77: Tension & Me ?!?... Never!!!

Tension, holds a very special place in my life!

One may say, most of my life has been marred and shaped by tension.. and this I am not speaking about time since I came to know what does the word tension means, but as early as I can remember , since the time I was 4 year old I have been in tension....!!!

I was 5 year old, in senior KG. Me along with my friend were selected to perform a dance performance in the annual social gathering of my school. Our social gathering used to take place in huge school ground which can easily accommodate around 5000 people and used to be completely filled up. The agenda for the function used to be lighting the lamp by dignitaries, speeches by school committee highlighting all good achievements of the school over that year, followed by prize distribution ceremony and finally followed by cultural programme filled with dance performances, mimicry, singing performances and the likes.

I had never before performed in my life, leave alone in front of 5000 odd people, effectively 10000 eyes staring at you, looking at you and judging you. Many among whom are your school friends, who may in future make fun of you, if you go wrong anywhere...!!! For a 5 year old, the trade off was little too much. Add to it, my dance number was not solely dependent on me but also on my partner,and that's where the seed of tension was sowed....!! What if she fumbles, what if she forgets the steps, what if she stops in between and what if she makes a mess out of it...!! Mind you, here I was not worried for what I am going to do that night, but worried for what my partner would be doing....!! I guess I have been a little high thinker about myself right from childhood... :P

We were lined up behind the stage before our performance. I was engrossed in all the special things I had done that night before the performance. The lipstick, the loud dress, the jewellery everything was new to me,  first time in life experience. I was being very cautious in not touching my both the lips to each other, else my lipstick would be destroyed... that was the naiveness in me of an innocent 5 years old. 

In a split second, while standing back stage, waviness of the curtain gave out a good opening and my eyes fell upon the enormous crowd, who were witnessing the performance which was taking place before ours. And in that split second , I had my first brush with Tension..!!!! All the thoughts of the messy performance where clogging my mind, and I wanted to run and hide somewhere and not be found till people go off to their homes. But I just couldn't run , couldn't muster courage to even move my leg. I heard a pat on my back, my mom was standing behind me, not sure if she judged my nervousness, but her pat was comforting and it made me realise that this needs to be done, no running away is possible.

We gave our performance, not a single step missed, not a single messy jump, not a single awkward glance , just as smooth as butter...!!! and the moment we finished our dance , I collapsed in my mom's arms, heated up with temperature. She was scared as hell, the next thing I know is , my parents picked me up, put me the car and brought me home, we didn't see any further performances on that day. Nothing. And the moment I reached home, in next half an hour I was back to normal. Healthy as usual.

That is what tension can do your body. That is why its said, stress and tension are the most destructive ammunition in this world. And for me, this was just one of the episode of tensions that has engulfed my life till date. I don't think I can get away with it, but all I can say is that I have learnt to deal with it tactfully...!!!

As mentioned by Aamir Khan in the movie "3 idiots"... you need to fool your heart and mind into believing... "All is well..." :)

76: Passion & Jealousy: two sides of same coin

When you put in efforts to achieve something in life which no one ever have conquered before,  people call you passionate… and when you want to achieve something in life which someone has already achieved before…people term it ‘jealousy’… Unfair!!!

75: Do emotions exist?

Often, the paths that we have travelled , people we have met on our way, friendships which we made at that juncture of our lives, is something which we may not carry with us always, but then one surge of emotion and everything comes back to you like it happened yesterday. Why does this happen? When that past holds no ground today, why is it that you still vividly recollect everything related to it?

One does remember that first surge of blushing very clearly when the person you had crush on, spoke to you something ....you remember every single word of it even years later, although that person is no longer the one whom you fell in love with...

One does remember that first episode of public embarrassment on finding your pant zip open and words said by the person who pointed it to you... you may not remember the next similar episode though ....but you will forever have an air of awkwardness in meeting that person again ever in your life...

