsets by, new pebbles in the river under my feet,
Old friends with whom new food must be tried and old conversations continued,
New friends to be made, new lives discovered & new stories to be heard,
There is always the old stuff which you love to do like playing uno & eating maggi at the most random places & drinking games & cuddling roadside puppies,
And all the new stuff which have to be tried out like dancing classes & yoga mats & all the new clubs and restaurants.
And then there is the endless learning curve of life.

Sigh, I still don't have the answers to any of the above life threatening decisions but I hope I will have the guts to do what I really want to and not give in to my fear induced decisions. I guess you can never really tell how life will turn out but it really helps when you are doing what you really believe in as opposed to doing what everyone else is doing or what everyone else believes in.

Quoting from The Female Eunuch

"In the struggle to remain a complete person and to love from her fullness instead of her inadequacy a woman may appear hard. She may feel her early conditioning tugging her in the direction of surrender, but she ought to remember that she was originally loved for herself; she ought to hang on to herself and not find herself nagging, helpless, irritable and trapped. 

Perhaps I am not old enough yet to promise that the self-reliant woman is always loved, but she cannot be lonely as long as there are people in the world who need her joy and her strength, but certainly in my experience it has always been so.

 Lovers who are free to go when they are restless always come back; lovers who are free to change remain interesting. The bitter animosity and obscenity of divorce is unknown where individuals have not become Siamese twins. A lover who comes to your bed of his own accord is more likely to sleep with his arms around you all night than a lover who has nowhere else to sleep.”

Source: society6.com via Jéssica on Pinterest

 

― Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch

Life is now!

Of all the things I learn't in my twenties, none was as important as the fact that life didn't happen after you found your perfect job or after you fell in love or saved up enough money or did your mba. Life was happening right now, this very second and you need to do start doing what you really want to right now.

I wanted to write a blog about all the craziness of my 20's so here it is. Starting right now.

Source: Uploaded by user via Sarah on Pinterest