Of Purpose & Inspiration

I keep running in my head. Running away from the present. Sometimes to the past, sometimes to a future I don’t know the reality of. I’ve thought of this before as well. And it always seems to turn out the same invariably. I run mostly for purpose and in search of inspiration. I find none at the moment. Well not purpose which would be meaningful anyway. I mean everyone likes to keep a wallet which would run their lives for them. Who doesn’t?

Purpose for which we feel the reality of our existance. Purpose, without which it would all seem like a bit of a waste. Everything would then wouldn’t it. We need purpose in our lives as much as we need the air we breathe, the water we drink.  Some find it. Some toil for it. Some …..well … they stand in abyss.

We struggle to come to terms with something which is not becoming of us much less with something which is more or less nothing. A slab of drudgery through the journey that is life. Without that particular ‘purpose’ for which we all exist, without knowing it or in someway being connected or associated with it, the journey…. becomes painfully meaningless.

However, purpose alone is not enough. As I said earlier, purpose at times can be meaningless as well. At the core of it all… lies inspiration. Inspiration doesn’t necessarily have to do with lights going on in a flash in your head or a moment of genius in which you end up inventing something. Neither is it necessarily a vision or that which makes artists create marvels of absolute beauty and awe.

Over here what I mean by inspiration is what makes a person tick. Again mind you not necessarily as a means to achieve greatness or glory. But inspiration to tick. To embrace life with color and positive demeanor. To manifest excitement and to create passion. It could be an epic movie for some ( a battle scene from a great war of fantasy or history). It could be a song which hits you much beyond your ears and brain, way deep into your mind and soul. It could be achieving a simple goal as well. It may very well also be the sport you play daily. (Watching is obvious I would think! Who wouldn’t be pumped and inspired after watching a great performance by their team of support!)

Right now … at this particular moment in time, I find none anywhere near me. This is kind of sad. For I love music, I love reading, I love watching epic movies. And I definitely love sports – watching Afridi standing triumphant after we became the T20 Champions earlier this year was truly inspirational… not just for me but the entire homeland especially at that point in time.

Having said that I am not entirely banished into abyss … and not completely with the lack of something to make me tick. But its not the same. Its not the same as when … well … a year back even.

I need a move on. A nudge….a moment of madness…… or as I’ve said many times in the recent past…. I need some time off from what is my life. I need a reintroduction to my music. I need a beach, with sand, sun and the waves. That would surely be perfect. But that’s not happening for now….so I am guessing I’ll have to make to do with a cool tall glass of lemonade and whatever my iPOD has to offer me!

A Solitary Isle of Hope

After mostly drifting through the past couple of months in and out of the daily routine that has become me, I found myself a solitary isle of hope. However the way to it has suddenly decided to allude itself from me. Which is annoying.

But then again… as I try more and more for change, and open my mind to try and figure out what it is that I ultimately want, a lot of things start to tumble out that I’ve not been thinking about … some skeletons… some things that I just am not ready for I guess. At this point in time I don’t understand. The solitary isle seems to be the only thing that I can understand… and hold onto right now. All the other stuff …I don’t know. It just seems … distant from my own being. I even begin to feel now .. that this constant daze of un-settlement is perhaps something wrong with me rather then all else.

For most of you reading this who DON’T know me … this probably isn’t making a lot of sense. For those who do, and are getting what I am talking about ..well hush.

I think what I am attaching most to the solitary isle of hope is a clean slate of sorts. Starting afresh. When I get there… it will be a new day, a new beggining. To choose my path more carefully this time. To choose my tools more wisely. To make a journey which is more in line with … me.

I hope something gives thou. Either I find solace in now, the present … or I find that isle. Or something new reveals itself.

If none of the above happens or pans out as thought, then I am darn sure that the un-settlement is in my head. And that will need to be checked out.

Bag Full of My Ghosts

Usually people like to refer to things from their past as their ‘Ghosts’. These are usually memories which have continued to haunt them even after some time has gone by. These are memories which refuse to leave and make you re-live the moment in your head all the time. Even after you subdue them to your subconscious, they are still there invisibly disturbing the thought process.

I like every normal human being have had bad and good experiences and cherish and regret bad and good memories. I like to think that I want to and have been living a life of ‘no regrets’ since last year after taking up that motto but I don’t think that is the case. There are certain things that I cannot un-attach myself from. Although it should be noted that when I did decide on making ‘no regrets’ a viable policy for life… based on a certain incident/situation that was there or rather prevailed at that time… it worked wonders for that particular incident/situation. I’ve no regrets for that. But there are other things which have happened since then… are continuing to happen, which I can’t let go of. They continue to bother me. For me my ghosts are not just incidents or events from the past. They are not just old memories. They are also very much from the present living time.

