Moments and beads

We never hold the moments as they pass by. At the end of a year we somehow walk on the same path to pick up the moments like beads we carelessly dropped. A year is too long a time. Some beads get lost in lanes of the mind. The beads we carved beautifully.  The beads we thought were exclusive and we felt that we were privileged to have. Beads from different locations, with different people, different emotions- Pride. Joy. Satisfaction. Relief. Pleasure. Peace. Tension. Frustration. There are also some beads we carefully hid to prevent us from stepping on them and then slipping back to the times, to the thoughts we had when we first encountered them.

Each bead like a tiny moment of joy or sadness, a simple moment to hold in you hands, a moment that can slip through the grip of your mind. We silently contemplate on the final days of the year. We pick up these memory beads and string them together. We collectively talk about our year being good or bad but we rarely recollect each moment as a separate entity a separate bead. We get so fixated on the thought of adding one new number in the date and it makes us mentally ready to plan changes and resolutions. We forget the laws of nature and hanker after things to change overnight just because of a change of date. We forget that there is nothing like a new year. All that is new is just our thought. A new addition in the date boosts our confidence. We decide that we can suddenly take up challenges and actually do all the things we planned to do but never did. We forget that again in a week or two… this newness will wear out.

We need to shift our focus from the dates. We need to look through the lens of time as a string of these beads. We should work to make each bead a Beautiful. Memorable. Delightful. Prideful. Moment.  We should understand that our newness lies in the ability to pick up these beads. Ensure continuum. Understand our capability to start afresh any moment. Just like simple act of choosing beads. Dropping the unwanted ones and picking up the ones that catch our fancy. Our ability to define and redefine our lives just by holding each moment like a bead and not waiting for the end of year to string them together from lost lanes of the mind.

P.S: The idea for this post came while I was reading Susan's post on New Year. Well, she has a beautiful blog in case you want to take a look at what she writes about.. go ahead and you will be amazed by the brilliance and simplicity of her thoughts.

55 Fiction #6 The Gift

Tiny little goose bumps spurted up on her arms. She sneaked out of her bed. Her heart sang the merry tunes. She crawled behind the tree and peeked through the dim lights. The smell of baked cake distracted her and she missed it. Her tiny hands gripped a beautifully wrapped present. Dreams do come true. 

55 Fiction #5 Again

She suddenly felt the wind brush against her skin. Tiny little goose bumps spurting up on her arms. An inaudible noise played in her ear. Maybe it was that Chirstmas effect. She felt a tiny elf running in her throat with his pointy shoes. Her nose blocked and her smile faded. Achoo. . cold again!!

Change

Out the most frequently used English words - change would definitely clinch a decent top ranking. All we have learn't about change is being open to change. Being adaptive. Not being stuck in a rut. I understand being paralyzed by same things, same situations and thoughts is bad. It is. But what if you are the kind that cannot succumb to regularity? If change is all you could do? Some people would term it as reckless, random and strange or plain lack of will when we fail to do certain things repeatedly. Some say we should have a little determination to hold on to things for a while.

But what if change calls to you. Change like a wave lures you to stand in that beach on the shore. Each wave of change adding a little more to your life. Each wave of change washing over your feet and leaving you little different.You feel the sand slipping and making a new ground with each passing wave. You suddenly realize you are no more standing on the same sand. Sometimes change becomes a wave that meets resistance and it splashes and erupts against the rocks. But what if it leaves a tingling funny feeling like a wave-froth on your feet that makes you smile? And what if you can't resist standing in that beach, looking at each wave and anticipating what it would feel like to float away with it?

What if you just keep losing interest in a place, in a person and anything you like? Too quickly. Unknowingly. Without pain. Without Guilt. And what if you are the kind who changes at an unacceptable pace?

Flashdrives of flashbacks

Memory is a very strange thing. At times we are delighted to be reminded of something in our past and at times it leaves us unpleasant. But what is thrilling is how we store this memory. I am not talking about pictures, photographs or videos here. Those are unreal, without feeling, without emotion and they are not lasting no matter how hard you try to preserve them. I am talking about those tiny little memories packed up in some senses. Few days back a chocolate ice-cream with mint sauce took me back to the day I licked out choco-mint creme from a biscuit. I was 10 maybe. I had comfortably forgotten it. But that day the smile didn't leave my face. I was so happy to have reconnected with a tiny insignificant part of my childhood. Similarly today a spoonful of milk powder melted on my tongue and I gleed with joy and felt like a child. What amazes me is not the memory. It is the way I remember it. Now if I think hard I can actually remember particular scents. A favorite teacher's saree. Or the smell of my mom's cupboard when I could comfortably hide there and be untraced when we played hide and seek.  A unique voice. A funny manner in which someone walked. The way someone gestured. The way someone smiled. A similar sight, taste, sound , smell and touch can unlock a whole new world from our past. Lot of it stored unconsciously. Insignificant things surfacing in the present but bringing back the same old feelings effortlessly and unknowingly. It is a pure delight. Most of these memories are not connected with joy or sadness. There are just those grey areas you never make an effort to remember for years. No value as such. But its sudden recollection that slips through some sensory detection- marvellous and miraculous. So if we actually understand this brilliance our flashbacks are stored in the flashdrives called senses.

