Loneliness

"I feel lonely at times..." - The first sentence that came to my mind this time. Here I am sitting in my office, the day after Valentine's day, which happened to be a Saturday as well...amidst the million possibilities I could have had on this wonderful weekend, the romance and the aroma from the V day still all around me. What am I doing here in this empty office? Why am I all so alone here. I feel lonely here. I feel sad...

 
               
                I began to feel helpless... I looked around for a familiar face, despite knowing for myself that the only misfortunate person in here today is me... It makes me sad. Like a million other times a million other things, people and places made me sad, the circumstances around me are getting a hold of me and are making me sad again.. Am loosing track of the things around me, of what surrounds me. Feelings of an impending anomaly surround me. When one feels clouded by loneliness, everything else seems to fade away, the good times you have had all along., even the good fun you had had on V day a mere few hours back...all that seems to be so distant, so frantically away from you now.
               
                Now....now its just me, and no one else, the irony makes you feel like you are the last person alive on Earth this very moment... Quite ironical, yesterday you had this big party, yesterday you had your friends and today there is nobody. Cause you ain't got nobody. Yesterday was a dream, rattled and shattered by a blatant reality.

                But then wait, amidst the dusty cloud of sadness misfortune and a whole lot of loneliness and helplessness, comes a few rays, of hope. But they are so fragile, ever so weak...like the dying light coming from a once mighty star, "Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky...", a star which is soon to die and turn into a black hole, an in-escapable dimension, a realm of eternity and darkness. It sinks up everything in it to its very core, and sucks up all the light that lies within. Its sucks up itself into nothingness. It turns itself into a portal, to a mirrored dimension, a fragile entry to a darker road.

 

                "But wait!!!" I said to my mind. Stop playing games with me. I am way past that point mate. You cloud me with a bundle of thorns, name them sadness and loneliness, I have my hope. Hope shields me from all things sharp. Hope sheds light when all else seem to fade out. Hope prevents me from becoming a black hole. It prevents me from sucking up my own light and happiness. When hope shed its light on me, on this lonesome weekend in my office, I began to see. I saw the many different people who are online in my mail. Most of them I haven't talked to in a long while, but so what? what stops me from talking to them now? It's like I have never seen them online here up until now. Hope made me smell the wonderful Coffey I had right beside me on my table. Hope introduced me to my many friends who are waiting for me once I finish my job here and come out, hope introduced me to a weekend that is not lonely anymore, and finally hope turned this black hole into a star again...

A Knight’s Fairy tale

CHAPTER 1

A long time ago, in a land far far away, a land filled with magic and spells, a land of light and darkness, a land full of demons, dragons and knights, there was a knight who was very strong and powerful. He conquered many heights and won many battles, slayed many a demons and fought brave battles with fierce dragons, at a very young age. The knight, though powerful, was not wise, unlike the many other knights of the town. He often got into un-necessary fights and was well known for his short temper   and lack of patience. Because of his arrogance and rude nature many of his friends had abandoned him.

But it wasn’t the knight’s fault he was so. He was not any ordinary knight, he was special, and he was here for a purpose we are yet to be known of. He was chosen by the mighty Gods. It is not easy being a chosen one among many, the God’s tested the knight’s courage and his heart many a times and the poor little brave knight had a tough time growing from a child to a man. He had given up his spells and powers of love, compassion and patience for the mighty spells of strength, the sword of might and the armor of agility. With such powers he gained the shield of anger and the cape of rage which made him into one of the fiercest warriors the land has seen. He was strong. But deep inside he was still that little child who was tormented by his past, who wanted to let go of his sword, and hold on to the arms of his true love. He was lonely and he wanted companionship.

The knight longed for love. He went around the land searching for his true love. A hand to have and to hold through the sun and the rain. But all in vain.

