Of New Years and Resolutions

Time for the old to fade away and to prepare for the birth of New year. Every year's beginning promises us new adventures, new dreams and before long we are committed to do things differently or should I say better than we did the year before. I always end up making resolutions, have even ended up making a resolution of making no resolutions one year. How far I stick  to it, is anyone's guess as the resolutions seem to repeat itself every year.

But this year I have a set of resolutions that I hope to be my mantra for living. 2014 is the year to change attitude, to treat myself right and to  rise above myself. 

In 2014, I promise to 

1. Focus on myself and people who love me.

2. I promise to listen to only what I want to listen. Yes I am going to be Ms.Always Right this year. No more explaining, no more justifying my actions to anyone.

3. Forgive easily. I want to travel emotionally lighter. No more other people's baggages, no more living lives that are not mine. 

4. Laugh more , dream big and and rediscover faith.

5. Let gratitude guide me to leading a more content life. 

6. Be kinder to my kids, and remind myself everyday that it is indeed their life - I can love them, but not prevent them from making mistakes.

7.Be more easygoing and just let things take of themselves. 

8. Meditate on the impermanence of everything in life everyday, just to appreciate what I have, and know that tomorrow is another day.

9. Keep friends close to my heart. 

10.Lastly , but not in the least, I promise to love life, and go against my basic nature and be more spontaneous -the only way to live life. 

Love, life and happiness

No matter how bad your current situation is there is always something that is beautiful in it. Fact remains bad, good are all the terms that we give to our situations. Life is ever changing, we are ever changing, nothing remains the same. That is the truth, the ultimate truth. We are constantly resisting change, yet the key to living life is to flow like the water, find ways between the crevices, to just keep flowing. 

Searching for happiness, love or peace invites more strife in our lives. Every reality , every fiction, every pain and every joy is deep rooted in our minds. The key is to open up our minds and not only accept our transient nature in this universe but to embrace it with joy. Happiness is now and here, peace is accepting the situation and just having faith. And all this is possible only when we realise that love is the key to living. 

Love is so hard to define. It is not possessing someone's soul, nor somebody's body. It is not being with each other 24/7. Love is all that is good, love is embracing life, being joyful , being thankful. Without love in our hearts we are nothing. Love defines our very existence. 

Love begins with loving ourselves, not in the narcissistic way, but being genuinely thankful for this opportunity to experience life, for our very existence. Loving ourselves ensures that we feel we are blessed, that we lack nothing in our lives. Until and unless we learn to love ourselves and our lives, we will never ever be able to love others. You can only give what you have. Fill yourself with so much of love that it spills over to whoever you meet and whatever you touch. Be so at peace with yourself that only kindness and genuine concern radiate from your whole being. 

Loving oneself is not as easy as it sounds. Most of us are unkind to ourselves, we don't forgive ourselves and our failibbles are easily. Yet the key to living a happy life lies in loving ourselves and although the learning process can be treacherous, it is the only way to really LIVE life.So love your life, and love yourself, for no one else holds the key to your happiness. 

Redefining Success

“A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.”
― Bob Dylan

For long,our perception of success has been defined by what society terms as "high achievers". Success has been regularly been labeled with materialistic gains, accolades and of course our belief that the person has achieved a seemingly difficult task. Confident men and women, living a life of extravagance, flaunting their wealth and achievements as a symbolic mean of leading a life that is successful.

I am all for excellence, I am all for achieving high goals, without which human life would not have evolved for better.  Yet recently when someone's 15 year old committed suicide, because of failing grades, it broke my heart. 

Success is not just reaching your goal, but how well you cope with downfalls, and setbacks too. Each of us have some impediments that are blocking our way to lead a happy and fulfilled life. Success  for me is recognizing those blockages  and working our way either by removing them or working around it. 

We need to teach kids not only to value  excellence, but also the art for living life to the fullest. Learning to deal with setbacks, failures, is part of leading a successful life. It is not what happens to you that defines your character, but how you react to it.  Having grown up in an environment where success was etched out in very specific terms,  where your whole identity was defined in numbers , marks,or money, I still struggle to label my  life as successful.

