The Modern Fable

 How do you call upon courage to lead your own life? It doesn’t come in anticipation, it doesn’t rear its head in planning. It emerges from the fog, in the hour of need, when your life is on the line, and the time has come to decide. It gives a temporary glimpse, a magnificent flash, until it retreats back inside under shells of compromises and broken promises to come back once again when you cannot do without it.

 How do you weigh potential? And when do you sacrifice it when you pick one of two ways and let go of all the scenarios, you had thought for yourself. Society expects me to know myself, when it has always dictated my needs. When should I listen to my core self, and when should I strive for something above me. It is not a matter of will, but a matter of means. I could push myself to achieve, and numb myself to lead, or, I could convince myself to settle, but then how do I make peace when people look down on me? It is not a matter of will, but a matter of means, and I can feel my will unravelling, with the fights I gave against my enemies, my enemies that hog my mind and my surroundings Well then, how do you decide what is good for you when the choices were flawed from the beginning? Who do you decide to be when you can’t recognize your own reflection from the shadow? It is a curse to be unconventional, to be different from the herd. You pay the price of ...

The molten silver in my eyes, became the coating of your mirror. Who was I then, if not just an onlooker?

When happiness touches me, I have to find reasons to explain why I don’t want you as part of the party? You say I am obligated, and I am, by the guilt you’ll shower, if I speak my mind.

They say imperfections make you beautiful, and I had just started to believe that. I bared the gaps I felt inside me, the seeping cracks, voids that at times engulfed me. I saw the gleam in your eyes and it was from the beauty that surrounded me. But all you saw was a girl empty inside, malleable, broken to your eyes, which you could mold to your desires. I retreated my words for a while, imperfections made me weak, a sight to pity at. Until I realized, imperfections made me who I am, as long as I did not bare them to, a man with a motive in mind.

When life gets hard, you have to kill a part of yourself, so you can let the rest survive. I have killed the part, that searches for its other half, while I struggle to keep myself whole, as life knocks me down. The fire is only dormant, until someone reignites it with their touch. I only know one thing for sure, whether or not, I find a partner in whom I share is up to fate, or rather ill-luck, the intensity of desire, the price of withholding my senses, for so long, when is stoked, will swallow me whole.

I loan people pieces of me, with nothing up for collateral. A piece of my mind, a glimpse of my body, a fraction of my voice but no one knows the fire inside me. Because it will destroy others, while it only carves the soul inside me.

Dust off, get up for defeat is not a choice. As long as I am alive, I will strive for my voice.

The sun shines even when clouds block the way. It doesn’t wilt in despair, that nobody lets it have its way. It keeps on shining and shining until the wispy clouds are swept away. And tomorrow, the cycle begins again.

I am not incomplete, merely broken. I don’t seek someone to fill my longings, but to see them and accept them so much so that in the daylight, the scars fade. I don’t seek someone to heal me, but to grow with me. Because I can rise up, fly up. Merely surviving for now, so that I can thrive later.

Hide your tears behind closed doors, Such is the comfort of my home.

This quote was shared with me today by my mentor. And it was a wake-up call for me. Don't believe everything you think - Joseph Nguyen  .     .     .     .     .   In my 11th grade, I struggled a lot. My family had to shift back from Delhi because of our finances, and I was a late admission into a school in which I felt out of place. I was struggling to find a way to work towards my dream of going to study in the USA, but I knew that there was a strong possibility that it wouldn't happen because there wasn't enough financial support I had. I was stuck in my head, most of the time, because I was trying to figure out which project I could build that would be my golden ticket abroad. But the problem was that my self-discovery was going into the realm of self-indulgence, where instead of trying new things and testing them out, I was indulging in stories and patterns from my past that I was trying to make sense of so I could have an insight i...

There comes a time when your daydreams, turn to nightmares, jostled by the abrupt change to reality. Who do you turn to now. when you need to build up hope? When everyone around you, says the same old woe. You need an escape, a vision, to pull you through. How do you balance optimism and practicality, when both of them pull you towards different streets? You try but the balance tips at times, while making sure you tread, towards the vision you have. Even when at times, with little will left, You sometimes resort to go back to daydreams.

Find a love in your life, a love so strong that it can push you forward, even when the storm surrounds. A love so strong, that it gives you strength to carry on, when the struggles seem hopeless,  when pondered upon. A love so deep and true, shining like a beacon of light, revealing all the superficial rules.