CHAPTER 2

In the nearby kingdom, which was ruled by a mighty but wise king, lived a princess. Her beauty and grace was beyond words. Legends say that she was like an angel that fell from the heavens. Stories of her beauty spread across the lands and so did the stories of her unusual tests she laid ahead for the true love of her life. Our princess had many magical abilities. She could see through the evil in people and the lies in them. People believed it was the God’s who showed it all to her. The princess hardly ever spoke to anyone; she kept to herself, unable to bear the lies and the darkness that lied within the people around her. The only time she came out of her room was to be with her father and mother. Being with them was the only relief she had in life. If only our little princess had found her true love…

The princess lived in a tower that reached up to the heavens. Legends say that the God’s visited her in the top rooms of the tower. With her magic, the princess created 3 gates around the tower, each guarded by a demon. The first gate was guarded by the demon of hate; one needed the sword of love to surpass it. The second gate was guarded by the demon of anger; one needed the shield of patience here and the last gate contained the demons of darkness and dishonesty; one needed the armor of light and the cape of truth to win over these twin demons. Only a brave warrior, who had the mind of a true warrior and the heart of a true king, would be able to surpass the three demons guarding the gates and reach the princess. Once a warrior entered the tower, he was put to the test of his mind, where the princess, from behind a shut door would describe to him, a dream she had and legend has it that only the true love of the princess, chosen by the Gods themselves would be able to please her with an answer, as to what the dream meant.

Many warriors from near and far away kingdoms tried to claim the heart of the princess, many failed at gate itself while some made it to gate two, only to be defeated by the demon of anger. Word goes around that a prince once made it to the tower, but as he was about to answer the princess’s question, she saw the lies covered up within him, he was assisted by the cursed witches of the forbidden kingdom, and within moments the skies raged fire upon the prince and he was never found again. Many warriors tried to win the princess’s love, but all failed. She too was getting lonely in that tower, but she knew she had to wait for the love of her dreams.

Word spread through the lands about princess’s nearly impossible challenges and the knights and the warriors began to think of her as a dream well beyond their reaches. The princess waited in that tower alone, years and years, waiting for her love to fight for her and to win her heart. To sweep her off her feet…

The Day I Met Her

I still remember the day I met her,

Like a lamb lost in a herd.

Alone was she in the crowd,

Her eyes searching for her lost smile.

Give her the smile she yearns for,

Said my mind to my heart.

Oh a thousand voices told me no,

But I couldn’t listen, I was in love!

I will love her like the winter night’s cold,

I will love her like the summer sun,

I will give her the life she so truly deserves,

I will love her like none has before.

Give her a smile, give her jive,

Make her see she was still alive.

Give her the smile she yearns for,

Said my mind to my heart.

I still remember the day I met her,

Like a sweet midnight dream from yesterday.

A stroll down the memories opened my eyes,

Was it I who gave her a smile,

Or was it she who gave me a life,

Was it the Gods who gave her to me.

Barren and abandoned was my heart,

A place ever so filled with thorns,

Redeemed and tidied with her love,

Like showers of rain over the barren land.

I still remember the day I met her,

Like a lamb lost in the herd,

But was it I who was lost,

Was it she who had found me.

Was it I who gave her a smile

Or was it she who gave me a life…

                                                                                    

                                                                                        -                                                                           -   Tom Thomas

Expectations hurt, Always (almost)!

I’ll put it straight to you, my reader…the less you expect, the happier you can and will be in life. Expectations always hurt, ultimately… I don’t know the wise guy who said this real truth about life but trust me, it’s the real deal. Trust me, if you can live and give without expecting, it doesn’t matter whether you expect big or small, you can be happy in life. Hell you can be happy in death. But if you are expecting anything, dude you are carrying with you a tool, a source for constant disappointment in life.

Where there are no expectations, lies the true joy of receiving. It is where the true joy of giving is accepted. A man’s expectation will grow as big as his greed. It will always be hungry; hungry for bigger and better things. If you breed expectations within you, until the day you consume yourself, until the day you lose yourself it will continue to grow in you.  Your expectations will blind you eventually. Or maybe it already has. But it is not impossible to break away from expectations.

How does expectations are born? Where do they originate from? Every expectation, whether big or small, originates from greed. When you are not happy with what you have, when you are unsatisfied with what belongs to you, you begin to wish for more. But wishing for stuff isn’t all that bad. I can wish I had a car, I can wish I had a mansion; I can wish I was famous. But once there is even the smallest probability that these wishes can become true, and when you realize that, greed begins to take over. It is okay to wish. But your wishes can turn into greedy expectations at the slightest sight of those wishes becoming true.

So then does that mean one should not expect anything in life? No. Without expectation, there is no hope. Without hope there is no future. We should expect blessings and not gifts, we should expect friends who will support us and not favors from friends; we should expect our victory and not the failure of others. We should expect good things and positive results, provided, we have put in the adequate effort towards it. Expectation backed up by hard work and constant efforts spreads confidence. Expectation in the absence of hard work and efforts breads greed and negativity. Positive expectation rooted on your hard work directs you towards success and backs up your ambition and motivates you every step of the way. Whereas negative expectation rooted on your greed drives you on the highway to failure and ultimately being a sore loser.

