Happy 2022

I was contemplating for many days to write my annual new year blog.  

Now that I’m at it, I will strive to keep it short and simple.

I used to be mechanical before, robotic in nature, in consumption and in relationships. I struggled in life, been there, done that and at every junction, I became a warrior, a survivor.

I also cared. Quite deeply actually. And truly loved.

From an introvert child I grew into an adult social chameleon.

I was a lot of things that I am not now.

 

The new year means another day alive, another year, another birthday. It is about being blessed and being grateful. Therefore, it is cause for celebration.

It is cause too for this write.

But my truth is that it holds no meaning anymore.

To further expand on my thoughts, would mean to disrupt the positive wishes.

Therefore, I will reserve my unfathomed ideologies for myself.

 

However, for those who think I have entered an abyss with my hermit life, they are not wrong but my abyss has sunshine with shadows and every sunrise is a new day of a new year, while every shadow is proof of the sun’s rays on me.

When the celebrations explode with displays of fireworks and shock wave sonic boom sounds, I think of how happy everyone will be, partying with the best cuisine, swaying with their loved ones to auld lang syne, as they raise their glasses to the coming year.

A cliché maybe but I celebrate this special day, every 24 hours.

Having an illness or a physical difficulty in life is a beautiful reminder of how real every day is and how much gratitude we should attach to every given breath even while we are asleep.

Just today, as I was rushing due to my own folly and mindlessness, I slipped and fell hurting my hips and knees. I have a dislocated shoulder and a swollen toe. I hit the side of my head which immediately sent me into a spin of vertigo. It was an arduous feat just to stand on my two feet again, but while I was struggling to get up, I neither thought of pain nor of the difficulty, I was in all honesty filled with gratitude for still being able.

Unceasing gratitude and executed contentment have been the major ingredients in my recipe for happiness.

I will neither speak of solitude nor of detachment, as it is annoying to people who crave for company. But in the coming year, I will attempt a blog entry on solitude/loneliness and another on boredom or since they run along the same lines, I will combine them into one post.

For now, I want to add that this past year has changed me a little more, or maybe a lot more than the previous years so I am uncertain of the degree of change in the coming year as for the first time in my life, I see myself not indulging in writing anymore. I cannot say positively that it will happen but I think I am slowly heading there.

Again, change has been my only constant for the past few years, so I might vacillate incessantly allowing indecisiveness to reign.

Until recently, I had someone in my life who was an unabating listener, a repository of all my insane, psychotic thoughts and also of my words of wisdom. But life, like nature, is as beautiful as it is cruel. The choices we make will either reap us the benefits or suffer us the consequences.

Every way we react and every decision we take or make depends on our interpretation of what is presented to us. We think we are right all the time. There is a clear overlapping of rights and wrongs, as they apply differently to different situations with different people and even though we often see ourselves as right, we seldom are.

We lack a higher form of intelligence to enable us to empathize and understand without evaluating or judging.

Which brings me to silence.

In it, I found a neutral space where I don’t have to be right or wrong. There is no battle to fight. The less you present your opinions or your verdict in conversations, the more you strengthen your mind. Judgement, I deduce, should be kept for ourselves, a reflection, an introspection.

When you do not need validation from others, nothing impacts your thoughts and actions. Real freedom becomes your truth and fear innately dissipates.

The major triumph, as per society’s portrayal, this 2021, has been Duli’s completion of her Masters in Environmental Engineering.

Society demands and dictates rules for our behaviour and achievements.  Successes have to run along the lines set for us. Anything unacceptable by their standard is disregarded or frowned upon. We remain slaves as long as we still want to fit in.

An entry into our lives this December was a beautiful cat with lemony eyes we named Lebu, pronounced `layboo’, meaning lemon in Bengali. She was pregnant when she entered our home. 

I went a little insane buying for her premium cat food for good skin and hair after which she never failed to visit us for her treats, added with a little bit of love, especially after her delivery. She belongs to herself and comes and goes as freely as she chooses.

For this coming year, there will be no resolution and no planning or goals for me.

The water tiger year 2022 has a prediction based on a few negatives by feng shui experts but since I have long stopped believing in anything anyone professes, I would infer otherwise.

I see the tiger as brave, confident and extremely charming. It is comfortable alone or with its tribe. It is both a protective and an unmatched leader, not undermining autonomy of others.

Therefore, irrespective of the predictions and beliefs floating around out there, you can predict your chosen route by creating your own chart to guide you positively, constructively and progressively. There are things in life which are eminently impossible, but only if you believe so.

Here’s wishing everyone 365 days of happiness and daily celebrations.

Wisdom with a lockdown birthday

The month of June is a loud reminder to update my blog with the happenings or non-happenings in my life. It seems that I only manage two entries a year, one at the end of the year and the other a day or two after my birthday since it marks the half year period. 

