Leaves [Analogy]

Ever taken time out to feel the life in a leaf? Breathing respiring, digesting- living. I would like think of our lives like that of the leaves. We all breath, survive and live. We all are different. One may be a leaf that blazes red and falls in the Autumn. Some leaves may be multicolored, some battling the unfamiliar bugs/insects eating onto their lives. Some like the mulberry sacrificing lives to be eaten for the birth of another life. Swaying, swinging, getting drench in the rains , living- living. 

Like all the leaves that look very different, that grow in different seasons, that have different life spans that survive in different geographic areas. Our lives, are the same. Some can withstand the blows of deep emotion. Some scrap off their lives without feeling a pinch, some wither and fall out losing hope some withstand and adapt. Some adore the snowfall and get bogged down by it's burden but, remain fresh underneath. Some grow to great heights. Some bend to see sunlight, some need to touch the flowing water  and some need to feel the joy of the wind. 

But whatever it does, it will never cease to be a leaf, it will never exist in independence, it is a part of a tree and it should breath- live and the tree lives. Each leaf working for a greater cause some cautious of it, some naive, innocent. Each leaf wherever it be- it will hold it's chest proud in the sunshine and soak in the rains, it will lick the snow atop and it's only goal is to breathe. 

Fluid

Have you ever seen a still lake.. you pop one stone into it and the whole thing floats, forms beautiful ripples -layer by layer, ring by ring it spreads. It oscillates, it vibrates to that one motion set in by an unknown object tossed in, right there, out of the blue. At that moment the stillness of the lake- It's natural balance loses it's sheen. It gets a whole new meaning to it. As it was fluid just to feel this. It is it's very basic nature - fluid. 

Many times it happens that we are like the still lake. Clam. Serene and peaceful in our own lives and suddenly "plub" somebody tosses in a emotion unfamiliar, unknown unexpected- out of the blue. It could be the inexplicable pain you experience by looking at a child begging because he knows nothing better. It could be the unexpressed fear for a old stranger who is crossing a busy road. It could be the love that fills your heart when you see someone you never knew- madly into each other. It could be the joy, that smile on an unknown face that makes you happy without knowing what happened. It doesn't matter- if you don't know. 

In a moment the emotion hits us and before we know and realize.. there are these little crests formed in our fluid lives. Molecule by molecule. Affecting us. These emotions float on the surface like a weighless leaf that gently glides on the water leaving a trail.Or they are like the ripples that make the otherwise dull lake relive with dynamic enthusiasm. We don't comprehend how these people surrounding us are tossing in there emotions. How we are tossing our emotions into their lives. It is beautiful. If you truly understand what I say.. because I have no words to describe that feeling.

At the end of that moment when the motion ceases. The crests, the waves vanish. It is not the end. What happens to the stone that gets tossed in the lake? It slides down and slips to the bottom. It rests on the bed. And the lake and the unknown object. Co-exist. That's what happens to us too. The emotions we feel for no particular reason- we find balance in them. They sink in our souls- teach us something and we live with them. Still again yet fluid. And it is beautiful. 

Cobweb

A cobweb. It is delicately woven. Just strong enough for the builder to trot on it. Strong enough for the builder to get his/her desired. But weak, very weak by its very fabric and it's reason for existence.Straining, swaying suspended in the middle of no where.Torn but re-build as it dips in time. 

Such is our guard. Our mental fort. Our barriers to what lies around us. We carefully weave a list of dos and don'ts sometimes we are taught these for our own safety. Forever we survive in these limits of woven shackles. We believe we are doing fine. We get food. We get some company by people who get caught in our web. Who carefully pass the guards. Make their way into our lives. We define it to be perfect. We extend our boundaries. We expand these webs. But want we fail to realize is we are still restricted. We are bounded. We get restless. We get paranoid and rebuild theses webs if we face a blow. 

Why can't we just suspend in the air? Not know in which direction to move? When every road invites us to an unknown adventure. Why can't we smile at a passing stranger? Why can't we take more chances? Why do we protect ourselves? What are we protecting ourselves from? Why do we weave complexities around us? Why do we live in cobwebs?

For once let it all go! Let words from your heart resonate with the world. Walk. Run. Do something. Forget what will follow. No guard. No web. A journey unrestricted. A path unknown. A pattern undefined. A life of your own.

