JACK & SPADES

A post.

It always amazes me how you keep "rediscovering" yourself throughout your life. It never stops. Every few years you turn into someone new or add layers to your personality. Occasionally some incident happens which makes you reflect and realize that you are such a different person now. What’s disheartening though is that you hear people throwing this word around so often and so casually that I fear the gravity of it is getting lost somewhere with time.

I like a certain depth in character. I feel people are not born with it, you are too pure as a child. This leaves the task to experiences. But experiences alone cannot guarantee that. You choose how experiences affect you. Character is abstract. It develops with you if you let it. Sometimes I fear people around me are living their entire life without knowing themselves, simply following a time-tested version of life that they have presumed to be fulfilling without really trying to figure out if it makes sense for them. I know this is just me outwardly judging people. In fact, today when I read some of the stuff I had written 10 years back, I totally judge myself. In hindsight, this completely counterfeits me feeling sad for others because back then I too did genuinely believe I knew who I was.

I remember few years back I was someone who could completely mold himself into someone else depending on who I am with. Think of my personality in an hour glass. When I used to meet someone new, different, I would simply overturn the hourglass, let myself trickle down to the bottom and empty up a space at the top to let someone new in. I can't do that anymore. Over these past few years that hour glass has been filled to the brim on both sides so there is no space left for anything else to seep in. Today I can't pretend to be someone I am not. I still meet new people and am perfectly normal and get know them but that's it. Beyond that I cannot form a bond with someone unless the sand in my hourglass matches in quality, coarseness, to at least some extent with the one in theirs. Maybe it correlates to the phase you are in, in your life. You start seeing everyone through a filter and whoever doesn't fit the requirements or your notions of maturity, feels unlearned, naïve; which in worst cases can leave you feeling very lonely.

Fin.

Fantasies

I was out on the terrace this evening, with the wind blowing in my face, listening to Bon Jovi on loop, strolling around watching the horde of cars whistling down the freeway overlooking my apartment. It seemed perfect and made me realize that I was chasing a fantasy all this while, a fantasy of a perfect life.

As a teenager, I had this fantasy all planned. I knew there might be a few hiccups but they’ll sort themselves out. Now I'm not going to share it. It's a bit hazy because back then I only had an overview. I left out the minute details figuring they weren't really important but now that I am actually really close to living this fantasy, I realize how important those details were.

I want to change a lot of things, not a drastic change though. A more gradual change, slowly putting things back in order. As a child you carry with yourself many different fantasies. Each day you see something new or hear something for the first time, your fantasies evolve. Post a certain age, when you have to finally decide which one of these fantasies you really want to chase, you try your best to somehow pick up the best pieces out of each of them, morph them into something realistic and go for it. A bunch of them are left right there at this precise moment. Lost and forgotten. Some of them stay with you for a while but during this journey at the end of which you believe is your perfect life, the morphed pieces start coming apart and you keep losing them on the way, one by one, some, without even realizing. Eventually you reach somewhere close to your destination, only to realize you don’t even know if what's left of your fantasy is actually what should have stuck with you all this time? Maybe you dropped something which might have brought you more happiness and fulfillment. You see your destination but you don’t want to reach there because once you do, the world will not let you turn back.

Even after you ignore the world, turning back isn’t easy itself. It demands a lot of courage. What if you’re too late into starting this race all over again. Maybe someone else picked up that fantasy of yours and made a life out of it that you wished you had, maybe you’ll never find this fantasy or even when you do, what if it’s not how you imagined it would be? Then comes the pain. The pain of knowing that the one life you had so meticulously thought out as a child has landed you in a situation where you don’t know where to go. Do I stay at this destination forever and settle for it, maybe it’s actually not too bad? Do I turn back, take on the world and start off for whatever’s next? Do you actually get to live out multiple fantasies?

No one can answer these questions and we all know there’s only one way to find out. So why not! One life, remember? I’m not saying just get up one day and quit everything. Think about what next, plan and start taking smaller retreating steps from where you currently are. Look towards your left and right, notice how everyone else is trying to push themselves forward but look at their eyes, they are all blindfolded. Stop someone and ask them, where to next? They’ll just point you to the person ahead of them. Should we really live following someone blindfolded?

Noticed how I used the word fantasy and not dreams the entire length of this post? Its because fantasies are really worth turning back for. You have no control over your dreams. Fantasies are something you create for yourself. Maybe they are unrealistic but heck, everything is unrealistic until someone eventually does it. Think about where you are and what you want to do, maybe there something else, better, that you and your life deserves.

Time flies? Not really, unless you let it!

Take every passing second and make something out of it. Don’t spend it on people. NO ONE DESERVES YOUR TIME MORE THAN YOU.

While you’re young, just make use of your time. Learn. Play. Write a song. Look at the sky and wonder at its enormity. Listen to good music. Travel, preferably alone. Ignore your phone. Ignore your messages. You can take calls all your life. You can post that facebook status later. Indulge in yourself. Work like there is nothing else to do. Show ‘em what you’re made of. Be motivated. Induce confidence in yourself every day. You think you lost an argument, learn everything there is to know and beat them the next time you argue. Don’t trust people, trust yourself. Listen and learn to ignore. They could be right, but prove to yourself that you’re wrong before assuming they are right. Be awesome, be so awesome that they have to invent a new word for awesome, for you. Just don’t settle. Never settle. You think the day went bad, well, it’s still 10 pm, you have whole two hours to turn it around. People will give you false hope, they’ll tell you stuff you want to hear. No one wants other’s success over their own. Everyone is manipulative, maybe to different degrees but everyone is, they’re all just looking out for themselves. Look out for yourself. Take that bike and ride all around the town, stop and look at your surroundings. Is anyone just standing there looking at you? No. No one will. No one’s wants to know If you reached your destiny. All they care is if they reached theirs. Don’t know about stocks and share market? Open the damn internet and learn about it. You like singing? Get out of your shower and hear yourself on a microphone. Don’t like what you hear, practice! You can sleep tomorrow. Night will come again tomorrow, and the day after. Make yourself better. For yourself. When you sing all night and finally get that note right, you’ll not need sleep anymore. You’ll dispense sleep. You’ll curse yourself for being lousy and needing sleep. You don’t need it. You can do without it. Everything you hear from people is a consequence of their own circumstances. Your life is different than theirs. There’s a reason God made you unique, prove to him you deserved it.

