Aaron Kee

How many of us have learned to love ourselves or even learned to forgive ourselves entirely? How often have we compared, envied or regretted because no matter what station we are in life, there will be times when we will feel inadequate or incomplete?

We will make mistakes, it’s inevitable. And who doesn’t know that you have to learn to forgive yourself. And when you forgive yourself you’ll say, ‘Well, if I’d known better, I’d have done better.’ You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is to yourself and really it is the hardest thing to do.

The fact of the matter is the most difficult thing in the world is accept who you are and not try to be who you are not. Be happy with who you are. Love yourself. What a cliché, you think?

There must be a reason why we are born tall, short, fat or thin, clever or not too smart. When a society sees you as ugly, unattractive, too sexy, too black, too white, too yellow, too poor, too fat, too thin, too outspoken, too outrageous, too sexual, that’s bound to be conflicts. But the real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself, not to be too self critical or insecure. If we keep doing that, we’ll be stunted, we’ll never grow.

Can we ever be completely satisfied with ourselves and convince ourselves that we have everything we need right here, right now? I mean we should love waking up in the morning not knowing what’s going to happen, who we’re doing to meet, where we’re going to wind up. We’ll never know what hand you’re going to get dealt with next. Or we can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or insane. Pious or sex addicts. Heroes or victims. Letting history tell us how good or bad we are. Letting our past decide our future. Or we can decide for ourselves.

—

Aaron took a day off to unpack all the stuff he brought back from hostel. Found a few old stuff staggered all around but one of em’ caught his eyes. It was this.

Memories came flashing back. He figured out he will keep this story for another day. His happy story.

The first Friday of December. I always look forward to Fridays. These past few days I have been in one of my restless and bluesy moods, a sense of not having any purpose, that whatever I am doing is an exercise in futility. The one thing I am sure of is that you must have a purpose and the passion and the right attitude to do anything, in the absence of it, you’re pretty much screwing yourself.

When you meet someone, we choose either to be happy, excited, interested, acceptable or crabby. But there is always something of yourself that you leave behind each time you are with another person. People will forget what you said or what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

We reminisce, fantasise and we talk about being anything we want. Our circumstances and our privileges or lack of it, sure they have some influence, but pretty much is actually left to us. How often do we live up and be all that we can be? How many times you said you’d do this or that but didn’t and found all the reasons not to. You don’t want to get burned so you play it safe. We hide behind a facade, behind the safety of our homes and our jobs and security blankets. We tried to be nonchalant or indifferent and hoped it’ll be the remedy to life’s melancholy and the mundane.

You think life will throw you good times and opportunities? But really it’s down to you, down to the amount of times you turn up instead of hide out. You wake up each morning and you wonder if this day will be a good one or bad or maybe a mixture of both? Let me tell you baby, its all down to you, that’s pretty much it.

You know what’s a trait I seek in people? It’s attitude. If you don’t have it, all else fails. When you have the right attitude, you explore all possibilities, believe in everything and anything and anytime that you can make things happen. You dream big, you reach far. So what if your life is filled with failures and near misses but you keep firing on.

But as we get older sometimes we think we know the world. We think that what is is. We judge everything because we think we know better. We think it’s impossible, it can’t be done. And we are so quick to cut down anyone who tries, whose different, who dares. Sometimes we end up killing the young, left them doubting, losing, forcing them to drown out their dreams and settling for a life surrounded by people bitching bickering about everything that’s different from them.

This dynamic plays out in everyday circumstances. But you know what? We get to choose to be caught up in the magic of life or we can claim to know everything and close off our minds and hibernate till the Grim Reaper comes calling.

Well, do you believe in something beautiful? Then get up and be it.

You can say I was a seeker, an addict, and at times a stupid hell-raiser. From the time I left High School, I was never idle long enough to think much, I was all bent on chasing away my malcontent. I was desperately searching for something. By the grace, I had the common sense never to neglect nor abandon my goals of financial independence and security because well don’t kid yourself, you can’t feed on love or a companion for the night. Many a times I felt somehow that others were making real progress, and making it all look so easy.

I too, spent many moments soul-searching, learning, making mistakes, making stupid mistakes and then trying all over again. I seemed to be leading a lost cause, that I was just heading towards a senseless path of self-destruction. I had a restless idealism of getting what I desire on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other. Essentially, I was ‘looking for love in all the wrong places’,which pretty much summed up the paths I was taking to find myself. At times, I got sucked into the follies that I can find it in someone else’s love or in material comforts. It is still a never ending quest, a journey of self-discovery.

They say, addiction is a decision. You want something, whatever that something is, and make a decision to get it, at all cost, that’s addiction. If you make a decision to take it and if it gets far out of control, it becomes an addiction. Yes, I have been down that road, I have desires that I pursued relentlessly whether it was an emotional affliction over a person or over a latest gadget in town that I must have in my possession.

When you are in that state, your mind is always haggling with the question, do I or don’t I? Should I or shouldn’t I? Do I keep on pursuing, or am I going to stop wasting my time, should I just say no? It’s a decision. Each and every time. If you string enough of those decisions together, you have a set of values and a standard to live by.

Ultimately, we all want the same things: comfort, love and a peaceful heart. Meaning and morality in life come from within ourselves. Some of us seek self enrichment by experimenting, by living dangerously and pursuing all possibilities. You can life on pity, self-contempt, self-restraint and guilt. Living a  good and meaningful life is ever changing, challenging, devoid of regret, intense and passionate, creative and risky. Maybe it’s good to put things in perspective, you get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn’t. You get to decide what to worship and what is worthy of your time and effort.

Live a life that is worth of you.

—

Aaron Kee’s favourite song for the past 2 weeks.

There are times in life when we are supposed to be with someone and when we are supposed to be alone.

The moment you feel you are no longer dependent on anyone, you feel a relaxed let-go, like a deep coolness and calm settles inside of you. But then, who doesn’t get lonely sometimes. And does it make one feels better to know that other people are lonely too? Of course, I do have my moments of boredom, yearnings and restlessness. It comes with the territory of being alone, and you have to deal with it your own way.

Isn’t it funny the quirks and oddities that end up making us who we are? One thing I do know is that I lack a filter, and it’s not something I can control but I firmly believe it is what drives the passion inside me. I love without questioning, when it’s love I feel. I can feel people sometimes, I can feel people’s hurts and pains, their loves and fears and sometimes it breaks my heart when I can feel these in people. I’m the kind of person who would miss a class or drive an hour across town to meet you for coffee.

Basically, I’ll make time for anything that is important to me. But in all those times when I’m alone, I always try to remember sometimes beautiful things can happen when you are alone that is a reflection of the state that you are in at the moment.

And it isn’t that bad being alone after all.