It's Okay!

"Just because you are losing doesn't mean you are lost." 

I don't know if  "approaching" is the right word to use but I'll use it anyway. I'm approaching adulthood and its intimidating as hell. I'm caught up in my dreams, ambitions and desire to pursue them. This "approaching" phase of adulthood messes with the head to another extent. You feel conflicted, apprehensive and doubt yourself at every step of the way. You question yourself if you have what it takes to accomplish your dreams. However its comforting to know that you are not alone in this...most of the people at this age tend to feel lost and directionless. Its sort of like a mandatory feeling demanded from this age. Its depressing to be uncertain and unaware of what the future holds for you but there is no way out of it. 

The conventional consoling would be "Think hard and figure your shit out at all costs" but it just seems so exhausting. Its cumbersome to wreck your brains into something where the beginning and the end is oblivious to the person itself. I keep asking myself questions which instantly tosses my world upside down because I am deeply uncertain about its answers. 

As humans, we have a strange compulsion to have everything figured out and turn the uncertainty into certainty. Truth be told life can never be certain. Who's to say that any single thing in your life might not change in an instant? It needs efforts to let the human mind adapt to the uncertainty for its own sanity. 

I think its the fear of failure that drives most of us crazy, especially me. Its a wrong notion I have in mind but I am working on it. Jordon Belfort has rightly put forward, "When you do something, you might fail. But that's not because you're a failure. It's because you have not learnt enough. Do it differently each time. One day, you will do it right. Failure is your friend." I am trying to live by this.

Maybe its okay to not have everything figured out. What's the worst that could come out of it? Its not the end of my life and neither is the world coming to an end. I simply just don't have things figured out. But that doesn't mean I don't have dreams to accomplish. I am certain that I will accomplish those ambitions but uncertain about the way I will. That's okay! Its scary and it feels like you are stuck in a hell hole but that's the point of it. Eventually you will get out of the hell hole but it takes time. I am going to have alot of meltdowns like these but that's the part and parcel of life. My parents have gone through this, they didn't have anyone and they came out of it pretty darn well so its my time to go through the same. 

Life is a never ending mystery and we need to learn to be okay with it. This is just the beginning to another chapter and eventually we will reach the concluding para of it and begin to write the next chapter. Its a vicious cycle. At this stage we are the eagerly enthusiastic crawling babies, trying to walk without any support. Eventually we will! 

"For what it's worth: its never too late to be whoever you want to be. I hope you live a life you're a proud of, and if you find that you're not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again"- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Wandering Love

The notion behind celebrating Valentine's Day is to express love to our loved ones. People become unnecessarily cheesy and mushy and forget that there are 365 days in a year and expressing love on just one day is not sufficient. We are so tangled in the circle of life that we have forgotten to show our love to our beloved ones. Here beloved ones aren't just the boyfriend/girlfriend but also the best friends, friends, family. Just a simple message would suffice the purpose. It doesn't matter how you express it but expressing it matters. We are so involved in our own lives, our own problems that we have become obsolete to our people's need of love. I know love is an unsaid emotion and one doesn't need words to prove its love; sometimes words play the strongest tool to make someone feel important, worthy and most importantly less lonely. We don't tend to realise how we take our very own people for granted and not give them the assurance of how important they are to us. We run behind others to get the love, get the attention, get the importance we deserve but we forget that our own people are right here to give us all of it. Stop running for love when you have it right at your doorstep. Widen your horizon and value the people who are willing to jump off a cliff for you because the world is a selfish place and people come and go but 'our people' stay and will stay till the very end whether you shower love or not. We need to learn to value relations because the scarcity of honest, genuine relations is increasing. Express the love because you can.  

People Need People

When embarking on a new life journey the people we meet here, the relations we make might actually last for a lifetime. However there is always the fear of losing friends; friends who have been part of our lives for months, years even and thus become part of our comfort zone. People come and go and its normal to lose some friends because there is a natural limit to the number of close friendships that we can maintain. Whether new or old, some relations are meant to last for really long irrespective of the hurdles that come in the way. 

