I’m sure you have heard it said don’t judge a book by its cover, that appearance does not matter so much, and that it is what’s on the inside that counts. Anyway, some people must think otherwise cause I read this sardonic remark and I’m not quite sure who wrote it or if it’s part of an article or a book; “this is utter rubbish, if it were true then people who were good on the inside would never have to comb their hair or take a bath, and the whole world would smell even worse than it already does.”

Every thing, every person, every space has its moment. Like a photograph, if you catch the moment with really good light and you will see the beauty around it. It might be an early hour in the morning, or the short time between evening and night. Maybe it’s the blue-gray glow during the rain or middle of the day where the sun hits the shade just right. It could be right near the window when all the lights in the house are off. If that moment is just right, you will capture these moments.

Life is wonderful, mysterious, terrifying and awful. The internet has definitely become a powerful presence whether we choose to invite it into our lives or not. There is a distinct thrill in finding things you didn’t realise you were looking for. Some places are so lovely to visit, beautiful and inspirational, others are dark and terrible. With so much ideas and creativity flowing, do you ever wonder how do people consistently come with new content, clever and relevant things to say? Sometimes it makes me realise I know next to nothing about so many things.

Reading is one of my favourite things to do. It’s often cited that people read to escape reality, to find reason for hope, to find strength. A good novel is described as a time machine, that puts you in the minds and bodies of fascinating people, a transporter that lets you travel to different worlds, an exploration of love and death, sex and romance, hopelessness and despair, seedy underworlds and fairy lands. Through stories of values realised, of wrongs righted, books can bring connection to the wonders of life, how life can and ought to be lived.

Sometimes you may even fall in love with the characters. They grow on you. And as you read, you start to feel what they feel. And when you’re done, you’re never the same, something in you has changed. Something in the way you think and the way you choose. But it all comes down to the state you go to after you finished a book. The after-feeling. But sometimes you feel left alone by that world you were in. It makes you sad because you were in this other world and then you have to say goodbye when you read the last page.

Sometimes we expect too much in life and that’s okay and we will have little rubs of disappointments but it’s also in our nature to turn to another choice, and we make a second better, we find comfort in something else. It is said that one of the most difficult things to think about in life is one’s regrets. If something happens to you and you did the wrong thing or did not do anything, for years afterwards you will wish you had done something different.

Do you ever notice that when things go wrong, they usually go on getting worse but when things start going right, they often go on getting better and better. I like to believe that.

Have a great weekend!

Sometimes life is so full of unpredictable beauty and strange surprises that it catches you off-guard. Do you know that feeling? When something is just too beautiful. When someone says or does something or writes something that moves you, maybe even changes you?

All we have is our memories. They’re all we can really base anything on. We all have our present moment, but you can’t help but be shaped by what came before. How many of our memories last?

Maybe not that many. Some memories you can remember perfectly from  long ago. The joy and sorrow goes away, the specifics fade into eternal way. What’s left of us are just traces of the feelings. Sometimes they’re beautiful and poignant, other times they leave us remorseful and with regrets. So what to do with all of these memories? Do you cherish what you have, what you could still remember, create new ones and hope they last?

Where do you find comfort? I find comfort in rainy nights, with raindrops singing the lullaby. I find comfort in reading books. I find comfort in my running time. I find comfort in my daily morning coffee ritual. I find comfort in taking things just a tiny bit slower and I find comfort in isolating myself. Away from the judging crowd.

My brain refuses to be slow. It’s constantly awake and moving. Thinking about this and that. Some call it overthinking, I just simply name it overclocking. It’s hard to attain inner silence when your mind has a lot to talk about. It feels like you’re being torn into different personalities, judgemental opinions, and it just couldn’t slow itself down. I’ve got dreams in hidden places and extra mile for when I’m blue for we are essentially and utterly alone in the things most intimate and important.

I updated this on my Facebook moments go. It goes like this, ‘Wouldn’t you want to open yourself to a good experience that shouldn’t have happened, even if it won’t last?’

So now the question is, would you?

These three lines have struck a cord with me; people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you make them feel.

Yesterday I was asked about my thoughts on what love is. I’ve been thinking since then about what the answer really is.

