Hopeful on 31st December 2010

i hear the sounds of revelry filtering across to my room as i sit down at ease finally after a hectic fortnight of entertaining guests to write my last blog of the bidding goodbye year.
There have been unpleasant happenings in the last few months ending with the skyrocketing prices of essentials and i am not very comfortable to say, " So far so good ".
i still don't know if i should count my blessings or should humbly sit thinking about the poor souls struggling to make ends meet.
But there surely is a sudden revival of hope that things should improve in the coming year.
i am not actually thinking forwards but going down memory lane backwards focussing on the positives and therefore this HOPE.
The end of the calendar year is a good time to do so.
No i am not making resolutions for the coming year.
Rather am just hopeful that things settle down to a comfortable level the coming year for everybody.
With that in mind i want to just sit back, relax and with lots of new hopes in my heart i wish that 2011 is not just another year but a special year where i roll on with enough cheerfulness which should help me transform the negatives into positives and thus enjoy a meaningful life.
Here's wishing everyone who stops by to read my blogs A Very Peaceful And Happy New Year.

Acceptance

Sometimes or rather many times we are stubborn and so insensitive towards our own selves. i find it sort of weird but that's the way it is.
Some sad truth happens and there we are, hurling imaginary bullets at ourselves. As if digesting the hard truth was not enough.
Why is it so difficult to accept the sad truth?
It's so easy to accept the happy truths and revel in it. Why then the sad truth is so hard to go through?
And why is it that we start questioning the truth and making several loose/false assumptions and dissecting the truth with painful analysis?
Why can't we just let it be and wait for time?
Nothing lasts forever and in time the sad truth too must lose it's sting.
For in time you forget and forgive. Maybe later you even laugh it out.

i have just been trying to deal with yet another betrayal by whom i thought was a friend. i questioned hundred times as to why it had to happen to me again. The betrayal was not a very serious one rather a petty one and instead of letting it pass, once again i questioned myself...felt hurt, angry, depressed in a manner as if my world has been torn apart.
Making a mountain out of a mole.

i go on a rampage hating myself...for being foolish, careless at not responding to the signals when they started happening. For being insensitive to my own inner voice that tried to warn me more than once.
i have no one to blame but myself.
i was so stupid...even after all these years...and people are able to manipulate me to get to their ends.
i am a means to their selfish ends...
i am pathetic...


Can i really ever learn to handle situations? Can i control situations and make it move into a direction that is favourable to me?
Questions battered inside and i needed answers.
These few days when i needed my answers were sorrowful where i saw myself wallowing in self pity.
Then i indulged into so many activities which i thought could pull me through this impasse.
Cleaning, decorating the house, tending to my plants, reading books, watching movies, going out for a long drive with some soothing music in the car and even going for a facial and massage as someone had suggested once.
The activities helped me during the day but at night as i lay down...the sorrow returned with a vengeance and i cried myself to sad troubled insomnia before collapsing to an exhausted slumber at the break of dawn.
When will i get better?
Or will i even get better at handling manipulation?

i got my answers only when i paused my wild thoughts and was a bit gentle to my own self.
For this is life...sometimes this could work too apart from meditation and yoga.
Being kind to oneself failed to be just words and became yet another transforming moment in my life.

When i was battling with the so many maybes...maybe this...maybe that, i wouldn't have reached my sense of equilibrium if i had not stopped from cursing myself.
It's sad but i don't know how and when this happened but i wasn't even aware that i was a victim of this debilitating disease called Self Loathing.
Loathing of the sort where i saw myself as the culprit. As the one who deserved what she got.
Things like...it's all my mistake...yeah i am responsible...i am irreparable...i am expendable... the list that looked endless was tormenting .

i look around and what do i see.
Everybody thinks they are right.
Everyone justifies their words and actions.
Each person feels his/her approach to be the best one.
And look at me...i am such a brutal critic of my own self.
And this self criticism can be so crippling.

From my own experience i should say it makes you still more annoyed...still more hurt...still more depressed and worse you start distributing this depression in a manner that it has a multiplier effect on others around you.
For i believe that only when you are happy within yourself about your own self, can you pass the happiness around.
And this happiness would in turn have it's own multiplier effects.
So it becomes imperative that i become now more sensitive to my own self.
i am no guru but have my own experiences which are my teachers. And i believe that the experiences are amazing not to be forgotten lessons nonetheless.
So my lesson has been to accept the mysteries of life as it happens. Life happens and there will surely be the crests and the troughs. And instead of questioning...WHY ME...i should take these experiences in my stride and just move on.
Move on not with bitterness and self loathing but with appreciation of the fact that  the experience is signalling me to be a new person. One who accepts life as it happens... feels the thrill and joy in all the good happenings and when things go unfavorable accept it again with a difference.  Feel sorrow if you have to,  maybe even cry it out but accept it just the way you would accept the joys and just move on.
True,  it sounds simple and could be difficult when one actually gets to implementing it but that should not stop one from trying.
For there is no solace in torturing oneself. Awful things happen to a whole lot of people. There are no maybes. That's the way life is.
Life showers trusts and betrayals.
It's true that nothing comes out of nothing but then there are many things beyond our control. What we can control is our own self.
i can tell from my recent experience that i will learn to accept that unfairness is yet another fact of life.
Yeah maybe remind myself not to be unfair when confronted with a similar situation.

i know i have ranted...i needed to but my rant is incomplete if i do not give due credits to this article in Times Of India which just passed the enlightenment to me.
http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp?From=Search&Source=Find&Key=TOICH/2010/12/14/14/Ar01403.xml&CollName=TOI_CHENNAI_DAILY_2009&DOCID=253035&Keyword=(%3Cmany%3E%3Cstem%3EWorld)&skin=TOINEW&AppName=1&PageLabel=14%20&ViewMode=HTML&GZ=T
i got more of the same from these words of Elizabeth Gilbert also the writer of Eat, Pray, Love although i haven't set out on a truth seeking journey but these words provided me with the comfort i was seeking. No words from anyone could do what these words did to me.
It provided me warmth and light. It comforted me when i sat with a dark halo around myself just trying to figure out where or how did i go wrong.
The book was no doubt a good read but the words i quote are from the film with the same name and also based on the book. Elizabeth uses some very good words...words that i found suited my predicament perfectly well.

She calls her questioning , " Physics Of The Quest" which she says is, " A force in nature governed by laws as real as the laws of gravity.
The rule of quest physics goes something like this:
If you are brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting...
which could be anything from your house to bitter, old resentments...
and set out on a truth seeking journey...
either externally or internally...
and if you are truly willing to regard everything...
that happens to you on that journey as a clue...
...and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher...
And if you are prepared most of all
...to face and forgive some very difficult realities about yourself...
Then the truth will not be witheld from you."

She says this was what she believes based on her experience which was a journey for her quest and i feel i know my answers too.
Thank you Liz and thank you TOI.
But most of all Thank You God for making me ME.

Ok maybe in the official video Bruno Mars is singing the song for the girl in his life...and here i am trying to look at myself in the mirror and sing this song for me.
Yeah i mean it...girl you are amazing...just the way you are.