Maintaining relations is easier said than done. We have a habit of giving up on people when things get chaotic and be completely obsolete to the fact that we need them. People go about showing how self sufficient and independent they are but people need people otherwise how do you survive? Some relations work while some don't but that's part and parcel of life. The truth is that our life circumstances forces us in and out of friendships. Some relations are rooted in history and distance will certainly not affect that. 

You may not talk everyday or even every week because everybody is busy but these are the people that if you called them in the middle of the night and said "I need you" they would come, no questions asked. You can't live a life with just the acquaintances you make on a daily basis. You need your people. You need your listening ears, your own pair of shoulders to lean on, your personal hands to hold when the going gets tough. Hold on to your people because we need each other to share the joys, to rant about the unpredictability of life. Hold on because they are your anchor when you drift apart. 

Detachment is Attachment

It takes a fraction of a second to be close to someone, but ages to detach from a person. Why does that happen? Is it the state of ever-present denial in our mind that does not allow us to believe that the person who you thought will be by your side for long is the one who is drifting apart? Of course it is.

Often it's our presumption and perception that makes the realistic seem unrealistic and vice-versa. For instance, it really is just your mind that is not allowing you to believe that this friend of yours could do something like this, something this bad, this hurtful. Now, in this case your mind will instinctively start to build excuses like 'maybe he/she is just busy' or 'maybe they have issues at home'. One can just not accept the bitter truth. We simply try to run away from the pain we are bound to face sooner or later. It’s the apprehension of being alone that makes us grow this weary.

The cardinal mistake we all tend to commit is to give attention to that person. We run behind them hoping they would come back to us but, sadly enough, they don't even show a glimpse of concern or care towards us. Think: arrogance. Unfortunately, this leads to an even more substantial dig into our morale and self-esteem. What wrong have we done to feel so miserable in life? All we did was love too much. The only way this can be avoided is by not showering your attention on that person, because, at the end of the day, they just don't deserve it Hold on to your relation with them for as long as you can, but when time comes, you've to let go and walk away. People come and go, and can't make one person your priority and let them ruin your happiness. Make yourself what matters.

Ignore the person who betrays you half-way through and couldn't respect your friendship: they have no authority to seek for your attention. If they come back then everything's well and good, but if not, it's even better as you've not only become so independent, but emotionally stronger too. You certainly don't need a low-life person in your life (The reason I call them low-life being that they couldn't even value the friendship as much as you did).

Frankly speaking, no one is going to stay permanently. There will a few, very special ones who will stay through your rough times and successes, cheer with you and cry with you and be the small clear voices in your heart, but apart from them ,no one stays for long. So don't waste your tears and exert yourself to take the extra pains on the people who're temporary in your life. One just needs to learn not to get so close to someone that it almost becomes unbearable to bear the separation. At the end, even if you bring the sky down for the person who is drifting apart, you will still not be credited or appreciated and neither will the person choose to come back.

The one who had to leave will leave. No force in the universe will stop them to return back to you. It's on you how you deal with it. The ball is in your court. If you choose to be grumpy and depressed then you might just be oblivious to the people who're willing to be your friends and be there for you. Who knows someone right next to you will be the one to stand by your side at every phase of life without expecting much from you.

Everything Fades

Never did I think in the last 4 years that I’d reach back to square one; I’d once again ponder to something that held me tight from my own vision of future. If I die today will it make any difference to the world? – The thought seized my mind. Probably friends and family might just post a sympathetic status on their blackberry or facebook on the grief of my death and yet lead a normal life. But I choose to look at a broader perspective and not make the attention of family and friends a priority, as they might simply portray a false mourn for my passing away. The crux of this is, will something be missed the day my soul departs from this world?

And I begin to contemplate…Have I given something worth being missed for to the world? Moreover, have I been a dignified well-bred human being? Besides will I be remembered by people other than family? Well here comes the haunted thought; what will I be remembered for? Even after a decade will people know who I was? Will the day of my death mean any importance to anyone after my family has passed on?

