F.O.L

“Our Life begins to end the day we become silent about the things that matter”.
-Martin Luther King Jr.

  It is impossible to read the human nature like it is. We are delusional if we believe that we can perceive, or sense (if you will) each and every human emotion as intricately as it is delivered in our everyday lives. Tears and laughter are obvious but what lies beneath them is usually what gets the clock ticking. Of course then there is a very general yet vital observation that we as human beings might look alike but react very differently, in all life situations. True.

I have a theory and it is one that although remains undeveloped to its full potential is still very applicable to all, even in its initial stage. I haven’t named it yet but for the purpose of explanation I’d like to call it ‘Fear-of-Loss’ or ‘F.OL’. There are most of you who will have experienced it on some level or another and some of you might even disagree with the consequences as I will list, but the point remains pretty simple- It happens to all of us.

And it happens with the ones we love the most.

Most often in relationships we usually have an outcome in our minds. Just like an equation and what its algebraic components will result in or even a graph which usually denotes where and how things will pan out. So we do exactly like we plan and hope for the best (yes, we humans have this incorrigible tradition of ‘hoping’, which in reality are expectations but we like labeling them as ‘hopes’ to leave out the lurking negativity that the word ‘expectation’ brings with it).

While hoping for the best we forget to include the unforeseen. We are happy in a utopia created by us and when reality seeps in through the tiny cracks of our ideal liaison we face what is most commonly known as ‘confusion’. LOL – at all of us for not foreseeing reality, I mean seriously we’re supposed to be adults with a Plan B.

But since everything was supposed to have a happy ending we forgot to think of ‘Plan B’. Uh-Oh.

This is where my theory F.O.L. comes in. We do not want to lose all we have created, so delicately with our own two hands, investing our time and energy- and everything we are, that we start to fear the loss of it all.

The loss of all the smiles and memories made together.
The loss of little habits, created over time, without intent or realization.
The loss of what we’ve become in such little time, as compared to what we were before we knew someone.

Irritating, isn’t it?

What can you do to overcome this fear? How do you deal with a loss that can be saved? How do you continue being the same person when on the inside you are aching to be- just heard?

This is the consequence to F.O.L –

It happens to the best of us. It makes us stronger and makes us realize what is truly important to us. When we lose what we had or overcome the unforeseen with the power to love without expectation. I had written about this in a very different manner a little while ago. The only difference was- there was no unforeseen and the utopia was intact with full circle rainbows (I saw one finally, btw!) and beautiful hues of pinks and reds, and the will to Love was ‘Onward’. Now, the will to Love is stronger than it had started out and the ‘Fear-Of-Loss’ has found a way out of my system (the reason also why this theory will never reach its full potential). I am not saying shut out your voice which needs to be heard, because an unresolved wound hurts the longest. I am simply saying- Listen to the Fear-Of-Loss inside your system, evaluate your own F.O.L theory and it might surprise you, just like mine did.

My F.O.L became my strength. 

Fiddle, Fraud and Squeeze

It is no surprise that for most of the human race, what we truly want from our lives is naturally hidden from us until we are wise enough to understand. It hides from us behind things that are visible to the naked eye. It shelters behind smiles and tears, joy and sorrow, awards and recognition. It accommodates itself into our deep conscience and does not come to surface easily. Other things like relationships and success take priority and before we know it the true motive of our lives gets lost.

The quest for the reason behind our existence starts the day we are born and for most it ends only when it’s a little too late to do anything about it. 

There are a few, however estranged the numbers, who don’t give up on this feeling and thirstily go after it with a fire so bright that it burns out any place for emotion. 
This is where our days alive become tricky, which brings me to realize perhaps the most important thought I have had in all the time that I have been breathing: There is a major loop hole with being human.

We are very conflicted in what it is that we want. When we get to where we were going, 
because truth be told; one day soon enough the Sun will go cold just like a body without the ability to pump blood through our veins. The stars might still go on to shine but there suddenly the journey becomes more important, and if we do not make it to our destination then the journey in turn seems completely futile. As indecisive as we are in our thought process, we are just as compassionate in thinking. It is hard for us to make up our minds and when we do we often wonder if we make the right choices.

It is a welcoming and warm sentiment to know that we can feel. That we are not savages who only kill, feed and breathe until the moment of death. We as a species pride on our ability to create and think intelligently. 
But the question is not how far we can go but how close we are to the reason of our existence will be no more eyes to wonder about their beauty. You, me and everyone else we know to be will cease to exist and if there is somebody out there watching the unashamed movie reel we all have come to become, they will have one hell of a laugh after we are gone, because our very reality would be completely meaningless.

Let’s make changes, while there is still time. 

