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.

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.