Experiences

Every once in a while I have an experience which puts me under intense pressure. When I am forced to react to the situation, I realize that my reactions have surprised me more than anyone else. I leave the situation, feeling totally exhausted and stunned at the way I acted. More often than not, I see that I surpassed my expectations, and dealt with the situation better than I thought I could. Maybe I had underestimated myself, or maybe being in that situation equipped me to deal with it.
Another observation I have recently made was in connection with my very strong belief in the importance of having varied experiences, pleasant as well as unpleasant in order to grow and evolve. I feel that in avoiding unpleasant situations, we miss out on a chance to learn. This doesn’t go to say that I am not sometimes an escapist, trying to dodge an uncomfortable situation, but it does go to say that sometimes I find myself deliberately putting myself in a place from where I am not confident of emerging unscathed. I don’t quite know why I do that to myself; am I challenging myself and pushing against my boundaries, or am I just self- destructive?

Permanence

Marriage- the one relationship that is supposed to be the most permanent of them all. United for life; a sacred union; till death do us part, etc etc. None of the other relationships a person has in life are meant to be as permanent (though they might be far more important to the person in question, I might add).
The irony of the situation is that these days hardly anyone gets into a relationship with the idea of getting married and making it last forever. The common thought process seems to be one of trying things out, seeing if they work, and then taking it from there. And even then there are no guarantees. Divorce is a very real, very often considered option. A far cry from what things used to be like just a generation ago.
And then comes the concept of moral degeneration. A divorced person is “damaged goods.” A society which has a high rate of divorce is considered morally corrupt, and one which holds nothing sacred. Well, how about looking at marriages around us...even the so-called happy ones, where the couples insist that they are happy together. Every so often, you will realize that they may be together, but only because they choose not to consider another option that might make them happier. Is that morally commendable? I’m not sure it is.
Now let’s consider the couple who has spent some extremely happy years together, but with time, have realized that they have grown apart and have nothing in common anymore. If they choose to let go of their comfort zone and venture out in search of something that makes them truly happy again, they would definitely be doing something that requires a lot of courage. Though the ride wouldn’t be smooth, at least they would have tried.
How do we define a “successful marriage?” One that has lasted as long as one of the partners is no longer alive. What is not taken into consideration is the question of happiness, fulfillment, love and respect. A successful marriage, to my mind, is one where both partners gain these things in the relationship, irrespective of how long it lasted.
I cannot deny that a fulfilling lifelong relationship is preferable to shorter, more exciting ones, but at the same time, is this change in mindset a bad thing? Who told us that marriage must be for life and why do we believe them? Why is it that we are so slow to question the things that are going to impact our lives the most?

"Me"

A few days ago, I was having a conversation with a friend of mine, and we started talking about how different people think and talk; and also about how different we ourselves were a few years ago.
That got me thinking about myself. Of course I’ve changed over the years. Who hasn’t? We all have experiences that make us grow in different directions. Some people may have the same experiences and yet grow in different ways, and change in different ways. That’s when you can see their essential natures. Strong, weak, optimistic, pessimistic, etc are all manifested through the way they deal with the experiences nature has chosen for them to go through. Learning is another thing that allows us a glimpse into people’s cores. What they decide to take away from a particular incident is an indication of what they really are…..
But I digress. I guess what I’m trying to get at, in a rather roundabout way, is that I have changed due to the experiences I have had in the past as well. For better or worse, but changed, nevertheless. What is worth noticing is that when I refer to myself 5 years ago, I still use the word “me.” That’s the same word I use when I refer to myself 10, 15, 20 years ago. Obviously, I am talking about different people, almost unrecognizable as the “me” of today. Isn’t there something fundamentally wrong with that? And who am “I”? Is “me” the person I am today? Is it the person I was born as before I had any experiences that changed me? Or is it the person I will be at the end of my life, complete with all the experiences I was meant to go through and the changes in my personality resulting from those experiences?
Is this a philosophical question, or am I complicating a simple linguistic issue? :)

Remind me again, please!

I keep telling myself everyday, that I’ll start exercising from tomorrow onwards. Of course, as we all know, tomorrow never comes. But that doesn’t stop me from promising myself again the next day to start “tomorrow.”
A couple of days ago, one of my friends’ nicknames on MSN messenger was “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.”
I hardly paid any attention to it then; after all, it was like one of those many lines we hear, which are very true, yet at the same time extremely obvious. Why should we need to talk about things like these? Don’t we all know them anyway?
But then I saw it again today, and thought to myself: Why is there a market for these lines if they are so redundant? Well, I guess the answer to that is because they AREN’T redundant. Knowing something is no guarantee for remembering and applying it. And we, as human beings have a great tendency for “out of sight, out of mind.” We need to be constantly reminded.
Also, application of these things is anything but easy. How many times have we told ourselves that we will start looking for a new, more fulfilling job….soon? Or that we will go for that haircut we desperately need….next week? Or that we will quit drinking for 3 months…..next month? If you pay close attention to your life, chances are that you’ll be shocked at the amount you procrastinate. On the other hand, when we look at the sentence again, it seems like such a small, yet obvious part of the big picture. This reminds me of a line I read in a dear friend’s blog: The most basic skills are the hardest to master!

The high point of this week

Hallelujah! I’m finally back! I’ve been down with the viral, therefore home since the last week, doing absolutely nothing with myself. Watching TV and re-reading my books, that’s what I’ve been doing.
Now I’ve hit a stage where I’m not well enough to resume normal life, yet well enough to desperately want to!
So what do I do? I sit back and twiddle my thumbs some more. Some more TV, some more books. Till, a blessed friend decides to come over and see me. It’s a great thought; we both sit together and reminiscence about college days. Of course, the only purpose we serve is one of making ourselves feel extremely old, but we do it nevertheless. One nimbu paani and a cigarette later, I decide I CANNOT sit at home anymore, and will have to venture out. So the poor fella is dragged out and coerced into taking me for a bike ride. Nothing less will do. I insist I want to go to Badhkal Lake, where I haven’t been in over a year. So that’s where we go. After seeing the pitiful excuse for a lake (that’s what Badhkal Lake is now, though it wasn’t up to a year ago), we turned around and promptly came back.
I was tired but mostly felt great. I mean, how many days can one possible sit at home for? And when I say “sit at home”, I mean literally that. It’s a sad day when a girl looks upon a bike ride, which at another time would have been all but forgotten by now, as the high point of her week. Sniff sniff!