The heart of life

As much as I dislike John Mayer for his doofus (read: bigoted) tweets, my soul still connects with his lyrics. Very few things can get me out of a down and out funk like a "Why Georgia" or "Heart of Life".

I do take songs on my iPod to be signs from the Universe and as "Heart of Life" came on my iPod today, I saw the significance of the lyrics. Just a couple of months ago, I was in a state of despair. No direction, no path (or so I thought). Just when I, the forever optimist, was about to give up, my loved ones came to protect that silver lining. They opened Pandora's box with hope just when I was overwhelmed with everything else that came out of it and boy, am I glad they did!

The heart of life is good.

It sure is. It takes a while to see and realise but as much as I don't believe in Karma/destiny, I do believe   that everything happens for a reason. A good reason. It's hard to see that when all you can see are grey clouds but there is a silver lining.  There always is.

The heart of life is good.

I'm grateful for that rough patch of my life and am also glad that life showed me that you can't continue to face every day with rose tinted glasses. The last few months have been humbling, have been enlightening and have provided me with a whole lot of insight and anecdotes for a commencement speech or a TED talk someday. Mostly, I'm glad that the rough patch has helped me appreciate and make the most of the smallest of joys! I'm a better and hopefully wiser person, because of failure and disappointment.

My perspective on the last few months changed after something I saw today.  A kid was learning to ride a bike for the first time. This brought back memories of me learning to ride a bike in Muscat. I still remember my first time on a bike (without the training wheels). I always rode around our little colony in Oman with my training wheels on, admiring the bigger boys who went zooming past on their bigger bikes, sans the training wheels. I was in awe of them but also scared to lose my support system and join the big bad biking club. One day as I was somewhat trying to catch up with my friends Ahmed and Hamad, they urged me to lose those training wheels. I begged to differ, I would fall if I removed those wheels. I was only 6 at that time but I still remember what one of them said to me, he said falling was a part of learning to ride the bike. "You can't really ride a bike unless you have fallen. If you don't fall, you may as well not ride the bike". Failing, or falling in this context, thereby became a step to achieving success, not the opposite of it. So the badazz 6-year old that I was, went for that big bold step of riding a cycle sans the training wheels and voila! I did fall but I also got back up and tried riding again, because well, falling was a step to success. That pep talk worked and I'm still riding my bike till date, sometimes falling, sometimes scared of falling but mostly knowing that even if I do fall, it will just add to the joy of the bike riding experience.

The same can be said in life. Failing or falling don't have to be the antonym of success, they can just become a part of success by becoming the step that takes you closer or pushes you harder to be where you want to be. Failure doesn't always have to be the bad guy or something to be scared of or avoided. The last couple of months have been that step for me and although I resented it at first, I'm grateful for what I have gotten out of it. 


Fear is a friend who is misunderstood, the heart of life is good. 

Oh well...

"Writing is a socially acceptable form of being naked in public" - Paulo Coelho 

 The intention behind this blog post is to get naked in public, not in a eww creepy way but in a this-does-not-really-get-talked-about-and-needs-to-be-exposed in some way kinda way. I'm not trying to play "poor me", neither am I trying to do my dirty laundry on a social media channel. All I want to do is talk about dreams...more importantly broken dreams, about rejection and disapppointment. All these things are a part of everyday life but no one really talks about it because it's not comfortable, it's not pleasant and it puts others around us in an awkward "how do I react to this" position. Failure is great when it inevitably leads to a success story. It's all great to talk about and quote Steve Jobs and how he turned his fortune around or about Einstein and how he overcame his weaknesses and shortcomings to become a successful physicist but hardly any one glorifies or even talks about rejection and disappointment in its rock-bottom stage.

 So here I am, to write and share my story and undress myself in public because I think it's important to talk about the unpleasant and the awkward. I, the "happy hippie", the ever positive optimist am here to share why sometimes life just sucks and why sometimes that can just be a blessing in disguise. During my time in University, AIESEC was a big part of my life (and in a way it still is) yet for some reason I didn't ever go for any core leadership positions in that organisation just cause I was afraid I didn't have what it takes. That turned into a big regret in my last year of uni as something I should have or wish I had done. In that year, I decided I didn't want to live a life of "what if's" anymore so I made a list of things I wanted to do in life professionally and made myself accountable to go do them or at least try to do them. That list comprised of

1. Live and work in Europe (check).
2. Work for a social business (check).
3. If heading to the corporate world, work for Facebook/Google/P&aG/a big market research firm
4. Get a degree from one of the Ivy league schools
5. Work for the United Nations
6. Start my own social business
7. Write a book/Start teaching.