You know what they say about life – “You get what you give”. So always be the one to spread the goodness, spread a smile. What does it cost you? And eventually happiness will follow you

around like your favorite puppy. And then you realize, the more you give, the more you get. The more you please others, the more life pleases you. The more you pray for others, the more blessings you receive. If you ask me, I would lay out the fundamental principle for expecting and wishing as – wish for a car, expect a Porsche but work for a Rolls Royce. And if you are not willing to put in the effort you can wish for a car, expect anything you want and end up never being happy in life. So always remember to   expect less, produce more and share even more. The rest will come your way eventually. Have a nice day…

5 Reasons as to Why You are Awesome

You there! Yes am talking to you! Yes you, the one reading this, you are simply awesome! You

don’t believe me? I’ll tell you why you are awesome. You’re a fighter, you’re a believer, you’re a winner, you’re unique and you are simply just awesome the way you are. Like I said in my last article, if you had the ability to see and realize the simple little things in life around you, you would have by now realized the many special things you do and achieve every day. It is you who put layers of big serious complex un-necessary matters over that phase of simplicity and covered up the truth about how awesome, how great you really are.

·      You’re a fighter

Ever since the beginning you have been fighting your way through life. No matter how far fetched and seemingly impossible it may appear to you when you read this, believe me it is true. Every day a million struggles and problems, which you may notice or ignore. But knowingly or unknowingly you are fighting them. You are constantly fighting against your own ill tendencies. It doesn't matter whether you win or lose. All that matters in this moment and the moments to follow is that you had the heart and the guts to fight. Ever since your birth, you have fought your way through challenges, adversities, problems, hurdles and guess what? You are still here. You are standing. Wherever you are, whoever you are, you fought oppression, suppression, depression, disappointment, fear, being pushed around, being bullied around, you continue to fight and you continue to stand on your feet. How is that not awesome? It doesn't matter anymore whether you won your fight or not. You fought and you are still standing, and that makes you awesome. There is a quote in the film Rocky Balboa, which truly states this. It goes like “It aint about how hard you can hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit, and keep going forward. How much you can take and keep getting up. But you gotta be willing to take the hit. You can’t point fingers at him or her and say you aint what you wanna be because of him or her or anybody else. Cowards do that and you are not one. You’re better than that.” So my friend am telling you, you are not a coward, you are better than that, you’re a fighter, you’re awesome.

·      You’re a believer

You have fought and stood up for what you believe in. You’re a believer. You believed in your principles, in honor, in yourself, in God, in the people that supported and cared for you, and when your beliefs were challenged, you stood up for your beliefs. You never let go off you’re your beliefs, no matter who made fun of you or who questioned you. When the things you believed in were questioned, when the authenticity of your beliefs were questioned, you stood up and challenged the world. You stood up for what you believe; you fought for your beliefs. Is there a thing nobler than that? Is there a person more respectable than that? You my friend are amazing. You my friend are a believer, and you my friend, are awesome.

·      You’re a winner

You have held on to whatever it is that you believe in. You have fought for the principles you stood up for. You challenged the world around you, and you are still here. Many have fallen on the way. But you my friend are still here. It doesn’t matter whether or not you achieved greatness, whether or not the world admires you, whether or not people admire you. You showed the world around you that when you are pushed around, when your faith is questioned, you will stand up for yourself. You may not be right always; you may not be smiling at the end of the day. But you showed heart and courage. Remember, your life is not a battle field. Winning and losing is not all that matters. At the end of the day, if you showed the heart to stand up for what you felt was right, and not regret it, and commit yourself fully to that cause, then you are a winner. Then you are awesome. You don’t need to win to be a winner. Sometimes losing makes you a better winner. Sometimes losing makes you from awesome to awesome-er!!!

·      You’re unique

You’re unique! You’re special. At least in one simple thing, you will have your own unique way. So what if it is a small little thing? It’s the little things that are to be enjoyed first. Only then will the big things come our way. Being unique, being different is not something to be ashamed of, it is something to be proud of. Being special in the little things is what makes you ready to be special in the big things of life when time comes. It is always the little special people who will eventually change the world and make it a better place. So my dear friend, hold on to your specialty. Hold on to your uniqueness. It is what defines you. I don’t care what you do, but isn’t it amazing that you of all the people in this world is able to do that? Isn’t that a calling? A calling to be better. A calling to be awesome!