Bunch of keys!

Have you ever heard the phrase- Think through? Now, re read it. It reveals a lot of wisdom. It silently plants a seed of hope in your mind that if you shall channel your thoughts a solution will come through.  Thoughts are like keys that unlock our mental doors, emotional rooms and  give us access to everything we sense, feel and respond. 

We all make our own keys. Some like the ancient big ones, beautifully carved, too heavy to carry around, but to be carefully guarded.  And, these keys do not fit into many doors(minds). They have selective purposes.But, there might be times when these keys become too big to unlock simple issues. Too pricey to open common locks.

Few others like the spares. They are busy picking up keys of others they have no unique key of their own. They shall forever limit themselves to unlock only those destinations that have already been explored. They lack excitement,adventure and faith in their own key to unlock a unknown life of their dreams.

On the other hand there are people who put in effort and collect a bunch of keys. They unlock every mind, every soul, understand every pain, every gain and every emotion.. well almost. They refuse to accept there is any door, any block hidden and unobtainable. They simply change their keys, make additions and keep opening doors and walk into new destinations. Their key bunch keeps on becoming heavier and more valuable. These are people who unlock the big or small ..any lock with equal ease- with just a turn of the key! 

Just a turn of the key! That is how simple it is. But we all are too busy wasting time thinking about the locks, claiming them to be too big, too rusty and too jammed. We forget and refuse to understand that we need to grow in our minds and build a key that fits well in the lock, we need to stop depending on the keys we have and look for the keys we need. 

Like a single key doesn't open every lock a single way of thinking gives us access to only our own restricted mental room.We need to keep adding new keys and get rid of rusted old ones. And, if we want to unlock more beauties, marvels and treasures of life we should make sure we have a bunch of keys and be flexible enough to use them all at different doors! 

Fragile happiness!

Happiness is the most fragile and sensitive emotion. Beautifully delicate like a air bubble - it floats around freely.

It is born out of simple wishes, our small pockets of joy hidden in moments spread across the years of our lives.Happiness too has a definite end. Like a air bubble it too will eventually vanish. Like a air bubble it also changes its shapes- defines and redefines its boundaries.

Some days our happiness bubble is achieved only when we blow enough air in our pompous life and fill it with unreasonable wishes and demands. Asking for more than what we deserve and need to be satisfied or be discreetly happy.  Or we find ourselves euphoric by  a simple delight in just being and existing in whatever situation and be thankful for breathing. Be thankful for life.

Like one losses the control over a air bubble as it detaches itself  from the ring and floats in thin air. Our happiness moves beyond our ability to maneuver from the moment when we feel it. One hasty remark or an unrelated incident  is just that little that is needed to make it pop! It is a common phrase - happiness multiplies when shared.. but how many times have you witnessed someone's happiness being received by jealously, misunderstanding and erratic response? It is sad... many times people don't even realize they burst a bubble!

One might argue one should find one's own peace and delight and live oblivious to the world."I care a damn!!" is the "in" thing! True, that might make one happy. But what is life without care for one another? How long can you shield yourself from what others do and say? We hate to admit it but we don't have much control over sustaining the happiness we create for ourselves.

It is natural for these air bubbles to either burst, grow or live on. A air bubble cannot expect smooth surfaces where ever it travels. The only game plan we have is to keep blowing our air bubbles. Find and discover our little joys. In abundance.

Magical Lanes

Conversations are like lanes. They can be like a highway on which words flow without hitch and jams. Stopping once in a while to pay toll while sipping a coffee. Just that the toll here is genuine smiles that express the joy of a person to have found someone (or some people)  who understands their words and actions like they do. Who knows a person like a person knows himself or herself. 

Conversations can also be those silent lanes lined with beautiful trees with flowers in full bloom. Where you discover a soul that belongs to you. You slowly walk. Talk carefully. Douse in the beauty of another person by the words spoken.Make your ears and other senses primary organs, live on by picking up tiny things your companion on this lane tries to show you. You can park yourself on a bench and stay in that lane a little longer. Linger on those moments that are rare. When a person walks you through his/her life on these lanes of conversations. When words like the hands of lovers mingle and bind.