These string of moments, flash by my eyes, not tethered by logic or time, but by emotions of wholeheartedness,  filling me with life. These emotions don't pull me down, like the ones I feel usually do, but fill me with strength and hope when life feels just right. Not more or less, looking for an excuse to fill with an escape, but just right. Right here and right now, for no special reason to tell, except that the people are right, and so am I. I look around and spot a ton of ways, the celebration could be grander, The decoration could have been neater, but there is no place  on the face of this earth, I would rather be. Rather than right here and right now. What is so special you might ask? Well, there are some brief glitches, in the matrix of time, when we don't live for a reason or a goal, but just for the sake of living, right here and right now. When life comes together, not to teach you a lesson, but to give you a reason, to keep carrying on. Right here and right now.

When you look back, you remember the moments you felt deeply. Not those moments when you were at an extreme end of a mood swing, but when your emotions held gravity because you recognized something in your life worth noticing. These moments may be felt consciously, like the time when I saw all my family members dancing to weird Bollywood songs I don't even remember and thought that I would miss this when eventually I packed my bags to a college I hadn't decided yet. When I hugged my brother close on his 22nd birthday, hoping that the smell of his hair might soften the reconciliation I'd have to give myself when I left town the next day. It is at these moments that we feel the urge to hold these precious moments close because we're scared of letting them go, filled with fear of losing this wholeheartedness. It is at these moments that I fully experience what Brene Brown meant when she said that joy is the most vulnerable of all emotions. We're scared to feel it, but ...

I have faced isolation from friends and family, lack of financial stability and physical freedom, emotional abuse, and clinical depression. (I am still in the middle of some of these problems) I have given up on many good ideas and projects, and haven't found a strict definition of a career to align myself with.  I thought that this made me different, that this defined how much I could achieve in life because they somehow scarred me. And I won't lie: they have scarred me. I have trust and self-esteem issues. But the key thing is that I am not alone and I can use my experience to help others, even by talking about these problems and creating a safe space for them. I define myself as a problem-solver and that has been the key to deciding which projects I enjoy, and because of these experiences, I am in a unique position to empathize with those who have faced similar problems and use that emotional intelligence of what it means to go through it and develop solutions. These solutio...

The stories we tell ourselves, how they fuel shame, and the impact they have We are creatures of habit, and our thinking habits form mindsets. Our mindsets, more or less, dictate how we approach our life. Lately, I have been exploring my mindsets and their impact on me. Earlier this year, I struggled with severe clinical depression, and taking a gap year to spend some time with myself has helped me explore the mindsets that brought me to this point. And I realized something. The stories I told myself had the biggest impact on how I viewed myself, how I interacted with others, and the decisions I made. In 2021, as the pandemic was raging, my family was struggling emotionally because of the financial setbacks we had faced. Amongst other problems, as mid-year approached I would wake up filled with anxiety that would get aggravated when I saw the date. You see, when the year started I had an intention of starting projects that I could include in my college application but months passed, an...

Instead of asking, 'Have I worked hard enough to rest?' ask, 'Have I rested enough to do my most meaningful work?'  Nicole Jane Hobbs This quote changed how I viewed rest. I used to bargain how much rest I deserved based on the quantity of work I had done. But after giving it my all in one project, I find myself needing a long rest to recuperate. Oftentimes, I feel like I need more rest than the little window I had allotted myself. And there is a reason for pushing myself back on the track again. Piling messages, pending projects, upcoming deadlines, and disturbing realities to escape. But I have learned that the outside world won't stop because I need it to slow down. I will have to step back. This means drawing some boundaries: not scrolling LinkedIn in my free time and saying no to a couple of projects I don't think I have the mental capacity to deal with anymore. Making boundaries is still quite tricky for me though. If I say no to this project, will I regre...

I will be honest. I used to despise this blog. Why, you might ask? Or, you might not but I will still answer as that is what this post is about. I wrote this blog amidst the beginning of a dark time in my life, where I was in my head more often than not, trying to find ways to move on towards my definition of success. I was lost, anxiety-ridden, and filled with guilt over my perceived mistakes. It was also a very isolating period in my life, where I was slowly uncovering my values but no one was there to discuss them with, to acknowledge my efforts, or to nudge me in the right direction. I have since learned to be there for myself when no one else is, but it can still be quite isolating. I was on a quest to do something great, but I was struggling to commit to something, anything. I eventually found a way to bring my ideas to reality through TKS, but that came way later in September 2022. Right now, we are talking about the latter half of 2021, when I had recently started this blog....