It has now gotten to a point where I am becoming flustered and frustrated with the entire scheme of things. Being reasonable with myself won’t be a regular feature in forthcoming months I feel. I am just hoping that somehow this coming season just passes by and life can move on.

But it is after all just a mere hope. It floats. But I don’t know till when. My external and internal worlds start to collide and conspire both at the same time. Imagine what that must be like? Place your head in between a cactus and a needle. It pinches, it pokes, it induces pain like nothing else but its own very special kind.

Rush

It often happens in our lives that we rush into things completely blinded by false images of a magnificent future without even looking deeply into what we are doing. And it often turns out to be something that we definitely should have had a better look at. We make the decision because we are desperate to escape this one thing so much, that we completely overlook checking whether the next thing is something which will make us want to escape as much as well….

I think I’ve often treaded that path, not with one particular aspect of my life but … well a collective few. And as I said…. it was often without the necessary due diligence. I’ve paid the price as many times. Maybe not in obvious terms …. but I know I have. In one way or the other.

The biggest problem in all of this is that we think about our future and we paint ourselves a perfect little world. And we get absorbed so much in that idea of our future that we never really get out of it. Whether its relationships, your work / career or life in general…we just get stuck to that idea of ours… our little painting of our perfect little worlds… cozily nested up in our minds. And all the while ensuring that reality is never really given an honest chance from us. We get easily frustrated, tired, mentally exhausted… all because …well … various reasons for various things in question. As a result of which we make a decision at the first exit point that we see…. and purely just because its an exit point with Glowing lights and flashy signs… with a couple of I don’t know … tempting posters or something. What we don’t really see is where this exit is leading us. Because of we did ….if we properly looked at it …we would know .. its someplace that you’d rather not be. Not because its bad…. but because …it doesn’t suit you even more.

I am at one of these points right now as well. And I feel more frustrated, pressured…. and …overall … don’t even know how to put it.

Point of this entire stupid rant: DO NOT EVER RUSH INTO THINGS!….. like seriously. This is true experience talking. Don’t rush into relationships. Don’t rush into feelings. Don’t rush into vacation plans. Don’t rush into hasty decisions purely because well you have to make it immediately. Your gut feeling is a good thing to go by .. but not all the time.

Wish for disaster…

It seems like I’ve hit a dead end in life. I can’t seem to find a way forward and the way back is already tormented me to pieces. I feel like this floating body in water where I am not really in control of where I am going. The flow is just taking me itself. The dead end is … my control over my own things.

5 years on from where I started and certainly don’t feel like I am at the junction I imagined myself to be. Maybe that’s because its just the starting phase of the new journey. Or maybe because these last 5 years have been maligned by single focused thoughts and day dream distractions. The last 5 years have not been spent in the right kind of soul searching. Rather the more whimsical kind.

Is this really something that I wanted to do or was I taken in by the charms of ‘entitlements’ and the grape vine factor? I really have to ask myself that question. But now I am too afraid. What if it’s too late? I am already on the next journey…. I am already someplace I can’t get out of soon. I am already trapped and confined to borders I wanted to be far away from. I’ve already let my control slip away slowly and slowly.

Its too soon to be in a sort of a ‘rut’ feeling. And I know I have that at times and I know that is not good. I feel helpless. 

So much so every now and then I find myself actually imagining myself in some sort of a mishap. An accident. A disaster. A tragedy. I almost find myself wishing for it. For the lack of any other plausible escape my mind wanders to creating the necessity for escape at a very high price. Not only in physical terms. But also one that I might just end up paying with my morality, my self worth.

But it will mean escape. Escape from where I am right now. It might just end up in a permanent escape, such a dangerous wish. I know I will never act on it. I should be saying ‘I HOPE’ thou.

Sometimes what you wish for doesn’t come true and then you immediately start wishing for something else. This wish at times can be a rebound wish. Works in the same manner and principle as that of a ‘rebound relationship’. And it really doesn’t out to be that pretty. And since you been through some stuff or are in it with someone you feel obligated to, you end up being trapped. And that’s when you end up wishing for disaster. Pathetic.

Maybe if I can just let some time ride by. Maybe if I could just hang in for a little bit. Maybe then a rational or rather a plausible escape will come my way. Just maybe. 

The Face Behind an Everlasting Smile….

Its always there. Picture perfect. For every occasion, for every snap, for every moment, for every event. For every other person I meet, its always there. My everlasting front up smile. Hiding my face from the onlookers of reality. Sheltering it from the disbelief that will be instilled if there ever was to be an encounter of reality with it.

It is kind of a hard act to put on, but for some reason the burden just doesn’t seem quite there. It seems detached. Like something happening in an entirely different world one which I am not entirely or consciously aware of. 