Delphic

She crossed her legs and stared at me. A sly smile simmering at the edge of her lips.
A distant roar of a multitude of pigeons for a background to the show, it was moderately miscued. I could not look back, could not move either, the potency of it all was intoxicating my muscles. She knew with clarity both limpid and fuzzy like a nightmare at dawn, what she was and where she darted with the boldness of a hawk on prey-watch. For a Sunday afternoon and the remiss the world was in, she instead chose an impassioned take of her own, and strong as it was, delivered what it set out for. The message in an email acceptance “Your request has been granted”. Not the way with words like some people do, but a forte such unfathomable only sedateness follows. She looked back before she left and did not flinch before saying what she should have the moment she entered “You don’t deserve this” and walked out leaving the door open.

Healer

This is my favorite month of the year for more reasons than one, but if you think about it, it’s not the perfect month. It’s not as cold and beautiful as a foggy December morning, it’s not as pleasant and lively as an April evening breeze. It’s humid, it’s tacky, it has potholes and ditches with rainwater. It is a prequel to something beautiful that is about to come but not there yet. I carry this taste with me in everything I like, including people.

I am not a fan of perfection. I think it is highly overrated. I like broken things and I like fixing them. Maybe it’s a symptom I need to get checked out but for now let’s assume I’m normal. I find people who know what it means to be crumbled, appealing. They have been shattered before and they have learned how to pick up those fragmented pieces, stick it all together and move on. The one quality which will be synonymous among them is that you will never realize just how ruptured they have been until they let you. You could spend years knowing a person and still know nothing about them. That doesn't make them two faced, not at all, it’s just their way of caring about you, because they know their baggage is too heavy for someone else to share. So they’ll carry it themselves for as long as they have to without even an inclination of bowing down because of the weight. These are the people who have so much personality hidden inside them that no one unearths. I aspire to be someone who could unwrap it, even if it’s just the top most layer. It’s a healing feeling that I can’t describe. I know I sound twisted, maybe it’s my own blanket I unfolded tonight, maybe it doesn't need to be a person to do that, a blank sheet of paper holds more power than most things in life and maybe a blank sheet of paper is my healer indeed.

love

There are million definitions of love across the internet, mostly incorrect though because there will never be one on which the entire world would unanimously stamp its approval. I have had my share of dealings with this emotion over the past two decades and if it has taught me anything then the only definition of love that I can vouch for is : "Simple", YES, as simple as that.

If it isn't simple it isn't love. It's an emotion and that's probably the last thing that people think about these days before calling anything 'love'. Love isn't a chase, it isn't a game you need to strategize for, neither is it a trophy when you find it. It doesn't 'complicate' your life, it's the last thing love is capable of doing. It doesn't force you to do things you don't want to. It doesn't demand attention, it deserves it. It doesn't change anything in you that you don't want to. You can pretend and call anything to be love and dive into it any moment of your life, that's easy but don't. It took a billion years of evolution for you to become someone capable of experiencing this feeling in the way we can, don't ruin it by faking it just because everyone else seems to be doing the same. It might be a long, really long wait, but it'll anyday be better than getting into something you'll regret wasting your time over. Lastly, if it's love, you'll find a way to make it last forever, always.

Chemistry

Regrets are the worst among everything that the world has in store for us. I was wondering today if I could go back in time would it really change the way I have lived? Possibly not. We keep imagining how different our lives could have been if only we took that trip or said something when we didn't or just been a little more aware of the situation back then but is it really possible? Of course it looks so now but if I put you right back where you were without the additional intellect that you have acquired since, you are most likely to act the same way that you did. So what purpose do regrets serve, nothing at all but we still can't seem to let go of them. Human mind is like those salt detection tests you did in the chemistry lab in XII where when you expect the solution to turn green it will obviously turn red instead and possibly catch fire as well.

Bet I fooled you in with the title. Little joys.

Gump

I want to run. Just run and not look back.

Its really strange how on some days even though nothing really goes wrong, it feels like one of the worst days ever. I've probably always managed to convince myself not to write when I'm down but I couldn't help today.

As a child when parents used to tell me that my life is really simple and easy, I used to shrug it off and never believed them. For me, the geography Monday test was the worst thing that could happen to anyone in their life. People also explained how we should listen to elders because they have experienced life and all I used to think was, "No, I am right. Why would they know more than me?". Experience is important because it helps you look beyond just tomorrow and life will throw you into situations where the only way to swim across is to look beyond what's right next to you.

Its equally amazing how you can always trust life to turn at the most unexpected moments and leave you wondering how fucking crazy is this guy who is making this universe work. I understand its impossible to foresee what life has in store for us, but a little heads up about it might help.

Sincerely.

Rolling in up high.

For the past two months life has been a roller coaster moving up. I can’t and frankly shouldn’t describe everything that has happened but the ride has built up so much anticipation that I actually fear moving forward, not just because there is only so much longer a roller coaster can keep going up but because now anything less than extraordinary would appear dull. Strange how I can manage to find a hint of cynicism in the brightest of times. Not really proud of the fact.