isn't it all worth it???

First a disclaimer- the thought is not entirely my own… but the moment I read this, it pulled some string somewhere and these words started flowing. As usual I am in no mood to rein them in, so writing this.

We often are afraid to fall in love, we think that these attachments bring with them a lot of sorrow, tears and heartache; at least I have always felt so. And so I believed, it is better to keep a safe distance from any emotion of this sort. But a simple book questioned this belief of mine. Won’t give the verbatim thing, but my version of the same (you might want to read the book yourself).

Suppose I meet a stranger. I like him and for once ask this over-protective brain of mine to shut up, and fall in love with him. He, a person with twinkling eyes which remind me of a starry night. We spend some wonderful time together, with me smiling every time I look into his eyes. And then one day, we have to part. It is tough, I feel devastated; I cry and feel that not letting me get into this would have been the wiser thing to do. And then I notice something. From then on, every night when the stars shine, to the whole world they are just the shiny objects in the sky. But for me they are the eyes which make my heart skip a beat. As time passes, the pain subsides and the stars remind me of the time when I thought I was the happiest person on earth. While to everyone else, they are insignificant objects far off in the sky; to me they bring a smile. Isn’t that something I should be thankful to the person about- for giving me a new reason to smile?

True, love does bring tears, but isn’t it all worth it???

Btw, the book is titled "The Little Prince"

A beautiful mind…

Noticed someone and spent hours pondering over a question- does our mind play games to deceive us, or do we play games to deceive our mind?

He was always aloof, full of questions, searching for something. He had really strong likes and dislikes. Valued certain things, considered some completely useless. Suddenly I see him trying to change himself, doing things that are unlike him. Why, I wondered???!!!

A closer look revealed a complete different picture. I see him snapping all ties- ties which he now proclaims were unimportant. I try to fit the pieces of this puzzle together. If I know him even a little bit, I would say that if this breaking of bonds had no meaning, he would have never done this. The people involved might be insignificant, but the action does have a meaning.

Is he planning to end his search and involve himself in the more mundane events, or was he so haunted by his own questions that he is trying to shut them up, building a façade which appears more “normal”? What is he doing, trying to tell his mind that although he has easily snapped so many ties, he is not getting inside any closure; he is in fact now doing things which all others around him love doing.

Would his mind be so easily deceived? Does he realize that the outer shell that he has built still has some gaps from where his true self tries to peep out? Does he realize that the shell is just a make-believe cover to the complex being that is getting more complicated day-by-day? It will break some day and the person emerging would be even more difficult to handle than the one who exists today. Why is he running away from the reality?

But there is something else that worries me more. What if the shell never breaks? What if the façade becomes a fact? What if he loses himself trying to be one of the other so-called normal persons? I hope he doesn’t.

We are a brave people

We are a brave people. Try as hard as you can, we won’t be budged. Nine blasts in Bangalore, and you think that we will get panicked and our lives will come to a stand-still. No dear, we are strong.

How proud we are of this strength of ours. We keep saying these things, hearing these things. I remember listening to a reporter on TV after the Mumbai blasts that the brave city was still on its toes and what not.

But is it bravery or insensitivity? I agree that to get panic-stricken is not a solution, but is being unconcerned is? TV channels pouring news about blasts and we catch a glimpse of it while rushing for our next class. Someone got a little more engrossed and shouted “Oh shit, got late, will lose an attendance”. An attendance versus nine blasts in your neighborhood!
Are we brave, or are we just too detached from others। I am fine, my family, my friends all are fine- once I ensure that I get back to my daily chores. Could I have acted equally “courageously” had a friend of mine been one of the unlucky ones?

Oh yes, I know I have spent too long in thinking and writing this and have to work on a submission. After all I, too, am brave.

It’s my life… Is it???

I was walking down a road, met a person looked at him and moved on. I was walking on down a road, met a person said hello and asked him the way to the post office. I was walking down a road, met a person talked to him, exchanged numbers and are friends till date. We, the two people involved in each case, are the ones who decide what that meeting would result in. But who decides that we meet in the first place? I could have chosen some different road to walk, some different time to travel. But both of us happened to be in the same place at the same time. Was this a part of some pattern?

In my college there are close friends, casual friends and acquaintances. A and I became friends because we happened to be in the same section, B because we had adjacent rooms, C because we joined the same club. I never got to talk to X because we were in different sections, in different hostel blocks- none of which we chose ourselves. And I thought it was I who was choosing my friends. The fact is that this predecided script was given to me just to act upon.