One does remember the answers given by one in his/her first interview with the company personnel and the way one walked through with the interview and got the offer letter... even years later one can very vividly describe how that interview had gone..!!!

I feel human mind and soul(heart) are interconnected. One does remember everything related to a particular person or an event because one never really forgets how that someone or an event made one feel. It can be any emotion, happiness, joy, sorrow, embarrassment, fear, but a concrete emotion is what it takes to make your mind store everything related to it in safe lockers of the brain that gets opened with the password of that emotion and circumstances...

Emotions are good... they are never bad ... they make one feel alive.... they keep one alive....!!! They are those invisible threads that keep connecting our past which we have lived off with the present that we are living in... and are those invisible threads that connect our current present with the upcoming future life...

Our well being depends a lot upon how we feel emotionally. Emotional surges can either enrich or destroy a person...!! Medicos usually say , body and its well being is controlled by mind.... but what about mind? Who controls it? Is there some metaphysical factor called soul that really exists, which feeds the mind? Or its our emotional make-up that plays a big role in our overall well being?

Not quite sure about the soul factor, but emotions do exist for sure... I am sure your mind lingered over that first crush of you life a bit while reading those lines in this article...!!

74: Man-made emotion... FEAR

Ever pondered as to why we feel certain feelings ? Ever wondered why is it always said that as we grow older we tend to get more worldly wise and our emotional quotient increases...?

Emotional quotient, really? I wonder if God ever thought that the human-ness that He is putting in a human being will be termed as emotional quotient some day..

The only emotion with which, any and every human is born with is LOVE...!! Think of it, a small baby, when he sees that care and love of a mother, it beams with happiness because that is the only emotion it understands. You may try to scare a baby by making different and weird faces , but it still smiles and laughs freely because all it sees is efforts by someone to make it comfortable and happy...!! You may ask a baby to jump from the couch in pursuit of you catching him, and it jumps without even thinking twice, about what if you fail to catch it? What if it will fall down? Wont that hurt him?

That brings us to a feeling called---FEAR.

Its this feeling which babies don't have at all, they don't fear anyone or anything, and are they happy living with that? You know the answer yourself...!! But as this baby grows , world around instils fear in it, fear of falling, fear of losing, fear of hurting, and slowly this same baby starts fearing almost everything and eventually the love is locked up in corner of the heart and fear engulfs everything..!!! Isn't fear a man made emotion? Something which God didn't really preach and practice...

A person who is learning to walk again in life after recovering from an accident and a baby learning to walk for the first time in its life are at same juncture in their life, only difference being, a baby puts every foot forward without any fear of falling, slipping or getting hit while the person is under constant duress to make sure he is stamping his foot correctly and with proper angle and weight... all because of Fear of falling, Fear of slipping and Fear of getting hit....!! I am not saying that the person should not be cautious but there is a fine line between being cautious and being fearful, its definitely good to be cautious but not good to fear just about everything in life..!!!!

Being myself through an episode of Fear, I know what it means when fear literally engulfs you from all the directions... the more you let it engulf the more difficult it becomes to shatter it and come out of it...!! But once you make up your mind, to face this fear, trust me, you realise that making that decision was more tougher than actually facing it...!!! Fear is just a man made invisible feeling...it doesn't exist, doesn't have a soul or substance ...!! 

Try it, just take that decision once to face it, and get it done with... trust me, that will be the most liberating feeling ever in your life...!!!

I can think of Mountain Dew ad caption here --"Darr se mat daro, Darr ke aage badho..."

73: Perspectives...

Perspectives... people... variety... diversity... ambitions... dreams... achievements... and realities ...

We youngsters hear them pretty often and more often than not these words really weigh us down with their expectations .... How world sees you and how you see yourself, is something that may not always be same. More often than not, its never same! 

Ask a village belle, what she sees herself doing at 27 years of age, and you might get a reply saying, happily married with two kids and enjoying life with my husband (not being judgemental of anyone residing or staying in villages). Ask same question to an urban lady, and you would most probably hear things like, I wanna do an MBA, go to States, work for Mckinsey, then maybe settle down 2-3 years later but prior to that own a house which I am searching right now. 

