Let Go

What does it mean to let go? Does it mean to abandon, to forget, to act like something never existed? Or does it mean to accept something so fully, To understand it so deeply, to believe in it so much, that you realize that its better off without you?

Letting go of the past is one thing. You cant abandon it and you may think you've forgotten it, but you haven't really. Why would one want to forget who one is, because ultimately, where you are, who you are, why you are, is entirely because of your past. The decisions you made, the decisions that were made for you, the people you met, the people you didn't, the risks you took, and the ones you deemed too risky. You've made your past, and through your past, you've made your present, and this present gives you the platform to build your future. There is no meaning to letting go of all of this, if you believe letting go is, just letting go. To truly let go of your past, to be rid of the weight it carries, the burden it places on your shoulders, the expectations that arise from it, so that you may have a present that is not merely an echo of the past, is to accept the past in its entirety. With no excuses, and no justifications, look back on what you've done, the mistakes you've made, but never regret them for a moment. There are no do-overs in life, and wishing there were is just a waste of time. Grasp your past and realize what is is you've done, the decisions you made out of emotion, or pride, and how they've shaped your life. Think how your life may have been different had you thought differently, but never dwell on what could have been, because that can never be. The sooner you accept your past with no reservations, and no regrets, then and only then have you let go of it.

Letting go of a person is incredibly more difficult than letting go of the past. For one, its not something of yours that you're giving away. Its someone else. Someone who means the world to you, because its only such people that you would want to let go off. I know that sounds paradoxical, but think of this. If it were someone who didn't mean much to you at all, and you said goodbye, then thats all there is to it. Sure you'd feel sad for a while perhaps, but the void of something that was there, that is no longer there wouldn't eat you up form within. You wouldn't flagellate yourself believing that finally I have let my ego get the better of me. Thats why letting go of a persons harder. When you let go of the past, you're satisfying your ego. In the process, yes you bruise it and batter it, when you take the blame for your mistakes and your decisions, but the ultimate purpose is to make yourself happy, or at least happier than you were. But to let go off a friend, you have to curb your ego. You have to stomach your pride. You accept that they are better off without you. Without you introducing doubts and uncertainties into their life, without you putting compulsions on them, and how they should be. To do that, takes a strong will, and true love towards the person you're letting go of.

Afterwards, when its all said and done, when the void within has slowly started to recover, when you get used to the phantom pain of something that was there but is no longer there, nor will ever be there again, you can only hope that the one you let go off, is truly happier, and that you have made the right choice. And then as you sit thinking back over the past, how you were, how you are now, and the future that should have been, but will now not be, you let go of that feeling as well.

But as with everything worth anything, easier said than done...

Reflection

I look into a mirror, the mirror on my wall,

I see shoulders slumped in defeat,

I see eyes desperate for a retreat

Into myself, where I am safe,

Me demons cannot pursue me here,

My other self shows real fear,

And in his eyes, my eyes I see,

A longing, a desire to be free.

I look into a mirror, the mirror of my friends,

I wonder what they see,

As they stare back at me,

A man of arrogance, a man too proud,

Someone they'd rather lose in a crowd,

Very few among them know,

How my true feelings flow,

I wonder what they see,

Their eyes bore right through me.

I look into a mirror, the mirror of the world,

People I know merely by a glance,

Others I wish, to meet, I had a chance,

All of them they look at me,

Some, like, others hate what they see,

They see a man too vain, too cruel,

A man ever eager to fight a duel,

Someone who wont back down till the win,

No matter the cost, he must win,

That is what they see as they stare,

None of them even care,

To see the real me, the one I hide,

My light, or maybe, darker side,

How can I blame them, I give them just cause,

I wish they knew though, everyone has flaws

I look into a mirror, the mirror of my heart,

The one within which noone sees,

The reflection no man can seize

The only me I ever want to be,

The one I want everyone to see,

But he is hidden deep within,

Safe from the world, he lays within,

Crying with every breath I take,

Every change I make for the world's sake,

All I want is for him to stop his tears,

For the world to overcome its fears,

And embrace the one within, my true self,

How can they, when I haven't, myself.

Something I wrote as a post, that is, right now, unlike my other works, which were written much earlier than when I posted them. A much more personal poem, and I know some people who might appreciate its honesty...

Pessimist and Proud!

Inspiration comes in various forms, but none as weird as mine today I'm sure.

Have any of you noticed that at the top of any blog on blogger, there's an option called next blog? That randomly throws you to some other blog, and this time, after chain-jumping for a while, one of my online activities, I ended up in a Chinese blog about a guy getting some random Chinese word shaved into his head. Yeah. Seriously. I was impressed. and considering I'm posting, I guess inspired too... My parents assure me they never dropped me when I was a baby.. not so sure now.... :P

As most of you know, I'm a third year engineering guy right now, and I'm pretty happy with life in general, mostly because I dont really ask too much from it. I have my aims and my desires and my hopes, but being a born pessimist, I assume that none of them will ever come true. Sure that sounds depressing, but listen to my logic, and I'm sure you'll come around to my way of thinking.