Life is beautiful, life itself is an opportunity. A successful life is one that has learnt the joy of giving,loving  and thanking.Smile in the face of  life, laugh with it, feel the pain of fellow beings, share your passion and above all be true to yourself. A heart that can hope in despair situations, eyes that can see the silver lining in the clouds, and the  mind that is not ready to give up dreaming constitutes a successful life.

Add colours to your life, teach the kids that life is more than numbers, that success and failures are relative. Gift them the  key to living a complete life.





 

Contradictions in life

We are full of contradictions. We are the only species with the ability to communicate, yet we are still isolated in our own bubbles. We are intelligent enough to explore the space and celestial bodies, yet we struggle to find solutions in relationships. We are wise enough to know that life is short and unpredictable, yet we live our lives working as if money is going to secure our life on this planet for ever. 

Our emotions are conflicting, our thoughts too, a bundle of haves and have nots, a constant battle of rights and wrongs seem to rule our lives. Why is it that seemingly simple relationships, take a toll on our bodies and minds? Why are interactions with each other at different levels so complex ?

Human mind is not only intelligent, it is a jumble of emotions. Ever changing whirlpool of feelings, staggered into depths that can scare the bravest of us. In our quest to conquer the world, to understand and grasp the meaning of life, we forget to look deep into our hearts. Learning to be honest with ourselves takes practice and courage, because truth can be ugly and not so easy to handle.

Our mettle is tested with each challenge, and how we respond to it. Do we wallow in self-pity or do we accept responsibility? Do we count our blessings or do we just look for lost opportunities? Do we build our strengths or do we focus on our weaknesses? Failures break us, and over the time we have the opportunity to rebuild it with more awareness about our inner resources. Every closure forces us to reinvent and rebuild ourselves.

Ultimately, life is a just a series of incidents, go with the flow, let every event reveal the depths of your strength and widen your horizon.Life is beautiful, and the only way to enjoy it is embrace it with open arms and open hearts. Yet one of the hardest thing for a human being to do is to be open. Life is simple, organized to a certain extent , with natural laws and guidelines guiding all species to a certain extent.

Light and Shadow

The best of us, are at times incapable of handling feelings of sadness and grief by ourselves. Our whole life is centered towards bringing in happiness forgetting that light can cast shadow too. We are often under the wrong impression that being happy means being in the state of everlasting bliss.

You need tears to soften your heart, just like rain softens the parched land. Without experiencing sadness and sorrow, there is no way we will learn to recognize happiness. Everything in life is relative, every emotion, every feeling has an opposite emotion. It is not only impossible but also not healthy to be happy all the time. High tide brings you gifts from far away, but only in low tides are we able to recognize and gather them.

Sadness is powerful, carrying you away with its force. Struggling or pretending to feel anything else is only going to prolong the cure. Hearts are strange that way, some fragile, breaking into pieces at the slightest blow, while others softening with each disappointment. People who are projecting a happy image, just so that their loved ones don't feel their pain, are the worst in recovering.

Even the happiest of us all go through phases of feeling low at times. Call it mood swings or nature's way of balancing, but just when you think you are strong enough, have been hardened enough by life to face any adversity in life with a smile, the monstrous head of grief pops up.

A little bit of sadness is what keeps us humane, but the realization that we are not as strong as we thought we were can throw us off guard and shake our confidence to the core. It is easy to ignore and pretend that all is fine , that you are unaffected by the disappointments and heartbreak, to just smile and march on, keeping all the feelings deep in. Negative feelings are strange, ignore them and they become intense. 

Quotes by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“Men are made for happiness, and he who is completely happy has the right to say to himself, 'I am doing God's will on earth.” 

“Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery.” 

“To love someone means to see them as God intended them.” 

“If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man, don't bother analyzing his ways of being silent, of talking, of weeping, of seeing how much he is moved by noble ideas; you will get better results if you just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he's a good man.” 

“I love mankind, he said, "but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular.” 

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.” 

“The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.” 

“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart.” 

“Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others.” 

“One man doesn't believe in god at all, while the other believes in him so thoroughly that he prays as he murders men!” 

Quotes on Beauty

“It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata

“Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.”
― Franz Kafka

“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.” 

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” 

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” 

“You don't love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear.”