It's ok to let go

This is what I have been trying to learn on my 37^th year here.

As I walk around building perceptions about myself and allowing others to feed me more of them for all these years,

I begin to wonder if I am collecting too much .

Too much pride

Too much confidence

Too much self righteousness

Too many achievements

And too much money that comes with it most of the times

Too much love even, perhaps

There is no problem with too much of all these things but the trouble is when I unknowingly start gathering a lot of self esteem. Sounds bizarre right? Is there anything as too much self esteem. Ridiculous.

I am working rigorously to create tools that build self esteem in children for heaven’s sake! So why am I talking about re-tracking all of this?

What am I really saying?

Let me try again.

With too much pride comes the guarding of few not-so great revelations about me

With too much confidence comes the severe myopia of my limitations

With too much self righteousness comes the intolerance for others mistakes

With too many achievements come the fixation to move to the next level without enjoying the perfection of the current score

With too much money comes the strong nostalgia for roadside tea with rain drops in them

With too much love comes the built in taking-for-granted feature

I tell myself, it is good you know these things so you will appreciate everything and everybody in your life and live a blessed life. All’s good!

But this is where the catch is, this kind of awareness is often fleeting and you are back to your grand opinion of self  before you realize.

The self. An interesting concept and ‘being’ in itself; I will write more about it another time. For now, on the idea of ‘too much’ in life I am trying to begin by abandoning each of those fabulous things I have crafted for myself.

And you know what, while I focus on the great things about me that I am trying to get away from I realize, I just as quickly build new perspectives. Oh!

Hmmm it still works. Let me show you how;

While I attempt this ridiculous list,

One, I get acutely aware of how blessed I am (reinforcement on the sly)

Two, I also get to throw away all the not-so-nice things about me (cleaning the corners without being harsh on me)

Three, I realize in those brief moment of throwing and before making a new perception – that I do exist even without these perceptions.

(which means whether I have these blessing or not!)

This new perspective that lives on with me for a while, a long, long while even though I may now have defined myself anew.

Too much awareness of anything is awareness of a partial kind anyway. Simply put, we are anyway only going to see things from our point of view at any given time. But this just lets me take my chair and move a little towards the right and say ‘how wonderful the sun looks while setting’

Much like what I said about the sun when the chair was a little to the left even. But it was worth knowing I have hands that can carry a chair and a spine that lets my body bend and straighten up, that my eyes can see and that I AM even if the chair or the sun were not to be there.

Therefore I Am Here even if my pride, success, achievements, money and love were not to be there in my life. See the connection? Nice eh?

Tomorrow I will try to let go of this too and find another thing or two about me.

Between the mysterious self, the mind that things faster than me, a heart that feels more that I can ever know, there is so much to look forward to in life.

It's that familiar feeling again

A little lost, a little found...I tread this world with a careful recklessness.

This month end, I turn 37. Not that birthdays hold any significance for me, but I suspect
this time, this year I might as well observe it a little closely.

I am moving, yeah partially, fully, not really, however it may seem depending on my state of mind, urgency of work and priority in life - at that moment.
The truth is I am moving. To a quieter place.

For all these years that I lived in this cheerful city that embraced me with grand gatherings and real conversations to sustain an entire lifetime, it seems that I need to hear my self.

So, I am going to a place where the sun rises leisurely and sets lazily.

No more rushing home on an odd day to have a good cup of home-made ginger tea on my white couch and precious crockery.
No more visuals of garbage trucks pulling out first thing in the morning.
No more smoking by the gutter while saying bye to a friend.
No more naked children on the road placed to inspire my pity and instill eternal guilt.
No more wishing I was home to pick my son up from school.
No more struggling to squeeze in an hour of yoga.
No more staring at a growing pile of books I want to read.
No more testing the ink pens I have in the hope that I will use them one day.
No more looking at things I wonder why I don't want them anymore.
No more wishing I had more time to be still.

No more of me as I have known myself for a very long time.

A chance at rebirth. I am going to take it. This June.

yes and a no

Yes I wrote I would not return, yes I have inhibitions about baring my thoughts to people I know more than the people I don't.

Yes, a couple of people called in to tell me they stumbled on my blog and how much they loved it. And I thought maybe I should write more, so they may perhaps enjoy what I write.

But then, I can always write letters to them, personalise my thoughts for them specifically and write letters, there is nothing more beautiful than that, and whose gradual disappearance pains me more than anything, as we abandon the writing pads, pens and desks and dexterously type away on ipads and laptops.

