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

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