Today I move on

I saw her standing there across the mall
thought I would go say hi
some time ago my best friend
now just a face in the crowd that I recognize

it won’t be awkward
I convinced myself
after all why should it be?

we’ll have so much to talk about
after all it’s been so long
I told myself

just then I saw my reason to fear
she was with her friends
surrounded by her new life and her new friends
she looked complete without needing me there

I gathered my wits and all my guts
and slowly moved towards her
determined to find my old friend
to find solace in our friendship again

I said hi and she replied excitedly
it’s been so long, she said
she excused herself from her friends
and choose to sit with me for coffee instead

happy, excited and a bit anxious
we chatted for a good hour
the wavelengths matched and so did the moods
but what did not were our lives

it had indeed been a long time
the more we spoke the more I realized
our lives didn’t intertwine anymore
We had each moved into a new realm of reality

the realization struck hard
it saddened me a bit
but then I realized I had been stuck too long
Today I finally move on…

What makes you happy?

What makes a person happy? What makes us want to smile? Most of us search our entire lives for that magic formula that adds self-contentment and zeal; transforming our existence into life.

Putting aside all the cliché answers, any true patron of the movie “Fight Club” would say that it can be anything that makes you tick. As Tyler Durden taught us, there is no limitation on the outlandish nature of our mood controller. For the uninitiated, Tyler got kicks out of ‘selling rich women their fat [that they got removed through liposuction] back as soaps’, ‘fucking Marla till the end of eternity’ and ‘venting out his frustration by fighting’. Strange as it may sound to some; but these things kept him happy. These things ensured that when he got up he had a smile on his face and looked forward to each day like it was his last; consequently living it to the fullest.

Though there are some basic needs that all humans have [e.g. the need for sex], there is one cliché that holds true for most of us – ‘You are unique, just like everyone else’. Each of us have some uniqueness in what drives us, what keeps us happy and what motivates us to do the unimaginable. For ages countless studies have been done to try and decipher what makes someone be him or her. But most if not all have resulted in inadequate conclusions. The sole reasoning behind this, in my mind, is the fact that nobody except the individual can decipher what makes him/her happy.

Friends and family are just travelers who stand beside you to provide any help if needed be, but only an individual himself can figure out the reasoning behind his grieving nature. A forward I read stated that “Many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full ofgarbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they need a place to dump it. And if you let them, they'll dump it on you.” That choice also remains with you.

Most of us spend our time just putting the pieces of our lives together. Trying hard and hoping that someday it’ll make the beautiful picture that we dream of. But just putting the pieces together will never make them stay in place; we need a glue to keep it together. And no one else can provide that to us. Spouses can help us put the glue in the right places, but the glue needs to come from us. This glue is the magic formula that we look for, the list of things that’ll make us happy. Well learning this magic should be the easiest thing in the world especially considering that the spell is within us, we only have to cast it and it has to be casted on us.

But we’re humans and not magicians. We can’t just cast a spell and make everything in our lives fine. Yet, I have chosen to take small steps. Discover things that make me happy. Every day I want to give myself at least one reason to look forward to the next day. It’s not to say I’ll leave aside all planning for a long beautiful life but I need to give myself reasons to ‘live’ it that long. A mere existence for 70 years carries little with it except pain and grief.

Some Quotes I live by

Law of the Garbage Truck - Unknown
Many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they need a place to dump it. And if you let them, they'll dump it on you.

Strong and bitter words indicate a weak cause - Unknown

The curtain is lifting. We can have triumph, or tragedy, for we are the play-wrights, the actors and the audience. Let us book our seats for triumph. Theworld is sickened of tragedy.
- John Macauley, Chairman, League of Red Cross, accepting Nobel Peace Prize

Go Out

GO OUT ...

"Damn, I feel like dancing". Most of us associate the want of dancing with happiness. Whenever we are blessed with a reason to add more curves to our smile, we feel the urge to share the happiness. In an internet survey, 8 out of every 10 people have similar events happening to them after this feeling. They go to share their happiness with someone, and invariably that person has something to crib about and blows out their bubble of happiness. How many times has this happened to each of us, all of a sudden we are forced to crash from cloud # 9 flat down to the ground reality of someone else's sadness.

So what do the remaining 2 people do differently? Are the just lucky or are they loved more by the almighty lord. Well though luck sometimes helps us select the right people, to make the correct selection all the time we need to change our thoughts. Those 2 people choose to be happy; they choose to share their happiness with someone who they know will either join them in dance or ask them to come for bungee jumping to celebrate. These are the people who are able to either share your happiness or help elevate you to a higher level of ecstasy. All of us have a big bag of eclectic selection to pick from - our collection of friends - but invariably we choose to select from a very limited set. We constrict our choices to those who we believe should be performing a certain role in our lives. And we may not always be lucky enough to find people who match our hopes. So what do we do then, do we persists with the same hope and often suffer the same disappointment. According to me, the answer to that is " F$#K%$G HELL NO".

GO OUT and you'll be surprised. Explore around, talk to people who you haven't bothered speaking with. Call up an old friend, step out of the normal conversation that you share with a current friend. Don't let your friendship become mundane by the same type of conversation; give him/her and yourself a surprise. Discuss something new; grow your friendship by exploring the new avenues. You may find that there is a lot more common between you and your friend(s). Sometimes we need our relationship with people to be resurrected. Whether you let a friend ferment for sometime [Give space to each other to think] or actively add vigor and spice to give birth to a new equations [Between old friends or with new friends]. Don't let yourself and others ever get bogged down with petty issues, there are 6 billion+ people in this world and you can surely find 10 friends for yourself. And just maybe 1 or 2 [More if you're lucky] of them who will be the ones' asking you to dance for the rest of your life.