What exactly I am trying to tell here? Well, anyone would like to be in shoes of the urban lady, who would not want to go States and work for Mckinsey and own a house and have an independent life. There is definitely a certain amount of fulfilment in achieving all that said by an urban lady but what about people? About family? About Relations? Village belle seemed pretty unambitious but she seemed happy... while on the other hand urban lady sounded so confident and ambitious but satisfaction, happiness, sense of fulfilment was far from visible. Being an urban lady myself, I can vouch that she is not gonna stop at achieving all that, because by that time there will be something else lined up to be achieved and the grind continues...

So then who is right and who is wrong? I don't think anyone can answer that, people and their perspectives have always been varied and they should be varied , else why would have God created so many humans on earth if ultimately everyone had to have one single perspective...!! 

Problem lies with the fact that we really judge book by its covers.. I know its rather clichéd statement to make, but really, just the fact that village belle doesn't have an ambition doesn't make her unworthy because she is happy , satisfied and moreover content in her life... while thinking of an urban lady as some rude independent high flying person unbounded by anyone or anything is wrong too, because she has achieved something in her life on her own, she has faced the world, seen in its eyes... and still made a place for herself. She is undeterred by the expectations put on her soft shoulders by the world and in fact she is ready to take on more.. and she is happy too in her own way!!!

All I am trying to say is, everyone is playing their part... fighting out in their own small way... exploring and learning on the way... making mistakes and paying for it...so what? So what if they don't fit in your way of ideal life ? So what if you feel they are distracted, so what if you feel they should be doing something else? So what if some of their friends are on to bigger and better things than them?

As a society , we don't really met out justice by comparing their lives against those of our acquaintances, saying things like -"see where she is and what you are doing in your life?!?"

Mind it, everybody is moving.. somewhere or the other...!!

Some might reach the summit of the Mt. Everest sooner while someone else might reach a little later, but how about the one who reached last.. all the while enjoying the trail... enjoying the bushes... enjoying the scenery ... enjoying the first ray of sun hitting the snow and see it turn yellow due to sunlight ...knowing the fact that he may not travel this path again in his life so why not make the most of it? Is he a loser?

If someone asks me, where do I see myself in couple of years, I would reply, I see myself as being non judgemental... that's it really!!  Everything else, is my own journey, which even if I share with others, they may not completely get it... 

There is a dialogue from the movie "Yeh jawani hai deewani" - Main Udna chahta hoon.. Daudna chahta hoon... Girna bhi chahta hoon...bass rukna nahi chahta..!!

Isn't this how it should be?

72: On re-discovering Me..!!

Have heard it often that everyone goes through phases of self doubt and insecurities and in the process changes, transforms and re discovers self again.

Had a first hand experience of this in life when my mind had several questions with no apparent answers and more and more insecurities and in the midst of this I discovered or rather re discovered myself again, when I stumbled upon my personal description that I had wriiten for my this blog-

Life is not what happens... life is how you make it happen...!! Thats my favorite quote... not because it gives away anything about my real character but it just gives me a better hope to know that I am here because of how I made it happen... and I will be at some other place also only because how I would make it happen...!!! But I do make mistakes.. lot of them... at times I learn from them, at all the others I just forget the episode and get ready to commit some new ones...!! Life is interesting because of I have really spicier people in them... and I come here and blabber around when the spice gets too much to handle.. :P:P

Life is not what happens but how you make it happen!

Indeed that line gave me all my answers... all the insecurities that cropped from the fact that How will things turn up, will they work out or they destined to not succeed, all just disappeared in a moment.

Sometimes I really wonder, have I changed so much that somewhere I had forgotten my own attitude or Life has been too much demanding to have changed me so much.

Indeed this re-discovering myself is endearing and strengthening.