Lanes that can be difficult to walk on are like conversations that are difficult to make. Usually one person emerges like a caring one and holds the other little one with words. Like mom who guards her child. Directs one's thoughts and helps one think better. To walk on the same lane and look at it with the same eyes but a different mind.

They can also be the lanes that are barren.  With no other person to talk to. A lane with complicated twists and turns bound to a destination unknown to you. Those conversations are like lanes on which we take up walks,alone, lanes on which we grow. They are the conversations we have with ourself. We walk around and finally reach a place we are comfortable with. A place where we believe we can put our journey to rest only to resume it again. A lane full of sights to forget and beauty to capture. A lane full of hidden treasures of one's nature. 

Conversations are miracles. They are those magical lanes that lead us to us and to others.

Butterfly mind

A butterfly is a tiny beautiful life of million colours. It forms different shades as it flutters by. It has no fixed destinations. It sits on what it pleases and flies when its interest ceases.

What different is our mind, beautifully coloured with a zillion thoughts? Fluttering in different directions? Restless at one time and focused as it rests. Moving from one thought to another one interest to another? Sometimes lazing like a butterfly pupa munching on leaves waiting for that moment to let wings adorn it. To turn from a cylindrical single coloured mass to a colourful butterfly with ability to fly as it pleases? Don’t we too wait for artistic thoughts, creative bends, that right mood to think important things through?

Like little kids who try to hold the butterfly by clipping its wings- we try to hold our mind to one thing. We try to focus. We hold it on. Like the delicate colourful wings of a butterfly our thoughts get tarnished by the pinch of the hold. We lose the focus. We become weak. Like a butterfly with damaged wings our mind rests paralyzed.

Letting go is all it takes to let you mind free. Like a little butterfly it will fly in different directions. It will shift places, take positions, sit near the light or sit in the dark. Fly around a flower or settle on a wall. But eventually the mind will rest. It will come and sit on your life -gaining the ability to think as you please. It will be calm if you ask it to be. If will be creative and fly off to return to the same place if you train it to do so. It will remain grounded if you teach it to be humble. It will be flamboyant and flash its colour if you pamper it too much. It will move in herds and choose colourful company or it will fly alone.

But all this will happen only if you let it fly and not clip its wings. If you don’t drag it down by burdening it with unnecessary extras. Like a butterfly the mind needs to be light. The thoughts like shades of colour should add beauty to the destination where the mind like a butterfly rests.

Mind like a butterfly should add beauty as it flutters by!

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.

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.

The fabric

Slowly. Unknowingly. We reach a point where we clearly know what makes us happy what doesn't. What we like what we don't. Who annoys us. Who makes us happy. Who is appreciable who is not. Ninety percent of our daily activities are figured out. Solved. Why is that people say life is unpredictable when we are always learning and unlearning? They say that because of these moments.

Those moments that are fickle. The moments when emotions fail to register. Feelings suspend. You simply don't know. Your memory cannot relate to what is in front of you and what you think you had figured out. You think you will be too happy but you try very hard to pass a simple smile. You surmise you will be hurt but you remain strong. You cannot figure out the fabric of behaviour and feelings you very carefully wove through millions of interactions you have had with the world. That fabric in which each thread is touched and felt by you. The colour of emotions, the set of reactions -everything defined by you. Now. Suddenly. You don't know. You pause for a while and peel the layers of emotions you experience. You keep seeing a different shade each time. Different. It is illusionary and  enigmatic. You cannot stop.You have to continue. Each shade is marvelous. If you peel a layer of happiness there is grief. Beneath love there is pain. Everything beautifully hidden. You may peel off the layers and stop at what you think is what you want to feel. There is no end. There really isn't. 

What is even more gripping is the amalgamation of our surroundings. Just like a fabric fades in the scorching heat and might burn a thread or two. Our fabric of emotion gets affected. It fades. It gets torn. It has patches of different cloths. It has nothing of its own. The emotions are adopted by our surroundings.The thing that makes this adoption exciting is- the choice. The choice of surrounding. You may choose to dye your fabric in the darkness of envy or self pity or pain. Or you may venture out into a unknown colour. 

The trick is to keep conditioning that fabric of emotion. Fully realizing  the power of its dynamics. Understanding that it is too complex to be fully understood. But, too simple to manage. Just a fabric, that we weave. The fabric which is palpable just in those fickle moments.