Take it easy

There comes a time in your life, when you have the choice to either take what happens to you seriously and fret about it, or to just look at the events from a skewered point of view  and laugh about it. People are screwed,  we are to a certain extent dysfunctional - and what do you suppose our relationships with others are like -  yes guessed right - screwed.

Yet this life - even the sanest and wisest of us are not what we seem like - layers and layers of deceptions  and add to  the recipe,  interactions with people who are damaged by life and its unexpected events. Life, desires, expectations and our greed for more, all literally twisting our minds  We are small beings with capability to talk and see - yet unable to communicate. We are mean people, with hearts that can be filled with love towards our lineage, also holds the capacity to be cruel to helpless beings. We can sear people's hearts with our fiery words, or warm their hearts with our kindness. Yes, we are capable of both. 

And then this is what happens when a serious person tries to write humour, - you go off track and sink to the bottom with the real and virtual problems of the world. Yes, we think - and actually believe that thinking helps... seriously? I have been  a proponent of teaching kids and adults to think - but honestly what good does it do? Yes "do" is the key word. Thinkers are not doers - the world maybe needs people who just take action. 

Teach kids early on that failures and successes don't make life - how we deal with it makes life - take both easy. Have fun , break rules, bandage your heart, shut your brain out to things that worry you, laugh at situations you have no control over, because crying definitely won't help either. 

All you get for being sincere, for taking others seriously is high blood pressure, anxiety and disappointments. We should be taught  and maybe serious people like me, given lessons early in life (maybe extra tutorials) that take everything and everyone you meet with a pinch of salt... Take life lightly, take yourself lightly.

Older but not wiser

It has been a while since I was excited about growing another year older. I look back and all I see is a flash of life zooming past. Time, the rebel , teasing me by fast forwarding my year to "that time of the year " again. Time flies not when you are having fun, but when you want it to slow. Age is not just a number, and irrespective of what my heart believes or wants to believe, I will soon be a year closer to actually be called "old" .I don't mind growing older, I would be ungrateful if I did , but I do want the time to slow down - to savor every passing moment.

Another year older and not a day wiser. The only wisdom I have gained in the past year is that being wise is no fun. Be foolish and make mistakes. In the past one year I have realized that I am in charge of only my happiness. I have learnt that sometimes it is okay to let the heart rule over your head. Forgiving comes more easily and that there is a reason why our memories grow weaker as we age. 

My eyes have gotten weaker too and that helps when I look at myself in the mirror to uplift my self-esteem. My moral compass has grown flexible and nothing shocks me anymore. The desire to prove myself and my ambition is waning every day and my tolerance for inane talks and stupidity is decreasing at an alarming rate. My disdain for irrationality has reached a s point where I feel too lazy to even respond with anger. I  am turning myself to just being a spectator and observer of human follies, including mine. Some things like religion, and politics , which I would have passionately given my views on, I am slowly turning indifferent to.

On other hand, I find more interest in anti-aging products and "health" - a sure sign that I am fast approaching the peak of middle age. I am getting better at finding excuses to avoid  social gatherings and I am more comfortable than I was last year with my idiosynarcies. I understand that I am human and it is okay to be swayed into the realm of devil from time to time and so long as it is only in thoughts and not actions, it is okay. 

What I do want, hasn't changed much, only the desires have intensified with an urgency that is only possible when  with growing another year older. I still want to see every sunset, every sunrise possible , just watch the leaves dancing with abandoned joy,watch the petals bloom, and find rhythm in the raindrops. I want to watch the snow flakes melt as they hit the ground, and listen to the stream happily  maneuver its way around the rocks to go where it wants to.

I want to travel the world, not to see places, but to meet people and comprehend what makes us human. I want to experience freedom, a free mind, an open mind, to dissolve all the experiences of the past and live again. I want to be able to go on long drives, with no destination in mind.

Yes... I am another year older and   the desire to live life to the  best intensifies  every day.   

Time outs

Be strong, be positive and march on. Everyday we live life, sometimes on our terms, sometimes on terms set by others. Yet, we live on. The wear and tear of everyday living - if we can call it that, our frustrations, our limitations, our loneliness and our pretenses, all just keep on piling up till we reach the brink of our tolerance and can take no more.



Being an adult is difficult. Being  a responsible adult is harder. One of the traits of adulthood is that we don't respond instantly or express exactly how we feel. Children can throw tantrums, can wail out loud in public, can laugh and play without any restrictions when and where they want. But as we grow older , we learn to grin and bear. We are taught to keep our emotions on leash, to swallow anger, to smile through the pain and even when we are happy to show restraint.

Restraint and  judiciousness  in our actions are essential to  fit into the norms of society. Society needs structure, discipline and restraint to exist.We  wouldn't be able to survive without the discipline to postpone our natural instincts, the covering up of our fears and frustrations. But all this covering up, takes it toll on you. The suppressed emotions waiting to surface, needs privacy to vent out - the poison needs to bleed out. Some take the help of alcohol, some put obsessive and streneous demands on their body.

Being  woman , I am fortunate that I have liberty  and the tool to let all the bottled up emotions to just escape which is perfectly acceptable by society. I cry .Nothing cleanses the heart and soul better than a good cry.The luxury of freedom to just wallow in self-pity, to just give my feelings the priority, is what I call time out for myself. I allow myself time -out from being strong, from being brave and happy and just let the wave of tears overcome every other feeling.

Time outs are just that- an intermission before we go back and start living like adults again, a break to be kind to ourselves, and indulgence to let ourselves just be self centered kids.

Empowering girls

Do we really need girls to be princesses? I see barbie dolls, I see parents referring to their daughters as princesses and all I want to do is scream out - no it is not right. I remember growing up, when I got into a physical fight with my brother and looked at my dad to help me out, all he said was, you have two hands, and legs just like your brother, fight your own battle, save yourself. It taught me to fight for my own battles, to be a warrior and not wait to be saved.

The west is generations ahead in terms of women's rights and I am so blessed to live in this society. Yet when I see parents treating their daughters to be princesses, I find it regressive. I feel disappointed when I see vain mothers, raising their daughters to be equally vain. There is this limitless opportunity for girls over here, to achieve anything they want, why teach them to seek for outside source to nourish their self-esteem? Self-esteem grows with accomplishment. Teach them to achieve, to compete with boys.Treat them to be equal.

We need more girls and women in well-paying jobs. In trades, in management, in politics. We need more doctors, lawyers, soldiers. We need to change the meaning  of tradition. I despise the word, because it represents blind faith - doing something because it has always been done that way.Foraging into male dominated careers also demands that men take up more roles in female dominated professions. The lines between provider and nurturer needs to be blurrier, if not totally erased. 

The time has come to redefine gender roles. Let kindness and respect be the qualities that women find  desirable in men . For true feminism, women have to change their perspective. Don't raise your daughters to be princesses, raise them to be queens - empower them with self-esteem and love and a positive body image. Raise your sons to admire strong women.

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 .