Friday, June 27, 2008

Love is like a Hill

I love hills a lot...but never thought I could equate being in and out of love with climbing up and down a hill.

When you meet somebody exciting and strike up a relationship, there is sizzling attraction, everything going right and its like MAAN, WOW!! You know, its like climbing up a hill or even a smallish knoll. In giant strides you cross it as if it were a small hurdle and reach to the top. You go up so quickly that you never realise the great heights you have covered. Everything looks so beautiful from there..aha, what a wonderful vista... you begin to see life in a new light. You jump and prance about and your heart jumps and prances about with you. You love the hill even more for what it has brought to your life.

I pray to God you stay there forever.

But most times, we are not lucky. Sometimes it ends. It may end suddenly and you see yourself reeling over the edge.

Or the end may even stretch out in a painfully long manner, when you find suddenly even more challenges to cross. You know, at such times one feels that it is the challenges of relationship that more efforts are required to reach the top. Probably it is a better view from higher up and you struggle more. But the reality is the challenges that you cross are not taking you uphill, but rather u r goin downhill.

And thats the truth...falling in love is like climbing a small hill, but getting out of it is trudging down like a tall mountain. Reminds me of an English film title, so apt "An Englishman who went up a hill and came down a mountain". It has such a romantic poster of Hugh Grant holding the heroine in his arms with the mountain as the backdrop. But I digress, as usual.

So getting out of a relationship is like coming down a mountain.....the closer the relationship, the longer the journey downhill and if it was love,then may God save you. The irritating part is that you have to put so much effort and that too just to come downhill (and thats where this analogy differs from climbing up and down of an actual hill)...and every moment you are aware of the effort you are putting in, which makes it all the more painful. And you cannot stop yourself from frequently looking back up, imagining how it was up above there, and coming to terms with the disbelief that it has all ended.

I do hope, that if ever any of you has to come downhill, that your journey does end so that you can gather your energies for the next hill....for life doesn't stop and life has to move on and once you have been at the top, its like an addiction and you want to be up there...be it this hill or that!!

While going uphill, one loves a lot. While coming downhill, one learns a lot.....thats the reality, sweet or bitter ...you decide

A formula to relieve ur mental worries

Sometimes if you want to get out of your life’s story….because it pains, because its horrid, and when thinking does not resolve the pain (and you have already done a lot of thinking) and when thinking about her rather becomes an addiction….the best way out is to get into somebody else’s story…. Read a good novel, get immersed in it, think about the characters and forget about yourself…..or talk to a friend about him or her and not talk about oneself at all. Believe me it helps. When you see the world around you in that familiar sea of emotions, all of them struggling, you find solace that you are not alone.... we are all bitches and dogs and find it soothing the even others face the same kind of problems as us and occassionally you come across other's who have suffered more, it makes you feel you have had a better deal.

Friday, June 6, 2008

Small Things

Sometimes small things matter. Take for e.g. discussing small things... say that today again you had to have plain moong dal khichdi for lunch or that the maidservant ditched you again or whether your name sounds good? or that you again woke up late for some appointment etc etc.

But with whom would one share all this; somebody with whom you can share the minor irritations of life and laugh it away, so that you can focus on the major things. Somebody with whom you can share any bloody thought that crosses your mind without fearing that you will be judged based on that, or more annoyingly - simply have it ignored. Somebody with whom discussing with anything big or more importantly discussing the small is not boring for them or for you.

I did not realise the importance of this earlier that much. I always felt that it's only worthwhile sharing thoughts with those who share one's passions, the larger aims of life. Who would discuss such trivial matters, anyway? But having seen the astonishingly relaxing effect of discussing small things, idiotic, trivial things, I now beg to differ from my earlier considered opinion.

A mentor of mine once said, 'Great men do not only do the great things greatly, but even the small things. Thats what makes them great.'

Scratching ur head?? You can discern no link to my earlier discussion??? I agree with you. It was just a pathetic attempt to include some quotation of another to make this piece look 'great' and irritating humor to make it 'interesting'. Btw he was berating me when he quoted that. Its a good quote though and probably you can use it in some other context where it is more relevant.

Anyway with the dubious support of the above quotation... I wish to assert that small things of life do matter in much more than a small way. So dont take them lightly - those with whom you can discuss freely the small things of life. They would typically be those you are most comfortable with. And comfort matters. Adios.

Thursday, June 5, 2008

Courage

Today was a day where I had to be courageous in facing myself. The weapons of thought were rusty from long period of unuse. The skills to probe deeper seemed to have been long forgotten. More than that was the lack of belief that the depths of self could be probed. My mind was like an aged warrior, who though he had won many battles in his youth, had been cocooned in an envelop of pseudo peace for a long time, and now unprepared for the rigor of battle, having lost his skills and his weapons blunted had to face a young foe determined to conquer him.

What is Courage .....but to face one's inner fears in a straightforward fashion. To not lose heart, when inevitable failure stares you in the face and you have lost everything. Arent these the moments that make you a better, a stronger person. More than that a person who has come to a better understanding of oneself, a deep awareness of what one is, what one could do, what one could have and more importantly what one cannot do, and what one cannot have.

It takes courage to achieve impossible things, when the possibilities of doing so are bleak. It takes greater courage however to accept irrevocably that some things are unachievable and one has to move on, not let that failure destroy oneself.

To know the hard truths of life, to face it, accept it, reconcile with it, and yet keep one's hope alive and aloft is courage.

Courage is a state of mind that guides you in responding to challenging situations in a particular way. It is so true that it is tough times that prove your courage, what you have in yourself.

Being courageous makes a person better, which means, irrespective of whether one wins or loses, one would have gained from that challenging situation for one would have learnt from it, become more aware of oneself. Its when your heart is not roiled with frustration and anger, but prescient with hopeful clarity of what you face, even in certain defeat, thats when you know that you are truly courageous.

Courage is about conquering the fear within irrespective of what denoument you face in life.