If you're an optimist and always believes the best will happen, then you're bound to be disappointed, because real life never happens perfectly. IF you wish for something you know is a long-shot, then chances are you wont get it. Sure you can quote the stories where the impossible does happen, but they are so few and far between. Thats why they're even remembered, because they're atypical. But on the other hand, if you believe that the worst will always happen, then you can only ever be pleasantly surprised at what does actually happen, because by definition, the "worst" is the worst, and life can only be better. Think about it, it makes sense. I'm standing up for pessimists all over the world as I write this. Too long have we been shunned and marginalized for speaking our views. WE play the role noone wants. The villain, the bad guy. The guy who thinks the plan will fail, the guy who believes that there isn't a "good guy" within us all, while secretly all we want is to be proven wrong. Yup. We want to be proven wrong.

The reason so few people like to be pessimistic is because it takes effort. Any idiot can go around hoping the best will happen, but a pessimist has to think about the worst that ca happen. and then think of how to deal with it. Being pessimistic is really easy, but being a true pessimist, now thats hard. It entails accepting and planning for the worst. You have to be willing to deal with the worst-case scenario if it does arise, and you have to have the self-belief that you can handle it. If not, you're headed to world of despair and depression if you follow the pessimistic path.

I think thats a common misconception, a pessimist doesn't want the world to go up in flames, but he thinks it might, so that he can be pleased when it doesn't. A cynic, on the other hand WANTS it to burn. And all the while, the optimist sits and makes flower-chains and sings weird music.

The pessimist wants the world to be good and wants things to be alright. He wants people to be good and the plan to work, but he'd rather be the brunt of negativity than be disappointed if life doesn't go exactly to plan. In that sense I think the optimist is actually a secret masochist. He wants to be disappointed again and again and again, and after a while he becomes the most useless thing possible- a cynic.

Optimists gone bad make cynics. They hoped for the best, hoped for the utterly impossible. Hoped exams would get cancelled just because they didn't study, hoped their bosses' planes would crash, and such lovely thoughts, which of course never happened, now they've lost faith in the world and spend time sprouting negativity. A true pessimist will never become a cynic Why would he? Life always turns out better than he had hoped for. No time does he feel that the world is out to get him, but rather he always feels that the world has been good to him.

I'm proud to be a pessimist. I truly believe that the worst will happen always, and I always feel overjoyed when it doesn't. Life is hard, yes, but the depth of hardness is relative. I f you set the bar of how hard you think life is going to be high enough, and prepare yourself for that, you'll be surprised at how easy life actually becomes..

EQUILIBRIUM

I guess my old exuberance has caught up with me once again. I'm posting again!

Do you sometimes feel like the more you try to change something, not yourself, but just something, the more it ends up staying the same? What I mean is, as you try to change something, inertia kicks in, and everything goes kaput. It stays changed for a while but almost always returns to how it was. One thing in chemistry, my least favourite subject ever by the way, that I appreciated, was the Le-Chatelier principle. Basically it says that if a system is in dynamic equilibrium, and you try to disturb it, the system tries all it can to restore equilibrium. In a nutshell, you play around with it, it plays back. Its happy how it is, and it'll try to get back to how it was. In a sense, thats my entire life principle. Live and let live. If I'm happy with the world, and the world thats important to me is happy with me, then why try to change? It makes no sense really, to change equilibrium. And thats what I feel that everyone should acheive in life. Equilibrium. Not money or happiness, but equilibrium. A state which is dynamic and static at the same time. Things are changing, you're living life, but you're stable at the same time. Equilibrium. My life's aim in one word- EQUILIBRIUM. Profound epiphany...

Returning to the chemistry analogy again, There are catalysts that can shift the equilibrium in the way you want, and I think that all money and 'happiness' (the ' ' is just so that you can put whatever you define as happiness there) really is are catalysts that shift this equilibrium one way or the other. When you're actually fully and completely satisfied with life, you attain equilibrium, and no matter what happens, you won't lose it. This is of course assuming day-to-day events. A death or something would obviously alter the context of it all, but once you do attain equilibrium ,I think its very VERY hard to lose it, because like it or not, the system (you) tries sub-consciously to retain it.

Now I'm sure you have lots of arguments to this admittedly over-simplification, but I'm sure you get the basic premise. If you are happy with the world, and the worlds happy with you, let it stay that way. If something changes the equilibrium gets disturbed and you try and get it back.. Simple right??

I'm back!

