Forever Young

I always wondered why we were so fascinated by youth. It's been a while since I was considered young, and although I have tried to keep myself and my thoughts open to new ideas, I know I am not young again. There is something poetic about how youth welcomes life with open arms.

Youth is all about being novice, about being inexperienced - about experiencing new things all the time. The wonder, the awestruck moment, when we step into the unknown, not with fear, but with hope and wonder. 

Youth that is not optimistic about its future, is wasted. 

There is something very powerful about being under the illusion that life is all good - life is going to listen and fulfil all your dreams. Yes , the dreams and the belief that you can be what you want and do what you want is what youth is all about.

As we grow older, face challenges, disappointments, see our dreams crash, bitterness and cynicism sets in and we age. We grow old as we grow wiser - youth is all about folly and being fearless. 

Some of us are fortunate to live in the age of innocence and naivety for longer  than others. Some of us are born wise and never get to see life through rose colored eye, while others just refuse to grow up. 

I miss being carefree, miss the fact that I only had to think about myself, be utterly selfish and be okay with it. I miss the days of "wasting time", of just living day to day. 

Trust and Friends

As you grow older, your life gets more entangled in the social web of relationships that actually don't matter in the long run. We get so busy with social obligations, that the longing for meaningful connections, where you can be who you are, no questions asked, are rare. Most of us have those few friends that we can trust to support us through all the upheavals of our life. They are our rocks, they are our sounding boards and of course our partners in crime.

They tell us the truth -or maybe  at times just go along with our whimsical thoughts and plans, waiting patiently for us to come to our senses. They believe in us, and irrespective of how bad it sounds when we say what we say, they can read between the coded lines. The no judgement part of the town, the talk before you think zone. There is nothing more valuable to me than friendship - the feeling of love and good will. Friendship is mutual - it is not mandatory - it is what we choose . Choosing and nurturing, we lovingly build relationships based on trust and love.

The foundation for all relationships is friendship and the glue that bonds friendship is trust.  Love, hate, get angry, get frustrated, but don't break trust.Take trust out of the equation and you are left with nothing, but simple fluff.  The problem with trust is that, it is precious - very precious and fragile. You have to handle it with care. It takes ages to develop and minutes to break. When we trust someone, we are basically holding the person in good faith . Faith is blind and so is trust.

Trust is what sustains our relationship with others. Although it is not easy to open ourselves, which we do , when we trust, there can be no meaningful relationship without trust. Love becomes meaningless, respect a sham, if we are not able to show our vulnerable side without being afraid of being betrayed.

What is the use of friendship, if I have to choose words? Relationships are investments, we invest our time, we invest our emotions and create a space in our hearts'  - sometimes they are so deeply embedded, that they become a part of you. We don't make friends, we develop them, friendship is a process, a constant process of giving and taking, of extending our hand all in good faith .

We all need friends - the bonding , the connecting , the acceptance and the unwavering faith that someone holds goodwill for you. Life would be meaningless without having true friends - or that one friend, who can read between the lines, who can say what they want, without the fear of being judged.

Friendship is sacred, it is the basis for all relationships - marriage, parent - and child, any relation that requires trust. And on a final note, there are no goodbyes between friends - just brief intermissions.

People Pleasers

There is something about anger and indignation that ends up with me concocting    a cocktail of caustic sarcasm with a dash of spice in it. I am a people pleaser or to be more precise, actually that is the perfect term -for the lack of good vocabulary. People pleasers - the term is self-explanatory - we try our best to keep everyone happy, even it makes us unhappy in the end.  I can go on record and say that there isn't a single person that I have severed relationship with.

Like you might have guessed by now, we have a few traits that define us. We can't say no-and God forbid, if we ever have to negate or refuse someone, we would be filled with guilt till the end. Not to say that we are insincere, or that we are nice, but we are boring for sure.

I can think of a thousand things that I didn't do in my life because of  "what would people think"? It is like an inbuilt mechanism, learnt or genetic , they are still trying to figure it out. 

Too much of sugar is bad for you - yes you heard right - sugar and nice- both are bad for you. Even we feel the need for some spice - alas the imp in us was lazy and skipped on many classes on "how to have fun in life"

It takes special kind of jerks to make us angry - and being a people pleaser, we assume that we were the reason for the behaviour that could only be explained by swear language.

Yes, we don't swear - very rarely under our breath - and if you were programmed right, you would be admonishing yourself in the very next breath. 

If you find this person suffocating to live with - I agree - yet the only way unfortunately to break free, would be to reboot and make sure the devil on your shoulder is less dominated by the preachy angel. 

So people, now you know how to spot a People pleaser, go ahead and befriend them - they are just waiting for you and your approval .