Resolve to be thyself...

The other day, I was watching a Woody Allen movie Vicky Cristina Barcelona and boy, if I knew how much I'd realize things because of it! This movie is all about emotions, loving people, discovering and loving oneself. It’s the story of two girls Vicky and Cristina and their summer holiday in Barcelona. Barcelona had the same one thing to teach to these two totally different friends, to love!

Antonio’s father was right when he said that world has forgotten to love unconditionally.

Here's an excerpt from the movie when Antonio takes Cristina to his father's place and she discovers that he writes beautiful poems but never publishes them:

Cristina: So, uh, tell me, why won't your father publish his poems? 

Antonio: Well, because he hates the world, and that's his way of getting back at them, to create beautiful works and then...to deny them to the public, which I think it's...

Cristina: My God. Well, what makes him so angry toward the human race?

Antonio: Because after thousands of years of civilization, they still haven't learned to love.

We all are so afraid of each other, of ourselves all the time. Our mind keeps thinking about what is wrong and what is right. Love, is neither wrong nor right. Love... is just love. We humans have defined various kinds of love. The love for your parents is different from the love for your friends, which is different from the love for your partner in life. But nobody knows how it is different.

Love makes you want to care. Love makes you want to understand. Love makes you want to protect. Whether mother or father or sibling or friend or your life partner, love is the same. Emotions are pure, for whoever it may be. We have created different connotations for it. You want to care for somebody, not because s/he is related to you somewhere but because you simply want to. You can’t define your emotions and neither can you justify their presence. They will occur when they have to and you will feel when you have to. All you can do is either sit like cowards with your eyes closed and only pretend that you aren’t feeling anything, or even worse, try to justify them with the most stupid arguments ever in your life, or, like the valiant confront our feelings, accept them gracefully, and feel them with double the emotion. With the kind of life we all live we have forgotten to feel everything, the romance of everything as they say. Yes, the missing ingredient in everybody’s life is a little bit of romance. There can be romance in everything. In getting drenched in the monsoon showers, in eating a full tub of ice-cream and still feeling unsatisfied, in watching the sun set from the window of your fast moving car, in leaving the last dim sum for your sister while sharing a plate, in spotting a perfect gift for the friend you love the most, in discovering how well somebody understands you, in that moment that makes you realize your worth, in writing whatever you want without worrying about its connection with the previous paragraphs or its organization- in all of it there is romance. It is not just about talking to your boy/girl friend at night from under the pillows, or being cuddled by him/her, but it is about many other small-small things that we all tend to ignore and forget in our worries of life. In competing with each other, in the race to do better than each other, we have forgotten to enjoy the romance of a team work and every little moment of work. We have unfortunately, tied ourselves to our conventional ways and fear to tear away from them. And this fear is what is taking away all the romantic moments from our life.

Break free. Liberate the mind. Feel free to think. Feel free to love. Feel free to return the love. Feel free to feel. Feel free to express. Rip all the fears. Fall in love with what you do. Fall in love with your own thoughts. Fall in love with your own life. Have a romantic affair with self. ;)

Know Thyself

A person is what s/he thinks. Thoughts define a person.

Thoughts have great power. The way you think is the way you do things. And what you do is what you are. If you, honestly desire something and know it very well that you deserve it too, then you tend to get it even in adverse circumstances. And this, my friend, is commonly called ‘luck’. Luck is nothing but what you make of it, with your determination and perseverance. 

Strangely enough, this brings me to another thought that this world is actually run by us. I have always believed in the power of almighty. The power that is supreme and above all other powers and energies of the world. But come to think of it, this power is of one’s own. Things happen as we want them to. But to feel that power, that energy you need to be truly honest and confronting with self. It is ironic how the person, we fear the most is our self. Hiding from the outer world is still sane. But hiding from our own self is the most insane thing we all do. But once we are, ‘comfortably' naked in front of us, we become – fearless. Fearless because we accept us the way we are – pure and befouled. There is nothing to hide, to conceal.

If you know yourself well, it means you know the world. By ‘knowing the world’ I do not mean knowing the people but the ways of it. The ways of this world and the world beyond, can both be gained knowledge about, once you know thyself. This I presume is enlightenment. I’m nobody to guarantee the truth of what I have written for I am not the enlightened one. These are but a few figments of my thoughts, as a conclusion of what I have read, seen, understood and realized.

I find the Holy Scriptures (and not their interpretations) and biographies of great saints, very useful in gaining the insight into it all and build a stronger, purer and more divine self. Because what you read is what you think and what you think is what you become.