55 Fiction #4: Story of our lives!

Her hands locked in a reassuring embrace. Her thoughts chained to a lost world. Eyes, staring into nothing but still seeing. A warm smile across her lips. Her heart like a marshmallow dipped in chocolate. She looked around and sighed. All good men-married, gay or untraceable. Falling in love- very easy. Finding a guy- never.

Spillage

Emotion is the best thing that happened to humans. It is marvellous how we can sense, read and understand the emotions of every person we see. We need not know them personally. We need not be close to them. Still we would know. The most beautiful aspect of it when these emotions spill. Have you ever caught a glimpse of someone you didn't know but you can tell is very happy, someone who silently wiped tears in the public but it just caught your eye. Someone you didn't know. Did it tug your heart pull a string or two? Did you smile when you saw them being ecstatic? Did you worry a bit when you saw someone cry or feel sad? Was there a moment when someone stood up for themselves and it inspired you to do the same? Were there moments when someone was very generous and you in turn were generous to them? Someone picked up a fight with you when you never intended to and then you fought?You didn't know them but their emotion rubbed onto you. Happiness and sadness are the highest and most common forms of expressing emotion. See little deeper and you find a million shades.There are more emotions than we are capable of expressing in words.  I don't know how that works. I'd like to understand them us colours. Each colour a emotion. Like no colour can be good or bad. No emotion can be good or bad. Each emotion just a different shade.At times you like a colour at times you don't. Same is with emotion. And these colours the emotions. They leave back their shade on every interaction. The colour of emotion rubs onto everyone we see. In turn their emotions are being rubbed onto us. When a beggar tries to gain your sympathy and becomes successful at it. He is just using this aspect of emotion. He displays self pity and it rubs off onto you. You feel sad for him. You give him what he asks for. This is just one example. There are countless others. Look around you many more examples. Even every one sided love story that ended in triumph. One's emotion spilled onto the other. You might argue it is not always true. It is true. The thing you call as negative emotion. An unwanted emotion. I'd say. Is still an outcome of someone's thoughts along with our own giving a shade of emotion that pains us and others. We have these wavelengths of colours we can accept. You have the power to choose these wavelengths. You can identify a colour you do not wish to be rubbed on to you and move away from it. You can. But never underestimate the power of this spillage. If you remain in vicinity of those colours (emotions) it will spill onto you, You can't help it.  Thats how it is. The only power you have is to choose the wavelength of colours. People who can keep spilling these emotions. The emotions you want. The emotions of the colour in your acceptable wavelength. Someone very rightly said -Life is a canvas and you have to throw all the paint you have got on it. I'd say. Make it a brilliant spillage of all the colours you love. A spectacular mix of emotions you desire.

Colour spill

There was a white. It was clam. It dashed into a red on its way. Now it had a reddish tinge. Its balance now, little skewed. It saw another white it lost the tinge and became white again. The red that dashed into that white found some change. It could now suddenly control its rage. This red further met a green. A sense of clam sprouted from within. The white then met a cheerful orange. The orange splashed its colour and white so clam gleed with joy. The white now with an orangish cheer and the yellow met the purple. They all threw colours and then a happy new colour smeared all over them. Just then this party had gloomy entry. Entered the blacks,reds,the depressing greys and the whiny blues. The bright happy colours now reduced to lighter shades. They could do nothing but take them in. Because colour like emotion always spill. These happy colours now  shuddered that their smiles would be lost in this gloom. One brave happy splashed a drop of colour on them. The gloomy couldn't help but desire that cheer. All the happy spread their brightness, laughter and the gloomy, depressed, whiny and  red lost its colour. The happy party now had new members all a shade lighter but still shades of joy. Now that is what is colour. The colour of emotion. There will be blacks, reds, depressing greys and whiney blues. They all will effect us. They definitely will.No. We have nothing that we can choose. The only solution is to have a very bright shade of joy and cheer. A sense of balance a white base. A groups of loved ones who can keep spilling these colours and the gloomy shades will get lost is this splatter.