The Foremost Love

To be all alone

In the middle of a crowd

Is not what this life

Is meant to be about

To be all worn out

In the midst of gaiety

When striking a simple conversation

Marks the onset of anxiety

To be unsure

Of what others feel for you

Is a disservice to your own feelings

Which define and make you, you

To be high strung even at night

When others seem to rest in delight

Is a very unkind plight

So just follow the light

Of your own heart

And let it guide you home

To centre and ground you

To love and surround you

For above all that in this world may be true

You, yourself, owe it to you

Out of the Box

The only difference between my desires and reality

Is that the former is limited by my own sense of worth, imagination, faith and frailty

Remove these from the equation

And I’d be unparalleled, limitless and undefined like infinity

If you look carefully, there’s a deep profundity in this piece’s brevity

So tell me what you make of it?

Diary Entry #6 : To Love a Mockingbird

Have you ever wondered why is it a sin to kill a mockingbird?

Well, Miss Maudie Atkinson said in the classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird: “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin To Kill a Mockingbird.”

I woke up pondering this question today and realised the need to identify all the mockingbirds in my life. The ones that fill it with beautiful melodies not for any reason but just because. The ones that make it a tad easier to plough on with their gentle, guiding hums and their caring flutterings. The ones that love us with no expectations in turn.

Yes, it may well be a sin to kill a mockingbird but if we do not take some time out to appreciate them, we just might slowly by killing their music and that, my friends, would be an unpardonable sin.

So go seek out your mockingbirds today and give them a song to sing!

Diary Entry #5 : Of Denials and Acceptances

At times it takes a while to be able to see something right in front of you. At times people grow on you.

Slowly at first But then quite steadily. Till you end up wondering how come you never noticed them before.

Or an opportunity which you’ve been waiting for since forever comes to you in an unexpected form. And the time you take in recognising it baffles you when you finally do.

It’s amazing, isn’t it?

How we want what we don’t have and how we get those very things in the strangest of ways.

Or maybe we don’t see it because we feel undeserving of it?

We live in denial till the slow acceptance of actually being worthy starts seeping in?

We keep our distance till a sense of security envelops us in its warmth, allowing us to finally let go of our inhibitions and just feel what we want to feel?

I don’t have any answers. Just musings. While I sit around admiring the people and blessings in my life that I resisted for way too long and stupidly, basking in their love and comfort.

Begin Again

Isn’t ‘new beginnings’ a redundancy?

Or do we all go around chasing old habits, places and people

Time and time again

Swimming in circles

Getting nowhere faster

Content with circuit being our lot?

I think next time

I’d just like to have a beginning

Period

No new beginnings

Begging to begin again

Of sunrises and sunsets

The rising sun brings with it

Hope and joy

A renewed vigour for life

Invincibility and motivation

As if you’re god’s favourite creation

And nothing, almost nothing, is out of your reach

The setting sun speaks to me

Of calm and peace

Of rest, overdue and well deserved

Of satisfaction and bliss

Of a day well lived

Of an evening well loved

And I go to bed content

In the certainty of another sun

Which soon shall rise again

Without fail

And bring with it

Hope and joy renewed

I dream of reality?

You ask me if I’m a dreamer or a realist

As if being either could define me in your eyes

Or being both at the same was incredulously impossible

No

I am a dreamer and a realist

For if you wouldn’t dare to dream

How could you possibly fathom the limits of your reality?

Altered Reality

I read and quote Sylvia Plath

Whenever I’m feeling low

I dance on some jazz music

To drown away the blues

I arrange tulips on my desk to remind me of the sun

When the skies are grey outside

And you wonder why your gaslighting

Merely makes me smile?

Of Resolutions and Resolves

I lost almost 25 kgs in 2020. More than that, and more importantly, I lost a lot of mental baggage too.

I feel lighter, fitter and healthier than I ever recall feeling.

I smile more widely and laugh more often. I sleep better and talk more politely. My patience and general well being have improved by leaps and bounds.

The only sad part is that it took a soul crunching, time stopping and all around jarring pandemic for me to pause and reset. To focus on and prioritise myself. To work through all the unresolved issues which were underlying the calm exterior I took pride in portraying. To actually process my feelings and emotions through healthy, conversation based and creative outlets.

So in 2021 the only resolution I am going to make is to choose myself. Love myself. Heal myself. Understand myself. Forgive myself. And to grow. To pause, when needed. To listen to myself. To pay attention to my own mind and body.

I hope you’ll be doing the same for yourself too. Because one off resolutions are like putting out small fires while an entire forest burns to ashes. The bigger picture, the important picture is always you and your life.

Yes, of course, set goals for yourself. But resolve to live happily and freely. And then test your resolve to its very limits….just to see it emerge stronger.

P.S. if you’re struggling and need a friend, I’m always ready to listen, chat and offer whatever assistance that’s possible from my end. I am not a proxy therapist, just a willing shoulder to lean on while you catch your breath 🙂

Language of the Universe

In a universe so infinite

Why would you want to love finitely?

Define yourself with numbers

Like scores, marks, weight, age, people?

Why limit your soul to one astral plane?

Why restrict your knowledge to only that which is defined?

What’s stopping you other than your own self-imposed boundaries?

Even if the universe were to be finite

Why couldn’t you live infinitely?

Or rather

Why shouldn’t you?

Even if the universe were finite

Go ahead and write your story

On every particle of it