Life Lessons #1

To the play the game like nothing is at stake... when everything is.

(Truly an art, learnt it from my parents as I saw them laugh and joke together days before my dad was to undergo a major brain surgery. Guess its a great way to play the game called life, and probably the only way to win it. )

A Little Love For Life

Only if you love life truly, will life truly love you back. If you are scared and hold back; life will hold back from you too.

It turned out that this was going to be my toughest new year's resolution to keep. 

How wonderful I thought it would be to just love life with a mad, passionate frenzy; the kind they talk about in stories. No expectations, no fears.. just pure, limitless, kind love. 

Alas, we are not trained to love; we are trained to compete, to live in fear of losing all that we scramble around to attain. Countless desires, countless fears.. endless yearnings, endless pain. 

They always make it look so simple in the stories, to break free of a tiresome life and to do deeds of great courage like travelling the world, turning your back on patriarchal society, breaking all the senseless rules, chasing impossible dreams.. and then we crash back to reality. Are we truly doomed to a life of endless insecurity.

I guess like in all great love stories, true love for life requires great courage. To open yourself up to life, make yourself vulnerable. Accept all that comes in and passes through.. the good and the bad, the pain and the joy.. all of it. To live every moment, to be truly alive.

 For what purpose you may ask, when did love ever have a purpose; we love for love's sake. But I believe and do so truly that in the end all this love will be worth it, if not for anything else but for a life well lived.

Forever

And in that moment I realized that if I wasn't happy today when I had everything my heart yearned for, I would never be happy
It was foolish thing, yearning for forever when forever didn't exist.

Bukowski: The gods wait to delight in you

your life is your life

don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.

be on the watch.

there are ways out.

there is a light somewhere
.
it may not be much light but

it beats the darkness.

be on the watch.

the gods will offer you chances.

know them.

take them.

you can’t beat death but

you can beat death in life, sometimes.

and the more often you learn to do it,

the more light there will be.

your life is your life.

know it while you have it.

you are marvelous

the gods wait to delight in you.


Charles Bukowski