Ascent

“Feet, what do I need you for when I have wings to fly?”
(Frida Kahlo)

Balance… Balance is not symmetry. For everything in this journey of life we are on, there is a right wing and a left wing: for the wing of love, there is anger; for the wing of destiny, there is fear; for the wing of pain, there is healing; for the wing of hurt, there is forgiveness; for the wing of pride, there is humility; for the wing of giving, there is taking; for the wing of tears, there is joy; for the wing of rejection, there is acceptance; for the wing of judgment, there is grace; for the wing of honour, there is shame; for the wing of letting go, there is the wing of keeping. We can only fly with two wings, and two wings can only stay in the air if there is a balance.

Having two desired wings is perfection. And perfection is not balance. Nature seeks balance. You cannot have two coveted wings at the same time, nor can you equilibrate with just one wing. A bird with one wing is imperfect; an angel with one wing is unblessed; a butterfly with one wing is dead. Life is a balanced system of learning and evolution. Whether pleasure or pain, every situation in your life serves a purpose. So there could be no joy on this planet without an equal weight of pain to balance it out on some unknown scale.

In each of us lie good and bad, light and dark, art and pain, choice and regret, cruelty and sacrifice. We’re each of us our own chiaroscuro, our own bit of illusion fighting to emerge into something solid, something real. This verse is one such moment of discovery of the self from a shackled state of inactivity to a long-desired flight.

Inner Insights

“Alice came to a fork in the road. ‘Which road do I take?’ she asked.
‘Where do you want to go?’ responded the Cheshire Cat.
‘I don’t know,’ Alice answered.
‘Then,’ said the Cat, ‘it doesn’t matter.’” 

(Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland)

Life has no rules.  It can be a complicated and bitter journey, or it can be a happy rewarding one with simple answers. Over the years I have come to believe that life is about choices. And the choices you make eventually shape your day, shape your views, shape your experiences, shape your thoughts… and shape your life.

There are some life choices over which you have no control or which others will make for you – like when and where you are born, the family you are born to, your life during childhood, the school you went to, etc. etc. etc. Beyond that, there are several other important choices that you make in life. And those choices define you.

Heroes are made by the paths they choose, not the powers they are graced with. If you believe it is a world of choice, you regard your life as a product of your own decisions. If you believe in destiny, you suspect there are greater forces defining your life’s story. Even if we are a part of some grand master plan, our unique journey has more personal meaning when we choose it for ourselves.

Desires dictate our priorities, priorities shape our choices, and choices determine our actions. We don’t get to choose what is true. We only get to choose what we do about it. At the end of the day, the questions we ask of ourselves determine the type of people that we will become.

Life is a test.  It was designed to be so. Few lines conjured up as I meandered into the world of choices that define our lives… or rather, we let them define our lives:

Beat Your Life!

“Your life is your life
Don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
Be on the watch.
There are ways out.
There is a light somewhere.
It may not be much light but
It beats the darkness.”
(Charles Bukowski, ‘The Laughing Heart’)

How many of us today are ready to be bogged down by cockeyed conventions? How many are ready to accept established norms just for the sake of obeisance? How many will wholeheartedly oblige if some drag king decides to rule nonchalantly? Hardly a soul I believe; just those who proudly flaunt their cultivated masks of fake conformity, and those who sit and whine when things fall apart.

The truth is: genuineness and unconventionality is what helps in making a mark on the world. If you go down just one corridor of thought, you never get to see what’s in the rooms leading off it. Beyond all our actions stands the larger shadow: How are we to choose between what we have been taught to think ‘right’ and something else which ‘might’ be? Real, constructive mental power lies in the mental conduct and the creative thoughts that eventually shape our destiny. So, develop a train of thought on which to ride. Change your perception and you change your world. You just have one mortal life in hand. Beat it! Beat it well!

Flow of thoughts got overflowed, and led to this small piece of verse:

Soliloquies at Sunrise

“There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man
that he does not know till he takes up the pen to write.”
(William Makepeace Thackeray)

Every sunrise is an invitation for us to rise up from bed and brighten someone’s day.

Sunrise indicates a new beginning, a fresh start. The dawning brings brightness into life and enlivens people to start the day with energy and intensity. Whenever you come across a scenic, beautiful daybreak, you cannot suppress a heavy sigh of happiness. In a way, nature, in the form of sunrise, plays the role of an illusionist from distant lands!

Few thoughts which struck me this morning as the first rays of light defied the rusty grills and bumped into my half-open eyes…

Discord

“So what is discord at one level of your being
is harmony at another level.”
(Alan Watts)

A short poem on the changing times and the duplicitous society.