Robotics 101

What is the basic, yet the most important, difference between a machine and a human being? No, it isn’t that we can talk and they can’t. If prompted and programmed they could be trained to talk. Neither is it that we can do things that they can’t. Again if instructed and coded they can pretty much do anything we can. Life heavy objects, do things at a greater speed than humans and even surpass a human’s intelligence in matters where we might just sit and pull our hair out, think scientists working in a lab?

The one thing, however, we cannot do no matter how hard we try is teach a machine or a robot to feel. (And just FYI reader, ‘Wall-E’ is a fiction of Pixar’s imagination!) That being said, established and proven by scientists world over, just yet, since they haven’t given up hope I stand by the statement that we humans can feel, while machines cannot.

So why is it that we have programmed ourselves to behave in a certain way? Why must we be distraught or livid when someone provokes us? Why are we incited to reciprocate resentment when someone throws it as us? Someone wise once said that there needs to be a balance in us humans, for us to truly enjoy the lives we live. By balance I mean peace of mind in everything that we do. If a bunch of needles are left on your bed spread, would you be able to sleep through the night without the fear of being poked painfully?

Life has become a race today for most of us. The race to live a life with everything that gives us comfort, yet we forget to be comfortable the way we are.

“Don’t just have a career or academic goals. Set goals to give you a balance, successful life. I use the word balanced before successful. Balanced means ensuring health, relationships, mental peace are all in good order. There is no point of getting a promotion on the day of your break up. There is no fun in driving your favorite car if your back hurts.  Life is one of those races in Nursery School where you have to run with a marble in a spoon kept in your mouth. If the marble falls, there is no point in coming first. Same is with Life where health and relationships are the marble. Your striving is only worth it if there is harmony in your life.

Else, you may achieve the success, but this spark, this feeling of being excited and alive, will start to die. One thing about nurturing the spark- Don’t take life seriously, as we are really temporary here.  If we are lucky we may last another 50 years. That is 2,500 weekends. Do we really need to get so worked up? It’s OK to bunk a few classes, scoring low in a paper, goof up an interview, take leave from work, fall in love, little fights with your spouse.

We are people, not programmed devices. Don’t be serious, instead be sincere. 

A very innocent, yet complicated question crossed paths with my intellect recently. It was one of those questions the answer to which should be at the tip of your tongue when asked, but rarely is. It makes you wonder, renders you sleepless for many a nights, kills your appetite and more often than not leaves you smiling when you would least expect it. The age old, tenaciously beautiful yet nervously shy question of when you fall in love. This feeling described by so many authors, film makers, your parents, friends and even sometimes a stranger makes sense only when it happens to you I guess. Until then you rely on…well, everyone and everything else. But what we do not realize is that in the English language we use this word way too casually and that in itself has confused us with the intensity of the word. Until recently I also used to think that loving someone and being in love with someone is the same thing. Then I went where I usually go, when I am confused…knocking on Google’s door (God bless the internet!), and found out how wrong I was. I read an article by someone called Derek Sivers, who of course couldn’t satisfy my quench for knowledge on the subject but the comments section of his article did get me in a loop for a while. Before you love someone, you need to know them. Not the biographically correct and data entry worthy sort of knowing them, but the deep-down instinct about that someone kind of knowing them. (Yeah ok, you think I am on crack trying to break down Falling in Love into a life sequence, but if you have gone through it all just take a minute and think about it. Isn’t it?) After you get to knowing them and ‘Liking’ something or some things about them you set aside the beauty of this relationship and fall right into wonderland. Most of us go this far. We make a deal with our own emotions and leave it at that. If the person likes us back the same way we go to bed every night with a smile on our face, if not we react differently. We either destroy all contact and try to ‘move on’ or then some of us (as rare as we may be) continue on this friendship. In today’s world this liking can be referred to as ‘Unrequited Love’; which actually made me LOL. Yep, that’s right I Laughed out loud for a whole minute and then paid my respects to the countless Romeos and Juliets out there, by observing another minute of deafening silence. For those of you who are alien to the world of ‘Unrequited Love’ then let me explain – It is the feeling of being head over heels ‘In Love’ with someone and not being loved back. In simpler words, love not returned. This is where the chain of logic in my brain and emotional palpitations of my heart lost all control because it made no sense to me. According to the world of Google and the depressing society we live in love not returned has its own definition and state. What I fail to understand further is the way society sympathizes with this or more close to home, how people you know treat this state. After three hours of reading and re-reading peoples take on love, being in-love, liking someone and of course the biggie- unrequited love, I came to realize that ‘Love’ is precious. It is a feeling incapable of jealousy, doubt, hatred and lies. It is incapable of being half or a little. It is complete. You can’t be a little in love, just like you can’t be a little pregnant or a little late. You are either in it or not. The line of difference is murky but once you are on the other side, and you accept the Love in your heart as whole then there is no ‘requited’ or ‘unrequited-ness’ if that is a word. There should be no question of return. If you Love someone you love them for who they are regardless of the circumstances. Whether they love you back complete is their choice. The only goal when it comes to loving someone should be to see THEM happy, be it with you or without you. I agree it may hurt, and keep you awake at night wondering what went wrong and where, but that is the disturbing truth about forever… You can either bask in the glory of the love you feel in your heart for that special someone or cry endlessly about why they didn’t pick you. Either way, the choice was, has been and will always be ours to make. And in some really wise words – Love in your heart for someone, without any conditions is perfect. It has no beginning and no end, Instead it has endless potential. Endless smiles. I used to think I don't know this feeling, but in reality I had written it a long time ago and it goes something like this-"The mind will recreate thoughts into things, It will never be satisfied but, it can reason itself to extremity And that is how it will reason love, It will look for reasons to love. The heart will gaze for none, For reason will never transpire to it. And Like a whisper never heard Only the heart will know it is truly loved"