I remember a movie I watched years ago, Frankie & Johnny. I love films like this– those gritty New York movies about trying to get by, trying to live your life. Frankie and Johnny is the tale of two characters played by Michelle Pfeiffer and Al Pacino, who are just trying to get by in life. Just trying to make a living. But Johnny (Pacino) is fresh out of prison and after meeting Frankie (Pfeiffer) he falls in love.

Sometimes we give up on something because we don’t think things will work out. There are some things in life that don’t go the way you want them to or the way you think they should. And you can’t hold on to something that left long time ago too because some things just aren’t meant to be.

We may think we know what we need to make us happy, what will be good for us, but life rarely works out in the way we expect, and our happy ending may have all sorts of unexpected twists and turns.

Everyone of us dream. We dream to give ourselves hope. To stop dreaming would be like saying you can never change your fate. And I think that it’s important to like stuff cause we spend a lot of time thinking about things that we hate. We often just accept the things that we like and complain about the things that we don’t like. But if we could intensely dwell on the really good things in life, things that we love, as intensely as the way we dwell on the negative stuff, that would be marvelous.

Sometimes our lives seem to be going in different directions– every aspects of our lives are either growing or falling apart or changing their meanings. Our relationships, our outlook in life, our likes and dislikes, our loves and passions, we feel and see everything a little different. There’s something extremely inevitable about changes and they happen in obvious or in more subtle ways.

But haven’t there also been times when you feel like you’re stuck in a rut and you want to make changes to your lifestyle, maybe do things which you have never thought of doing or have been too scared to attempt? It is so easy to see or read these things in others, things you admire and yearn to do and then when it comes to you trying to become that, you procrastinate and hesitate. We are conditioned to a life of security and conformity which may appear to give one peace of mind, but can actually dampen our spirit. If you want to get more out of life, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security, I have been told that many times.

Our mind is our worst enemy. When we try to focus, our mind wanders off. And when we want to change our life style, we dabble in all sorts of things and expect quick results. We’re left feeling discouraged. But the one thing we don’t really think about changing is our way of thinking.

The promise of realising our hopes and dreams is an enticing one. It gives everything meaning. But life is often less poetic. We would love to marvel in how meaningful life is – we like to see our lives as meaning something, as leading in a certain direction, that there’s an essence within us that is guiding us along. But after a few illnesses, deaths, heartbreaks and shattered dreams — we lose that spark.

You try to hold yourself together and think of the things you love and how to get it right. In the process of doing more often than not we seek validation from others what comes out of what we do when the truth of the matter is that the one person that needs to validate what we do is ourselves.

We create the world we want. We have to believe there’s a magical essence pointing us through life — that we have the power to live the life we want. The mind is everything, what we think, we become. Hope can be a powerful force. Maybe there’s no actual magic in it but when you know what you hope for most and hold it tight within you, you can make things happen, and it’s almost like magic.

—

The writer fell in love with the song the moment he heard about this from a very treasured friend. Men’s imperfectations are part & parcel of life, but more often than not, we choose to overlook that fact and building expectations and asumptions on others.  He hopes that from now on with every gleaming moment of life, he could just push those away and live a life as it is. Simple, but meaningful.

Hope you do too.

It was 4 in the afternoon when my phone buzzed disturbingly while I was having a leisure stroll along with my friends who came down to my place to pay me a visit. I took a glance at my notification. It was an email.

An email that I waited all along.

Had you asked me about winning this 4 months back I would have given you a hesitant no. It seemed to be such a distant possibility at a time when I struggled to balance so many different things at hand. Juggling so many balls at once and at one point I thought I was poised for failure. That depressing front when you looked at failures at all ends; all things seemed to be crumbling down as you blamed yourself for attempting the impossible.

There were times when I struggled between getting away from my old self, my same old way of thinking or dwelling deeper into it. So, what was I supposed to do? Go watch a movie, go for a walk, read a self-help book, whatever I think would pull me through. But sometimes nothing I purposefully do would be of much help.

But once I pull my mind out of the doldrums, I felt free, my complaints and mistakes become opportunities. When I did achieve one of those ‘ahha’ moments, well, not much in the world feels better, or more right.