 The first two were easily checked off and I felt like I was onto something. My what-if's became can-do's (awesome can-dos, that too) and they were very positive impetus to achieve the other goals I had for myself. That's when things got hard. I've spent the last two months trying to achieve 3/4/5 all together and it's been messy. I applied for exactly the companies I had on my list and got far but not far enough to be successful. I applied for the United Nations, again got far yet not far enough to be successful. The last 2 months have been a combination of a heart,soul,hopes and dreams poured into an application leading to a "promising" interview stage to a disappointing outcome moments. It's one door closing after another, one kick in the butt after another. I'm all for "a kick in the butt is still a step forward" ideology and I'm sure all those rejections would make great material for one sweet story some day but for now rejection is hard, failure is painful and not achieving dreams you have for yourself is hard to digest.

 Today as I received a rejection for an internship with the UN, I was at an all time low of this stage of life and then something on my Facebook feed caught my eye and made me reflect on all the negativity. The quote was "I would rather have a life of oh-well's rather than what-ifs". I had made that list in my last year of University as a reminder to go for my dreams, it wasn't to achieve them all (although that would be awesome) but to TRY rather than live a life wondering "what-if" and "if-only" and although those what-ifs invariably changed to oh-wells, I'm glad I dared to go after those dreams. It's good to have a definite answer to the "what-if", as horribly negative as it might be. At this point, I don't really know how those rejections can be used as material for a positive success story, hope seems bleak and options seem limited. If life is about "shit happens", this is the diarrhea stage. But also at this point, the silver lining is that I was victorious against that part of myself that used to hold me back. The silver lining also is that I went for my big hairy audacious goals and didn't settle for comfort and complacency (the easy way out).

 So yeah, it's hard being a 24 year old, still living at home and with bleak career prospects after all the doors that you knocked on closed one by one. But OH WELL, it just means it's time to go for the other goals on the list or create new ones. As the wisest man I ever know told me "the lion always takes a step back before making the big leap for the kill". Time to take a step back and launch an attack on the next goal! Till then, feel a little disappointed and dejected. Disappointment is sucky but regrets are suckier!

Time to get the writing hat on!

It's that time of the year when I re-visit the blog and reconnect with my inner writer! Bumhood can be a great inspiration for getting into the writing mode. So write, I will.

Day 30: Letting it be and letting go

Ok so I just revisited the blog and realised I failed at finishing off my Newember resolution with a new thing for the last day. Well, I did do my "new thing" for that day but it was one of the hardest things on my list. It took me a long time to go do it and even longer to write about it.

Liz Gilbert, my hero from Eat, Pray, Love wrote about it and I pretty much copy, pasted and applied it to my life:

 “Instructions for freedom":
 1. Life's metaphors are God's instructions.
 2. You have just climbed up and above the roof, there is nothing between you and the Infinite; now, let go.
 3. The day is ending, it's time for something that was beautiful to turn into something else that is beautiful. Now, let go.
4. Your wish for resolution was a prayer. You are being here is God's response, let go and watch the stars came out, in the inside and in the outside.
5. With all your heart ask for Grace and let go.
6. With all your heart forgive him, forgive yourself and let him go.
7. Let your intention be freedom from useless suffering then, let go.
8. Watch the heat of day pass into the cold night, let go.
9. When the Karma of a relationship is done, only Love remains. It's safe, let go.
10. When the past has past from you at last, let go.. then, climb down and begin the rest of your life with great joy.”

 I don't really want to go into detail but my new thing for the day and life is done and dusted. Time to climb down and begin the rest of my life with great joy.

Day 29: Baby, I'm ready to go!

I used to fear change but now I get a kick from it. At the age of 20, in my third year at University, I had my entire life planned out, all my 5/10/20 year plans sorted and then I was struck with a personal setback which kind of shook up my plans and taught me that there was no point of planning and preparing, if things have to go wrong, they will go wrong. So just go with the flow. "Go with the flow" has been the mantra of my life for a while now. I don't organize, I don't plan ahead, I don't worry about the future but just take each day as it comes along. You can't adjust the sails of your ship based on the wind up ahead, you just have to go with the flow. As a negative side effect of this new mantra, I have developed a horrible habit of leaving things to the last minute because "going" is always intensified just before the "flowing" is at the flooding stage. I take pride in the fact that I can work very hard the night before on an essay and get an A or that I can pack 2 hours before my flight and leave without knowing where I'm going to stay and what I'm going to do. It's all a part of the adventure, I'd try to convince myself. When it comes to travelling, I'm often the person running towards the train just as it is about to leave or the person they page for at airports. I'm the kind of person who comes with a travel bag, with half the things missing - no toiletries, no socks, no jandals etc. I never go with a map or a lonely planet book but rely on the foreign paths to lead me to my "destination". I watched this really awesome Bollywood movie called three idiots which taught me to say "all izz vell" and lie to my heart and convince everything is ok even if I'm scared to bits and that's what I do when travelling. So my new thing for the day was to be a little more organized about my next trip. I planned and packed 3 days before my flight which is an achievement! My friend Ting nearly fainted when I told her! It really brought a smile to the always prepared and super organized mother's face. I made a list of everything I needed and made sure I had everything I needed. I packed and weighed my bags. I read my lonely planet guide and Singapore must-do lists and went all out to find accommodation and local contacts in Singapore. It felt weird being so organized, it almost took away the novelty of surprise or a sense of adventure but it also made me feel really onto it. It's like baby, I'm ready to go (with the flow and a plan).