It helps me come off as this happy jolly person. My excess capacities even take me to be ‘santa’ of sorts. It helps me avoid confronting the face it hides all too well. “An everlasting smile’. I like hearing that sentence. If nothing else it puts a wry smile on the real face. The one behind the shadows. The one which is in constant touch with the reality of my emotions. Ironic thou, putting on a show to hide one reality from another.

So what’s the face really like behind that 32 carat mug? That’s the thing, I can’t explain it… cause I can’t quite understand it myself. And its not like the real face never smiles.. it does. On occasion. When I go out on a limb and come back hurt and out of it. That’s when it smiles, the real face. The one hidden all too well by the frontal smile.

The face is more or less a result of all the times I make my mind not to listen to my heart over my head and still end up going with the heart. The heart is cruel or can be cruel. And not through any fault of its own. According to the book ‘The Alchemist’, one must learn to communicate and actually talk to ones heart. Actually hear it talk back. Let it all out. and properly communicate. According to the Alchemist it is very important for man to reach that particular goal. To reach that point in your life where you are easily communicating with your heart. And if you do, you won’t regret to any great degree listening to your heart over your mind.

“A mind is a terrible thing to waste” . And that’s exactly what will happen if I keep trashing its advice.

This face…. this scarred emotionally divided face. This over thinking , over analyzing, over detailing face. The truth behind an everlasting smile. 

Note of a tormented person…

I keep watching to the dark night. Watching as the full moon fights a losing battle against clouds. Watching as the wind strikes against me hard. Watching as the rain lashes through the atmosphere making its presence known to all living things.

I keep watching and waiting. Waiting to see if the heroes that our destined to save all of us will turn up tonight. Heroes we’ve always heard will be there to save our souls. I’ve been waiting for so long for mine. For my savior. All I can see right now through my cracked vision is the flight of my soul. All I can do is watch as it flies away.

But I am still standing and waiting, tormented from inside at the loss of feeling anything. Twisted but real. I know all of this requires a much needed dose of sanity. Sanity which won’t come without those saviors, those heroes. Those who I heard about from the ancient times.

They still haven’t come. I am here, in this moment, with an escaped soul. With the hand of a stormy night enticing me more and more over the edge. All I can hear is it’s thunder, some distant screams, the voices of torment from inside my head and the feeble voice of hope fading away somewhere in the distance.

It will vanish for good sometime soon, my hope. All that will be left will be the torment then. I won’t even have the capacity to feel the storm. Maybe I won’t even have the capacity to hear a tear drop fall let alone shed one.

I wish something would just take me away, I’d even settle for the grim reaper at this point.

Scared….

Even though I’ve been through all of this before and I’ve done this before there is still this feeling of absolute uncertainty. I don’t know exactly what to pinpoint but something makes me scared right now. Scared of going out there and taking a chance on myself. I’ve talked about this before regarding myself. But it does. I just feel something, some point in me …. is just holding me back from taking a chance on myself. A chance on anything really. Not playing the risks which are obviously bound to be there because they come with the territory oh we all so dearly would love to tread lightly. But unfortunately we can’t. We can’t tread lightly. We have to go jumping and hoping and hand in hand with those risks. They are unavoidable. But … even thou I am professing this, I am scared. Scared to say anything even though I know its not like I am going to be uttering lines from the book of Sin or something.

But I just can’t get myself to say anything. And at the same time, I want to get it done and over with. Like this being a movie and just pressing the fast forward button. But its real life. And I can’t do that. However ironically as my friend put it yesterday, being as emotional as I am, at the same time I can disconnect rather quickly as well. I don’t have a problem with moving on.

But at this point in time, where we are a good 2 phases prior to the part where one would Disconnect, I am hating it. I can’t handle this part very well at all. I just can’t.

Everyone I’ve talked to about this kind of stuff, keeps telling me that fine everyone is scared at this point in time. That it won’t be so bad. The maximum that would happen is that I would just have to move on and disconnect. That it won’t be such a big deal. That I just need to go for it. I just need to take a chance.

So what the hell am I scared of exactly? … I don’t know.

I just don’t know. I am at …. split ends over this.

Vindictively Alone….

Man is born alone. Man dies alone. It’s not like he takes another soul with him on his death journey. In fact everyone you come to know in your life will be lost forever on you once you die. You will never recognize anyone again after this life. Not even people you love with your whole.

As if that’s not bad enough….. people end up being alone in this life as well. Circumstances lead to such that they drift through life, without really holding on to anything or without being held on by someone else.

People don’t always turn out to be what they initially seemed. Feelings can change in an instance. Some painful scars can linger on for seasons beyond seasons. Everything that you have envisioned inside your head could turn out to be nothing more than a fable, a fantasy ….. a fairy tale story. All in the process leaving you alone with your thoughts…. with yourself.