Then, I wonder...my blogs can be for me my way to release myself, without thinking who is going to read it, am I in any way sharing something that might impact another I know who can come in here and read it and most importantly, can I just have one place in this world, which is my own quiet corner. Where no one can reach me easily.

That beautiful anonymity, encourages me to perhaps blog, somewhere else, for no one in particular. Where I cannot even if I want to, make it a good read or a useful read for anyone I know.

Then perhaps I will have a place for me.

no more

sorry, i don't think i can do this.
it took me a long time, a very long time to get myself to agree to blog. to put my thoughts out there...and i wondered why people do it, leaving aside the marketing agendas, i wasn't sure why any sensible person would want to put there inner most thoughts out there just like that.
unlike a book where one can construct the entire emotion, here, in bits and pieces how does one allow it all to fly out into the world, with people, unknown and even worse sometimes known (dont know which one is worse) to take what they want and walk away, without your knowledge or even letting you know.
see? what i mean, all these thoughts about some people, who i don't know, my apprehensions about them knowing me...what does all this mean about me? what am i so possessive about?
what do i know that i feel told randomly will hurt me for its misrepresentation?
what is it that means so much to me?
what am i thinking that is so precious? that has such power?
the beginning of the year with a wide grin and full of laughter and just about enough thought as i think i needs to write, i wrote my first ever blog.
and claimed, there i have done it!
i have freed myself. nothing holds such power over me, i am going to put it all out there. in an attempt to free myself. completely.
i even posted the link on my profile page on facebook where i don't go anymore.
but such was my belief that i had conquered it all and i am fearless to let my guards down.

strange, these things sound to me, even when i write them. me ? guards, fearless? really bizarre.
because, i have lived my life as fearlessly as one can.
and me, guards? how can that be. the joke is that it takes someone two minutes to meet me to know all about my glorious divorce, great husband, sex life, the works...
so then why am i writing about apprehensions?
what is this all about? who am i ? who is writing all this?

two days after, some blog behavior information urged me to return and write another one.
i cant. i don't want to. i didn't.
and of what i remember, the things i said about abandoning the 'to do' list, it isn't even my voice, they are not even my thoughts.
i am gripped by this acute awareness of just how much do i need to de-layer to to get to me.

where am i? in all this.
perhaps, i am in all this.

m

courage to live

This year. I wish to renew my courage to live.

It sounds extraordinary if one has an identified terminal illness or so ordinary if one has a normal life with a reasonably healthy body.

Yet, the courage to live, truly live our lives remains elusive. To feel the breeze in our hair, to smile at a stranger, to tell anger that it has no place in my life, to let the to-do list slowly fly away to a table far away and rest there for a while so I can soak in the sun or smell the rain.

We tend to forget the immortality of each year, the inevitable end of it and the beginning of new is as real as terminal illness ( one that terminates us) as we know ourselves right then. In that sense, no end is final - there are no ends. Each moment is a chance at a new beginning, as our minds wait eagerly to take new instructions and the body waits to follow suit.

To become anything I would like me to be. This very moment.

In that sense a year gone by can terminate us of all the things we no longer care for and of all the things we wish we could be. And we can start afresh as the person we feel we deserve to be.

These are things I wish to Renew,

Courage to let bygones be bygones
Courage to let me extend myself without having to govern each move (I will escape the to-do list)
Courage to be hear my thoughts
Courage to trust that good happens to good
Courage to love without looking at the scoreboard
Courage to give without feeling wronged
Courage to not evaluate the value of every moment in terms of focused contribution to the various roles I have trapped myself in, mother, wife, boss, friend, neighbor, citizen...
Courage to let the people I love make their mistakes
Courage to forgive myself for a day spent lazing, for an expensive buy, for less time given to anything or anybody
Courage to love my self
Courage to let me be
Courage to simply L I V E.

I named my son vir (meaning brave), he is four now. I hope to one day explain to him that, all he needs to remember is to brave. Brave enough to have a point of view, brave enough to own it, brave enough to walk his path. And that all else will fall into place.

Today, as the revelry of unknown expectations of a new years' eve settles down and a new, absolutely new set of numbers and names we attach great value to as months and dates be our bridge to walk across to a whole new world of a million possibilities that do not label or put in us neat boxes; but ones that let us fly.

So we may know that we exist today, right now in all glory, in all we were and can be. That these dates are merely so, dates, made as a point of reference. That we in our potential exceed them. To this boundless sky may we fly.

May the divine within each one of us make itself known.