Certainly I am yet to attain the sheer importance I desire. The 5% of my efforts are minimal for me to be remembered for anything beyond personal affections. Getting an obituary also appears to be doubtful unless my family posts one in the newspaper. As a matter of fact no one will write about me or shower some kind words on me as a person. I won’t be quoted.

Ample is left to do and it’s more of a need than a want to be remembered for long after I depart the world. I aspire to be an icon in my own field/industry. I want to be set as an example to the people. When I die, I want my work, my efforts, the slogging hardwork to live on in the minds of the people. I want my work to be stated globally.

I deem it to be quite ambitious. Nonetheless these are the things I want to be cherished for in people’s mind. I’d want more than just my social networks and blog to result in the Google search of ‘Aanshi Jain’. Let’s weigh up the bitter truth here, once your kids are grand-parents, they will probably be your last descendants who’ll vaguely remember you. Once they leave the world, everything about you will fade to dust. Your very last memories will die with the death of the last few people who knew you.

In order to be remembered, I must leave a mark on the world. Indeed there’s a long way to go for that to take place...At the end of this path I don’t want everything to fade to dust.

"I don't know what my calling is, but I want to be here for a bigger reason. I strive to be like the greatest people who have ever lived" - Will Smith

Silent Killer

When life tows you into the darkest road, insecurity gets the best of you. You yearn for importance. You feel like a ball on the snooker table apprehensive of the hit for reaching down the hole. You start questioning your existence. You conclude your relation with every second person a goof up; mainly you’re a wreck. What you want is for someone to prove how vital your existence is in their life. The insecurity often reaches a level where it’s almost impossible to be sane and you’re aloof from the real world; hence our loved ones fail to pull us out of the gloomy dungeon…

The result of being insecure: You start to think about the beginning, it’s the end, and your life revolves around one decision your insecurity made for you. Insecurity deprives people of their zest of life. We are often ashamed of our insecurities and try to run away but we fail short to realize, faster we run challenging it becomes to handle the depth of insecurity.

Our insecurity develops from how we perceive the world and face the rejection from the society. It ain’t mandatory to be accepted, rejection isn’t the sign of weak. We turn out to be oblivious to the approach of life, instead of zeal and enthusiasm the insecure man chooses to lead it with uncertainty and anxiety. The mind of the insecure man never chooses to not deviate irrespective of anything. The deviation leads to an emotionally wrecked being.

Insecurity is a silent killer to the mind. Every emotion is left crumpled and trashed. There is no cure for insecurity; it’s extremely contagious. As it affects the mind it travels rapidly to the brain, intervening with our sanity. Insecurity is everywhere. One needs to seriously learn to handle it rather than drowning into it. Stop giving up and move on. It’s rude to say but no one cares whether you’re insecure or not. What people require is someone whose in high spirits and cheerful. Agreed everyone goes through the rough phase but facing it and putting it aside is an art that anyone can attain but we choose not to. We prefer suffering; we enjoy the attention and sympathy don’t we? Insecurity will persist in each one of us, only the strong will be able to cast it out and replace with assurance.   

Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall

Tears have a perception of their own. They flow independently but every teardrop has its own story to convey. A story, half the world is oblivious to. We often perceive the wrong notion of why the drops of water are pouring down the eyes. It’s inexplicable to define the depth of emotions and feelings containing in one drop of salty water.

The responsiveness through emotions is a mystery. We laugh until we cry; we have tears of joy as well as fear, sorrow and sadness. Some of us choose to vent out frustration through tears.

As mentioned human emotions have been tangled in a world of their own; difficult to untangle and solve the mystery. At times when words fail to express the overwhelming thoughts, the words heart can’t express tears explain. I deem, cry if it makes you feel better. As for me crying helps me cleanse my body, unburden my heart and composes emptiness within; zilch inside to suppress me further. 

Crying is not for the feeble or for the strong; it’s a way to make yourself feel you, a way to calm yourself down and make the adrenaline rush decrease the pace in the veins. It takes a lot of courage to show the vulnerability of your emotions through tears. This is certainly no weakness.

To conclude …

“He does not weep who does not see” - Victor Hugo.