Of course it’s easier said than done. Sure, there were (and there would still be) days where I failed miserably. But each time, I tell myself that I have to get pass the blunders and stupid mistakes. Start tomorrow with high hopes. You can spend your time over-analysing a situation, trying to justify what could have, would have happened, trying to put the pieces together, or you could just leave the pieces on the floor and move on.

I chose the latter. Perseverance played a big part in guiding me through. And so did the encouragements & support from my family and friends. I found solace and confidence through prayers. Confidence was so hard. I’m my worst critics but, I couldn’t blame my inner demons or anyone else – I’ve just got to get pass the self-doubts, criticism and rejection.

And it really helps if you find people that get you. When I find someone whose personality/creativity/energy excites or inspires me; I practically throw myself into their lives and follow their progress closely. Sometimes you can’t do it alone. You need to take advice from anyone who resonates with you. And I’m glad to have found them.

Fast forward 4 months later, I scrolled through that very specific email. Overwhelming was an understatement. I passed it to Sydney, Alveena & Jonathan whom later surrounded me with congratulatory message. Tears rolled down my cheek uncontrollably. Tears of joy. Tears of sacrifice. All those prayers and blessings, they were duly answered. There was a point I thought it was all just a prank. But it wasn’t. It’s real. And it’s here.

I did it.

I was about to buy a new laptop, and I couldn’t decide on the color. I tried to visualize the laptop and imagine how I would feel boasting it off in each color. I weighed the options, hoping one would rise as the right choice.

I’d already gone online numerous times to look at the laptop, even interrupting important work to do so, and I’d gone back to the PC store twice. I’d asked countless people which color they thought I should get, pulling out my iPhone to show them the options.

I’m embarrassed about this. I’m supposed to be efficient and productive. I’m supposed to be confident. But there I was, wasting time, asking other people to help me choose my favorite color. This is not who I want to be.

But, clearly, it is who I am. Much as I’d like to deny it, I am often indecisive and insecure.

That’s hard for me to admit, so I tried to avoid facing it.

I blamed others: Maybe it was my parent’s fault — they made so many decisions for me that I never learned to have confidence in my own choices. Or maybe it was the company’s fault for offering so many colors — there’s compelling research proving that the more alternatives we have, the harder it is to choose.

I minimized my struggle: I make lots of important decisions, so who cares if I can’t make the insignificant ones?

And I tried to follow a process: First eliminate the obvious no’s, then if it’s still unclear, they all must be fine and I’ll just choose any one of the remaining colors.

None of this worked. A week later, I had still not decided.

One night as I lay awake feeling the shame of my ineptitude, I began to think about my friend. He can have difficulty controlling his impulses and he falls quickly into conflicts with friends. How often have I scolded him or given him unsolicited pushy advice, annoyed that he acted the way he did?

I’d assumed that, if he wanted to, he would change. But, from the vantage of my own struggle, I realized how wrong I’d been. My friend is doing the absolute best he can. And my judgement of him behavior — of him — only makes him feel and behave worse.

That’s when it really hit me: My expectations of everyone, including myself, are counter-productively high.

High expectations can have a positive effect; people need a high bar to stretch towards. But I think many of us take it too far. We slip so easily into criticisms of ourselves and those around us — family, friends, coworkers, public figures — that we no longer expect people to be human beings. And when we shame ourselves and others for failing, we make things worse. We contribute to pain while nurturing impotence.

When we face weakness — ours or someone else’s — it doesn’t help to blame someone or something, pretend it’s not important, or simply decide to change. And it’s not sufficient to identify a three-step process to fix the problem. So what does help?

Here’s the best I’ve come up with: compassion.

As far as I can tell, for advice to be useful at all, it needs to be preceded by compassion. Yes my friend needs support, guidance, instruction, and advice. But he needs compassion first. As the saying goes: Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. That certainly includes me. And, I’m betting, you. Being compassionate will probably make us better, more effective people. If not, at least it will reduce the suffering that accompanies weakness. And it will most certainly make us nicer to each other and to ourselves.

Eventually, I bought a laptop. I brought it home. Then, the next day, I woke up at five in the morning again, second-guessing my decision, thinking I should have bought a different color. I berated myself momentarily and then I remembered: This is who I am. It’s not perfect. I don’t even like myself sometimes. But it’s the best I can do. Hopefully, it’s good enough.

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