Thoughts

Reflecting about 2019

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Another birthday went by. Also another year is nearing its end. This year when I look back, unknown to me, the focus has been on love.

It started in January when I read the book, The Forty Rules Of Love by Elif Shalak. Every rule touched a nerve in me. It left me thinking about the principles and the ideals I follow. During the summer vacation, I went to live with parents for one month with their grand daughter. Every moment of their living reminded me of the changes in them and me, and in general the miniscule of life.

By the time I returned with a heavy heart, I had started onto the famous Harry Potter series (which I had set aside thinking they are kid’s books) which teaches various shades and hidden layers of love. With such an overflow of love, I turned loving more towards myself, indulging in art which I wanted to from long time. But the tide didn’t last longer.

At house, seeing the kid struggling with the enormous educational materials, it made me ponder on how they view the life and how it differs from our point of view. Recently in one of the tantrum fights, I caught myself from a higher perspective, realising how every human being is struggling with ego, starting with such young age. Every kid wants to believe themselves as right and holds onto their belief. It took me back to my age when I kept complaining how Amma never understands my point. I had to calm myself and also the kid, by pointing out that she is right but that doesn’t mean I am wrong. Now that I look back, I realise no kid ever points out to their parents that they are wrong, instead what frustrates the child is, the realisation that he/she is considered a kid and their feelings always being ignored. Again I could see the tussle of power between ego and love. Instead if love is to take over, the belief that the kid will learn on her own with time and experience, will help us to calm down and will enable us to give the kids a chance to live their way.

Recently I completed the book, Daring Greatly by Brene Brown, and I realised I could relate to it completely. Most examples in the book are so realistic and I could sense the shields and masks, which is talked about in the book as something which I wear in day to day life. But all these reading or the inputs I received impacted more on my mind than my actions. As much easy it is to read and understand these truths, it’s that hard to implement in real life. As my therapist says, acceptance is the key to the change. In other words acceptance itself is the change to bring about.

Maybe till the next birthday, the theme could be the acceptance and the long drive could be on the road to freeing my inner spirit…

Bangalore life/Thoughts

Call of the Abyss

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Its here again. Every time it comes and drowns me in its deepest abyss. Then I slowly crawl out of survival instinct and start swimming against the tide. If not, I am sure i would be carried away to the cliff and would be pushed over. Most of the times this swimming against the tide takes longer time during which, I fizzle out of my energy and land back further my initial position. Yet I try. The human nature of survival is unexplained. The source of strength magically appears when we least think of it. 

For months now, the social media has been a distraction, an excuse for me not to hone my creativity skills(if any). Every day I would think, I would start practising doing the morning pages or attempt to do some DIY or learn new art of painting or crafting, but a tempting choice of glancing through the digital devices before the start, glues me onto it for the rest of the day. Apart from scrolling the feed and stalking other inspirational profiles, some for curiosity and some for art, music and other interests of mine, the feeling of posting something on my own has come down.
But on a few days when I could reign myself in, I did end up creating this mandala, which is my new love interest these days.

And then there is the watercolor and acrylic painting classes which tempts me so much, but the prospect of learning and then giving up, holds me back. It’s as if I have some serious commitment issues when it comes to productivity.  Can you believe I haven’t taken any photos too lately? For someone who did a photo per day for one whole year and gloated about it, this seems to be so out of character.

Yet I try tinkering around, playing with paints like the ones below, or completing some books(did I mention about Harry Potter? that deserves a full post!)

Some say music helps, but I wonder whether it would help the 8 year old at home, when I am blasting “In the End It doesn’t even matters” on the bluetooth speaker! The easiest way till now was to go back to roots, listening to plain old carnatic music with the violin and melancholy ragas, which can improve our mood so subtly that we would not know how long the music has been playing. But its hard to make the new generation (who talks nothing more than gonna and wanna), appreciate such old beauties.
How do you usually get out of “the abyss”?

Mélange – Random Tidbits

Summer Pink!