You don’t feel like reacting to stuff that you’ve only just started to realize… like stuff that you’ve been left out of. Or how the presence of you is like a tiny blot on a windscreen in other’s life. Like … you’ve lost complete confidence in feelings that you have. In feelings that others might have for you. On that whole idea altogether. Its like … what’s the point. ‘My destiny is alone’ …..which might not be true unless you want to be melodramatic about it. But still… that’s how it tends to be at times. That’s how rigid your self loathing and ample feeling of patheticness can get.

It is human instinct to think of oneself as alone on certain levels. Don’t our minds often wander towards outlets of emotions in a remote destination without any contact with the real world ? Don’t we at times imagine ourselves sitting ‘alone’ on some roof or some height staring into the dark night and the bright stars ….. thinking whatever thoughts there might be….. but sitting and thinking alone… ? We all do. You’d be lying …. to yourself if you thought or said you don’t or haven’t ever.

The Spartans …. outcast their young warriors of age 10 or so … into the wild .. to survive on their own. To grow on their own. To become men on their own. All alone.

So to prove human nature …that’s an example of it from history. It’s in us to be alone at some point in time.

But it hurts when we are alone by external forces and not by choice. When we are alone by choice ….we are looking for solitude. And when we are alone by external forces………….we are isolated, abandoned…… forgotten even. It really hurts then. When it’s sort of in between ….. you have mixed feelings and doubt over everything else even if it hasn’t quite reached that stage yet where this entire debate would be applicable to it.

When we are not alone by choice ..and rather circumstances beyond our control……we turn violent on ourselves. Maybe not physically… but emotionally. Our souls remain tormented. Uncared. Unloved. All sorts of negative thoughts get a free pass into our mind. And slowly and slowly we orchestrate our own mental demise…..we become instrumental in unscrewing our own strength and iron will. We become our own worst enemies.

Of Heart & Mind….

  There are many points in time in your life when you are heading down a path that you’ve been on before. Maybe once, maybe twice or maybe a whole bunch of times. You’ve experienced that path before and know it’s pros and cons, ups and downs. Yet… something tends to draw it to you again and again. Even if it didn’t work out before, you are still always drawn to the notion of taking that path. And more often then not, you do end up taking it. If for nothing else, perhaps because its familiar to you and that keeps you clinging to it in hopes that this time it just might work out because you’ve learned how to tread the road in the past. You’ve learned of the ditches and the obstacles that are there.

What people don’t account for in such a case is that the more we learn how to tread , we only go further on that path and encounter further obstacles that we didn’t before since we were knocked out on the previous ones which we just managed to cross.

And at times, even though that obstacle is perfectly passable, we just tend to let it go because … well lets face it , the amount of times that option pursued and the amounts of time its not worked out , everyone and your own brain judges you and passes on their 2 cents. Now as we get older, we lose the patience to listen to everybody’s 2 cents. “Hey I am mid 30s you know… i know what I am doing”.

But that’s the thing. God gives us chances to rectify our mistakes. And maybe that’s such things keep coming back on our radar. Those things we’ve tried before but at some point in time during it we failed. They keep coming up on our minds, our thought processes because … we haven’t tried at it properly and fully. And if we don’t , maybe we are screwing up a perfectly good chance for ourselves.

So why not ? Why not go in there with your all that you’ve learned and really give it a shot?

We also tend to lose faith and confidence in ourselves, and in our ability to achieve what lies at the end of the road. Rejection, failure can only be taken constructively and optimistically for so long. We are after all humans and humans are after all emotional creatures. And this way we continue fighting our inner battles. Inside our head. The debates keep going on and on. They never stop. They last forever it seems.

In my case …. my heart goes one way and the brain goes the other, leaving the mind and soul in between to draw something from the difference. In the past I’ve always listened to my heart. Inevitably that decision has let me down. For me this is the path that keeps coming up on my radar again and again. So .. what to do now ? Do I take it as a sign that listening to my heart is the right thing to do and continue to follow that principle, or shun it aside and actually listen to the brain for once? Because with me you can be absolutely sure that the mind and the soul are just as indecisive as the next person; rather in this case ‘organ’.

In the book ‘The Alchemist’ , the writer portrays the philosophy that The heart is but made from the same hand which made this world and hence the soul of the world and the heart are one and the same and they eventually meet. While these weren’t the exact words, that’s the basic idea. He also says, that it takes time for one to understand their heart. To really know what it is saying. So perhaps I just haven’t reached a point in time in my life yet where I am actually communicating with my heart. Well not properly anyway.

So … again…. the question stays…. what to do? Listen to the heart as always, supported by the logic of the Alchemist, or listen to the brain supported by past experience? Don’t know… hope the choice is easier with the readers whenever they face something of this regard.