·      You’re awesome

You my friend reading this, you are awesome! You have always been wonderful and awesome. Believe it; you’re a wonderful specimen of creation. And time has come for you to spread your wings, no matter how small or how tired they are. You fought through your life’s problems: big and small, you held on to your beliefs, you survived everything life threw at you, you became a winner, a proud winner, you are special in your own ways, you are unique and you are no less awesome of a person than anyone else ever walked on this planet. Things may seem uncertain, life may seem challenging, the moment of disappointment and disbelief may seem to be swallowing up your strengths, but believe me, you have the strength to go further, you came this far, you are only getting stronger, take a break, take a moment, remember that you are special, that you are wonderful, that you are awesome, remember what you fought through and what you achieved, and face life today, one small special step at a time. Have a nice day….

Pain

Before this moment of epiphany too flows away from me I want to scribble down the random thoughts on my heart.. An unknown pain bothering you right now? Or has it ever occurred to you? Ever felt you are in pain but don’t know the reason? Why does it happen to us? We are reasonable beings…we thrive on reason and rationality. But at times like this, when there is no reason for thought ahead of us, what do we do? How do we get over this unknown pain?

I feel sad, I feel my heart missing the things I hold close, things, people, places, memories… I don’t know what, but something missing in there. But is that the reason for my pain? Or is my mind playing games with me, suffocating me with a barbed wire that doesn’t ever exist. We are vulnerable to pain, to suffering. We are afraid of pain, of being sad. But the truth is without pain how will we know what joy or happiness is like? For me, I recognize happiness as that which gets me away from thoughts and memories or feelings that give me pain and sadness. Happiness is a memory for me, it’s a sound, a voice, a song that leaves a smile on me, a color that brings back good memories, a place that reminds me how simple things are despite the million odd complexities I have placed upon my life.

                              In that regard happiness is not material, it is not worldly. Of course happiness is made in this world, but it doesn’t originate from the worldly possessions, we cannot buy more happiness. Because all the happiness we need, all that we want is right there in our simple fragile minds. No matter how much we complicate the matters of our daily life, it is still a simple matter of yes or no in our minds. We are the ones who eliminate this simplicity by adding layer after layer of complexities. And then when it is done, trying to regain that simplicity life had earlier gifted us is like peeling your way through an onion, you end up in tears…

                              Somewhere down the road we took, we lost the simple nature of our lives. It is always like that in everything. When we start off it is a simple matter of two choices and it is later down that road things get rough. An easy example is, when you are at the start of a relationship, at first it is just a matter of ‘does he/she likes me?’ to you and later it becomes ‘does he/she love what am being / doing at this moment? Is he/she happy with me?’…these are the simple good parts. It is later on that the simple honest doubts give way to complexes and ego.  If he/she doesn’t like what you are at a certain moment, the simple thing to do is to change yourself and be what they love and expect from us. After all, it is you who love him / her, and you want them to be happy always no? Wasn’t that the simple thought that originated the moment you fell in love with him / her? But is that the choice we make? We obviously go for the less simple choice, try to make them like us. Why? Does it make them happy? Does it make you happy? Does it truly make you happy? Will it keep you and them happy for the rest of your life? Then why? Why did we leave the simple choice we had in our life and tried to complicate it intentionally? We continue to do this, hurting ourselves and the loved ones in our little lives.

                              Remember, our lives are fragile and last a very little while only. Why complicate it with crap issues that we can avoid every time? We don’t have a lot of time out here. Make the most out of it and keep it simple and real. Get rid of those layers. What have we got to loose for it? Let go off that unhealthy sense of pride and complexes. Forgive, forget and smile. Enjoy the little things with and open heart and the

big things you seek will come your way eventually. And the next time you feel sad, you feel that pain, and don’t know a reason for it, remember…life is simple enough and there is nothing you can’t handle on your own and when things seem out of reach, there will always be friends and people in your life who will hold you through the hard times. And, if none of this seem to work on you, just go and write an article for your blog :). It may be the first time you are writing or the first article for your blog – like mine now…but it really helps. Let loose and scribble down everything that comes in your heart here. Your heart is pounding hard with thoughts. Your mind has a lot to tell you and share with you. Enjoy the rest of your day and your life :)