Day 28: What rubbish?!

One man's rubbish is another man's treasure. I realised that at an early stage while growing up in India. Things we didn't have use for or didn't need were often given away to our house helpers for their kids. Those kids would hold the toys we grew disinterested in as their most precious possessions and would happily wear clothes that we didn't think were cool enough. I was always amazed by this recycle/reuse concept and it always gave me great joy to see a "not needed" thing being used as a "most wanted" commodity. In this growing age of consumerism, where we believe retail therapy solves all our problems, it really is increasingly important to recycle and reuse our so-called rubbish as treasure. I may sound like a primary school teacher here but I feel extremely ashamed and wasteful every time I clean my room and have to dispose off all those things that I once bought and thought I needed but never used. I do try and give most of it away to charity and clothing drives but I don't think that's enough.

My new thing for the day was to create a treasure out of rubbish. I wanted to do something creative, something fun, something useful. I decided to make jewellery! It would not only make my ex-roomie happy but also prove my craftmanship or lack thereof. I googled some ideas fore recyclable jewellery and came across a really cool new idea for earrings made from headphones! I'm not sure how and why but I go through headphones like Hugh Hefner goes through his playmates. I need a new one almost every couple of months. Out with the old, in with the new. I dispose off those headphones without even stopping to consider if there was another use for them...but now I do! Earrings! They were super easy to make, all you need are broken headphones, scissors, paint (if you want to jazz up the earrings) and the wire for the hook. Within less than an hour, I had new earrings! Treasure out of rubbish! Who would have thought? We all have a Midas touch to turn things into gold (gold is a metaphor for something splendid/useful), just have to adopt a new perspective sometimes. New day, new earrings, new disposal ritual for headphones! Success!

Day 27: Getting beached-azz

It is a commonly held notion that you often or only regret things you didn't do. Timing is key and it really does suck if you don't make the most of the right moment at the right time.

What I did yesterday wasn't very new. I went to the beach. I do that every summer and a lot of it every summer. However, it was my first official beaching out experience of this summer (after 2 years) and perhaps the last, before I head off to Singapore. I would have regretted it if I hadn't spent my last splendid sunny day in Auckland at a beach.

Everyday I try to be the type of person who wakes up thinking "carpe diem" but sadly, my laziness or busyness often comes in the way. There are so many sunny days wasted indoors watching TV or so many crispy cold mornings on weekends spent recovering from the night before. I clearly remember last winter in Prague. It was cold and snowy...the usual Czech winter and I was in no mood to go out and "seize the day" and make the most of the winter wonderland. I stayed indoors, avoided going out as much as possible and dissuaded others too from venturing in the "oh so pretty but oh so awful snow outside" but my flatmate, a Colombian, experiencing his first white winter begged to differ. He would go out, take photos of the christmas decorations, grab hot wine, make snowmen and snow angels and bring back a snowball as a souvenir. He held onto his childlike curiosity and made the most of a snowy day. At that time, I was allergic to his enthusiasm but now that I think about it, I actually do miss the snow and do wish I had spent more time reveling in nature's Christmas present instead of wallowing in a pool of contempt and vodka.

I didn't want to make the same mistake with the quintessential kiwi summer experience at the beach. I didn't want to regret not bathing in our chilly but pure waters before I left. The "stars" and I headed to Long Bay as a part of our summer ritual with a whole lot of junk food, sun screen and books (that remained untouched) and basked in the glory of summer. Swimming, walking, sun screen smearing, people watching, napping, more sun screen smearing, ice cream eating, more walking...times flies when you are at the beach. Five hours later, we had managed to finish a major portion of our sun screen lotions, all the junk food we bought and managed to get a tan on! The sound of the waves, the chill of the water, the jet skiers and wake boarders, the warm sand and smell of grilled meat on the barbie...this is summer. This was summer condensed in one day.

It was new because it was the first beaching experience of the summer. It was also new because I somehow managed to get sunburnt for the first time in my life! Definitely a new experience for my complexion...and a not-so-pleasant one. New you seek, new you shall get! Day 27 was a beach of a new experience!