3 months. A far cry from the times I tried to post every day. I plead guilty to abandonment this time. No excuses. No claims of lack of material. I simply got bored of writing a blog that I felt no one reads. But then I figured what the hell right? I mean someone's going to read this sometime, and when they do, I hope they get as much fulfillment out of it as I do when I write it. Because ultimately thats all a writer wants. Sure he'd like his works to become a best-seller or a financial success, but the pleasure of writing is in that instant, as you lay down your pen, or shut down your computer, the feeling of accomplishment, thats what its all about.

Life is in the little things. Sure its the big things that everyone makes a big deal out of, but have you ever stopped to wonder why you consider somethings big and others small? Its based on your perception of how society would view them. Why is divorce a bigger deal than bad manners? You feel society would shun you more for the former than the latter, though in todays world you really cant be told. I'm sick of telling people and being told that somethings 'not a big deal'. The very reason for having to say that is because someone feels bad about something that happened. And so you really think you can make him feel better by saying its not important? Of course its important! Thats kind of why they were sad in the first place. Its just when its not so important to us,, we assume that things have the same priority to others. Thats something I learned the hard way. Priorities. One persons sense of whats important need not be yours. And I urge all my readers, (few that they are :) ) not to make the mistake of assuming that whats important to you must be important to someone else.

Knowing what you want, and going all out for it is a trait that must be admired, no matter what that thing may be. It could be a new car, or a new job, or even an impossible dream, but what matters is that its important to you, and even if others don't understand that, or tell you 'its not a big deal', shut them out and go for it!

This doesn't match my usual style at all, but I'm feeling good. Coming off a bad time, the world seems brighter again, don't get used to it my faithful reader(s). A storm never stays calm for long...

BORING!!!!!

Ok... I thought I could get through the holidays. I almost did. I succumb with 3 weeks left. I am caught up in being actively inactive. I know there's a contradiction in there somewhere, but what the hell.

My boredom has led me to pursuits I never would have considered. I am now the owner of a Eastern Air Dragon. The cute purple thing you see to your right, and unless I find something better to do, the owner of a something that I just adopted 5 minutes ago. I have no idea what that will turn into, but I'll keep you posted.

Have you ever noticed that the more bored you get, the slower time passes. I know its a cliche, but it is true. You can almost feel the earth turn. It's not that I dont have anything to amuse myself with, but I lack the energy to actually do anything. Typical me, but I'm pretty sure you associate with me also. I haven't met anyone till date who can honestly say they've not been bored in the past hour. Man is almost always bored. Boredom arises not when you have nothing to do, but rather when you cant bring yourself to do something long enough. You get bored in movie theatres, in football games, watching TV, even eating. The theory I've come up with is to not try and do something else, but rather keep on doing what you were. Create an image of satisfaction about the task in your head and 'just do it', to quote Nike. The reason I call it a theory is because I've never practically applied it.. got too bored!!

A post about boredom... how sad life has become..

Oh and by the way, please visit my dragon... It gets lonely... And after the other 'thing' hatches, can you visit that too?

Thanx in advance!

EDIT: Heres something new... http://tempestnation.myminicity.com/ my own city... how the mighty fall :P

Solitude

Well my month long hiatus is over, and I find myself with something to write again.

Being alone is not really all that bad. The solitude gives you time for introspection and makes you appreciate the little things in life. As an only child to 2 working parents I've had my share of solitude, and I'm none the worse for it.

What is bad is being lonely. I know that both things may be the same, but my command of englissh is not great enough to pull a word out opff the myriad of them that encapsulates what I mean. Instead let me try and explain.

Being alone is a state. It arises when thorugh external factors, there is noone to keep you company, and you accept that. It passes and noone really cares. Being lonely, in my concept of the term is when you feel unwanted by people and hence you try and be alone. In my concept, being lonely is a decision you make, when you excuse yourself from socciety because you don;t feel like you can take its beating anymore, and as icing on the cake if you will, this leads to your friends feeling offended and themselves feeling lonely.

Friends are essential. That goes without saying. There's only so much that one person can bare, and friends help share the load. They're your support, your laughter and your tears. But they are not yours. If one fails to understand that one's friends are not just one's friends but induvuduals all on their own with lives, hopes, dispairs of their own, then one isn't a friend at all.

Being lonely is a direct consequence of the failure to appreciate the life of one's friends. You expect them to always be there for you to pick you up, straighten you out and say- tomorrow is another day, but they are human too. And if you're lucky enough to come across that rare individual who puts you above themselves in every action.  consider yourself the luckiest person on earth, but bear in mind, they're human too, and just as they are your friend, you're theirs too, and you need to be all that they are to you. Because every relationship goes 2 ways.

But its not enough that you make yourself available. Anyone can say call me when you need help. What matters is actually meaning that. Actually meaning that whenever you need me, whenever your lonely, whenever the world seems to beat you done, I'm there for you, above everything else, I will pick you up, I will set you right, I will share your smile, and I will wipe you tears. For that is what being a friend is all about, and in the selfish ssociety that man has created for himself, that is the only way to ease ones passage through the relelntless gauntlet that is life.