Slip and Soar

There are these moments, it’s hard to describe them but once in our lives we all have them. It’s like standing at the edge of a cliff, looking down at a bottomless crevasse. Thousands of feet below you lies a paradise so unthinkably grand that it feels almost unreal, only it’s not, it’s there. It holds everything you have ever wanted and you can have it all if you took a chance and let yourself go. It will grasp you with both arms, you know it, yet you resist. You’re scared of falling and hitting the ground and be splattered like a handful of dough. Taking chances sounds silly and risky. But if it weren’t for taking chances how would we ever know what lies ahead or on the other side of what reality really is? Would we as humans, have advanced even the slightest bit if we had left no room for mistakes? And exactly what is it that we fear? Failure? But then, answer this, if it weren’t for failure or the fear of it would we ever know winning in its truest sense? Failing itself is a sign that we tried and won’t stop until we succeed. We know what it is that we need to do, we know how, when, where and yet we don’t do it. So, we stand at the edge of the cliff in constant fear of slipping and falling, when really what we should do is soar towards all that we deserve, with a smile. :)

Charmed

According to Greek mythology Pandora was sent down to earth by the Gods to unleash evil. Evil that was contained in a tiny little box, and was meant to stay in there. A woman was sent to give a free rein to greed, lust, deceit, lies and whatever other form of malevolent things you can think of. According to the myth, she opened it out of curiosity. She opened it and let it all out. Ever since then no one seems to forget that it was a woman who gave way to all things bad. But what no one seems to understand or perceive actually, is that maybe what got released into the world weren’t really evils at all, but gifts if you’d look at them as such. And once they were all gone, what was left in the box was hope. That the gift the gods really wanted to bestow upon us, was- a legacy of hope. That life is not hopeless, but each of us is hopelessly human. I wish I had a box like that. Something so beautiful, with delicate carvings and a shiny wooden surface, so breathtaking that each I time I looked at it, It would help me remember that what we consider bad in a relationship might in fact not be bad at all. Things like fear and deceit might be invitations for us to go deeper- to see the one we love as he is instead of as we’d like him to be. Maybe the way you all get angry one moment and not seem to care the next is in itself a great thing. Because it tells us women, who do a pretty good job at driving you crazy, that you care? You care enough to get mad, to sometimes walk away, just to come back with a bunch of lilies. Men aren’t simpletons. They’re very, very complex, and their souls are screaming for poetry. If only, they’d admit it. 

Chance

The broken heart
your lunch is a piece of lemon tart
you missed the dart
the day is a shame, from the very start

Screaming on the top of your lungs

your life sucks
I know you think it’s just bad luck.

The shirts got tight,
You lay wide awake in the middle of the night
Giving up already, you can’t put up a fight

I know you’ve had it, you’re fed up
I know you think it’s just bad luck.

Dinner got cold,
Your story remains untold
That gray hair reminds you, you’re getting old
And she said, Move on little bitch…time to fold.

There, there honey, sit tight and smile
Hold on to your innocence for a little while

You feel stupid just sitting, you feel stuck
I know you think it’s just bad luck.

Spent the last twenty at the bar
Your best friend became the shining star
Last Saturday you totaled your car
And now she is gone too, she is so far

Yes, I know…Its just bad luck

Locked away in your cupboard upstairs
In a cloth bag named desire
Lie your precious memories, you’d long forgotten
Lies there the life you left to rot
Lies there the passion you lost

You forgot
How could you darling?
Since when do you believe in Luck?