I am introduced to someone. In two meetings we fall in love and in two months time we get married; and I think I chose my life partner. Who decided our first meeting?

We claim to have control over every thing in our lives. If we go just a few steps back we would realize that we had nothing to do in the decision-making process. The path was laid down well before we started walking on it. How could I have walked on the path if it was not built? We can’t even decide who does and doesn’t become a part of our lives, let alone the more complicated issues. Trying to assume that we do have some freedom to decide, life can at max be considered a multiple choice question- I can maybe choose one out of the four given options, but cannot write an answer of my own.

Nostalgia

Was flipping through the pages of an album. There were so many pictures of me with my dearest friends. I was in school at that time. We were a group of seven. “Hum saat saath hain”- we always proudly proclaimed. We were so happy together that we never needed anyone else. Others at school were jealous of us, and we laughed at them. That was the time of innocent love without any conditions. Somehow we thought that never ever would we part- used to talk so much about future- together.

Kids, we were. And very soon reality dawned. We all went to college- all in different parts of the country. We missed each other a lot, used to start planning the summer break together right from the end of the winter break. Thought that, although just twice a year, but we would always keep meeting, keep laughing together.

Still kids, hmmm… Today, three of us are married. So busy with the family that even chats have started becoming rare. Two of us are pursuing our master’s degrees- completely caught with the college schedules. Well, we do meet, but never all of us at the same time, at the same place. We talk about the days that were- the fun, the carefree moments, the wild pranks and the stupid yet sweet vision of future. But one thing we all have been lucky about- we all are happy wherever we are. The days of the past do bring with themselves nostalgia, but also a smile. We were happy with each other; we are happy about each other :) .

perceptions

“People alter their memories to make them fit their perceptions” – Scott Adams

When I read this first, it seemed a little weird. Altering memories to fit my perceptions??? I always thought that the relationship was the other way round- that my memories determined what perceptions I had. But with some deeper thought, it started making some sense.

Altering the memory – I am not very sure about, but “selective retention”- that for sure does happen. Say for instance, I like this friend of mine. He obviously is no divine soul and does certain things that are good and some that are not so good (see, I am biased right here in not using the word “bad”). Anyways, I might dislike the “not so good” acts of his, but after some time, provided I still like him, would somehow forget about them and simply give him the credit for the good ones. Selective retention!!!

Let us take a slightly different, but a more common example. Let’s say I dislike this person, and you ask me my view about him. I will tell you all that I feel is wrong about him and will easily come up with numerous instances when he was not good to me or to someone else. Does this mean that I have never ever seen him doing any good deed? Selective retention again!!! I prefer to forget such events and keep only those in my memories which suit my perceptions.

Want more??? How many times have we almost forgotten the wrongs that we “accidently” did and not that the other one did to us? Or the pinching comments that we made and covered up with “I didn’t mean to hurt you” and not that came to us wrapped up in a similar fashion?

So it is not what I have experienced that forms my view about this world around me; it is rather my view that determines what I choose to call my experiences. Remember the old saying “aap bhale to jag bhala”.

People don’t turn you down… only expectations do

“People don’t turn you down… only expectations do”, had heard it a long time back. But even today incidents and experience continue to validate this and show me that how simply this one sentence has put together the crux of all that we call a “relationship”.

Any relationship- howsoever important or unimportant we might consider it- brings with itself a bundle of expectations- to both the sides, of course. Slowly, its ingredients like companionship and bonding lose their value and what remains is a long list of “should do’s” and “should not do’s”. The moment any of these is not fulfilled, we feel devastated. We proclaim that the relationship has lost its value or charm. All the beautiful things become clouded by the “should have done’s” and “should not have done’s”. But a surprising and often ignored thing is that the fulfillment of these expectations does not necessarily have the opposite effect. We expect something of some person and he does it- it generally goes unnoticed! We never jump with joy for that, we don’t even acknowledge it. Whereas just let that person do otherwise and…

Then isn’t it better that we simply do away with this thing called “expectation” before entering into a relationship and just enjoy whichever way the wind blows. Easier said than done… and maybe not even that right a thing to do either. Maybe relationships are meant to be that way. Even a small child goes to sleep after being fed, but cries the hell out if the feed is slightly delayed. Maybe expectations just have to be there.

Is there a way out then? The only one that I can see is to be able to separate the person and MY expectations from him. If something unfavorable does happen, I need to understand that I was turned down on what I had expected or wanted the other person to do and not what he ever told me he would. This is the only way, I see, a relationship can handle the pressure of expectations.