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Summer Pink! .#flowers #gardenlove #pinklove #snapseed #randompic

Bangalore is famous for its pink flowers. Though I am yet to have one in my namesake garden, this picture is of a new plant I bought recently. Love how editing app like Snapseed transforms the simple image instantaneously. Reminds me of the Photoshop trouble we had to play around with, a decade ago, to achieve the same feat! Filters and photo editing apps have changed the dynamics a lot easier.

I wonder why didn’t I resort to this idea of doing photo-post once in a while now that there are easier ways to import from Instagram to WordPress. At times, we are so adamant of our ways like compartmentalising and perfection, that we end up ignoring both WordPress and Instagram. Silly, no?

Relationship/Thoughts

Love over the years

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February, the month of love!

Celebrated with red hearts, balloons, roses, candles, gifts, teddy bear and what not. As years pass by, I find it unbearable to see the fakeness in the extravaganza. The charm of youth played with my heart too, and there was a time when I was disappointed with the inhibitions of my family and loved ones, or not choosing to openly show the love hidden deep in our hearts. Now the interests have changed though. 

The love towards the materials has reduced considerably (at least that is what I like to believe!), though there are essentials, for which we choose the best (iPhone, Oneplus etc. You get the drift? ;-)). I now realise the value of the experiences more, say the short trips to the outskirts, vacations we take, or the family moments spent at home on weekends, which doesn’t need much expenses or arrangements to show off to others. The clothes, jewellery or the home decor items are bought now not for tradition or flowing with the rat race, but to adorn our house walls and bodies, so that to multiply the self love when we see ourselves in the mirror or to boost our self morale and confidence . More than a candle light dinner and roses, wishes or public PDA, have you noted the increase in your happiness when they understand your silence, weaknesses and do something to add to your daily dose of happiness, in everyday routines?

Along with the love toward an other person, self love is gaining so much popularity these days. The keywords like mental health, depression, anxiety are quite common that I wonder the essence of uplifting the issue would get drowned amidst the generalisation by the millennial. Though the good thing that came out of it is the self-love quotes and messages flying around reinforcing us to look into ourselves. Words are quoted from the religious texts and books, to the extent that one-liners are made out of nothing, and called as a philosophical quote! Hope the smarter people get into touch with themselves aligning with the intention of the source of these messages.

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Bangalore life/Mélange – Random Tidbits

Welcoming 2019

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As 2018 ends and a new year begins, I nudge myself up to water my creative cells. I checked upon the photo challenge #fmspad which I did successfully in previous years. The photo prompt was “yellow”. I kept humming the Coldplay Yellow song wondering what yellow thing in the house could be my guinea pig this time. My eyes rested upon the yellow bed sheet below me. The brown flowers called out to me for attention.

…And I wondered why not this bedsheet? A simple Bombay Dyeing bedsheet and unmatched pillow covers of another bedsheet set. Will it get into my instagram feed?

The questions were looking at me, one by one. I slowly realised I was always questioning, rather overthinking for such a small casual phone click? The other invisible soul in me continue throwing questions at me though (…Casual phone click? An iphone click is now a casual click for you? Don’t you have shame to post this bedsheet to public? How dare you reveal your privacy in public?…)

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Mélange – Random Tidbits

Scribbled Memories

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Laugh or not but the below images are of something I scribbled with pencil in a diary 20 years ago… I loved writing with pencil than pen in those days, with its screeching sound reflecting how I am scrubbing all the dirt from my mind away…

Stumbled across old journals while shifting home and ended up reading them doing soul searching for today. Some notes were unrelated, some so naive and judgemental, some crazy weird gibberish nonsense! Realised that some thoughts have roots so deep that my heart is aching at the slow realisation of the gravity of how hard it is to pull them out!??.??

The second one is few more years older but without any date. Still wondering why am I posting this! ???.??Unfortunately though I really want to renew the reading habit, I haven’t got past few pages of the book in the third one. So bringing myself to the conclusion that I am posting these to start practising what I read till now!