I began writing at a very early age and I remember how gravely horrific my grammar was, not that it is excellent now, but it is definitely a marked improvement from the purge. Despite the obvious errors and the ignorance of the sniper, she fired away. People were too embarrassed to correct me, but not more than I was, in finding the basis of the missile.

I wrote endlessly. It was the thing I delighted in, and then there was art too. Yeah, sketches here and there, figurines, fonts, still life, and with water colors came scenic imaginations. Writing expanded to pen pals and letter sheets, some with my drawings, some with their own designs in the background. I sort of graduated to philately by default since letters came from all over the world.

Every year I would keep a diary. And unflaggingly I would share the secrets of the day with it like it was my best friend. Akin to Tolkien, I created my own language which had its own alphabet, and only my diaries and I would understand it. No one could read them and eventually when I was decluttering after thirty years, I myself could hardly remember the letters I created. I burnt years of secrets in a large bonfire celebrating an upgrade to quotes and poetry, wisdom and philosophy.

We have different phases in our lives when we are attracted to different elements. However, one thing remained the same for me throughout, the love for words and literature, its growth extended, occupying a little more space every time, and so books remained the friends I couldn’t do without.

Transitions happen without us realizing and though my life long dream was to be alone, I don’t really know when I entered that phase or if it was always there hidden, waiting to make a grand entrance.

I fall in the category of people who use all ten fingers to type with a pretty good speed but one who prefers the real writing with ink on paper.

Lately my arthritic fingers have made it next to impossible to indulge in it but I still obsess about how the ink just flows on those empty pages. Adding to the pain, the fingers cramp and twist in any direction in torturous want, squeezing every bit of enthusiasm I have developed from the passion of just holding the pen and letting my thoughts flow. 

Solitary living suits me.

It is a grand reward for someone who loves the wilderness, the mountains and the ocean. All that is colossal and unpopulated. When there is no room for gossip and unnecessary words, silence becomes the buoyance of peace. When anger and hate is not present, one doesn’t require to work on being happy. We don’t need to search, it finds us.

I was so unwise.

Wisdom opens a frontier that you enter never to turn back. It is a state of bliss in a paradise some have created only for a time after death.  

Wisdom teaches you detachment. When you have nothing and you know nothing, that is the beginning of everything. It teaches you the extraordinariness in simplicity.

We live in a time when unnecessary things are our only necessities, making the whole value and standard of importance a far reach from wisdom. We are entangled in this maze exploring mindlessly until we are not able to come out of it. The majority of people have this perpetual curiosity to know everything around them except what is worth knowing.

Wisdom guides your thoughts derailing it from anger, regret, hate, grudges, worries, jealousy, vengeance and all such things into a realm of natural calm. You come to a realization that time should be wasted on the quietude of things, the meditative state of mindfulness or progression, on the joy of your own company, on books, music, on giving, teaching, guiding, helping, on kindness and on reflection, nothing else really.

Anger management was always a difficult achievement in my life and the more I talked to myself to rationalize, the less I had controlled my anger. I will write about this in another blog entry but for now I will just say that anger is a paralyzing emotion and it does more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anyone or anything it is poured unto.

Solitude and wisdom are greatest of friends and if wisdom fails me, solitude picks up the pieces and I find myself pacified with calmness undoing any bearer of chaos.

I have bulldozed my way into most of my contacts, giving them my grand statement of departure, and then totally detaching myself from them without giving them a chance to voice out their opinions, not wanting to hear what they have to say.

I would like to apologize for becoming who I have become not because I am sorry about it but because there are so many levels of right and wrong, so many versions of dos and donts and since mine almost never tallies with anyone else’s, especially my closest friends, I hope they will find it in their hearts to forgive my exit from their lives before my final egress.

How does one disconnect from good friends and relatives with a valid explanation? There is neither justice in it nor understanding.

But my obsession with solitude has heralded everything that I have wanted in my life, everything that I have become.

I look upon the pandemic as a gift. Nature has to be revered, kindness has to rule, and the homo sapiens have to progress into betterment, not augment chaos with greed and hate.

People view me and my thoughts as a part of a dark domain, and they may be right but they see the abyss as dark, whereas for me it is a place for the brightest flare.

Everything is perception. 

Darkness is a benefit, an award, a decoration, a companion of light. How can one be substantial if he or she cannot cast a shadow? Why does the theory of dualism exist? 

Darkness has been made lethal by the constant slavery of our minds induced by the thoughts of others. 

This year's lockdown birthday turned out to be one of my best birthdays with my favorite vanilla crepe delivered to my doorstep entirely for myself (by courtesy of my sister), prawn macaroni and cheese, chocolate and strawberry sundaes and no people. 

The brilliance of the pandemic for me, is indeed a benediction.  

The past six months have been a blessing. Every day I wake up thinking how fortunate I am to live a life that I wallow in.

My happiness is contained in this luxurious monumental freedom and space, lots and lots of space, unpeopled space.

Health will always be an issue if we focus on it. I neither think nor care about it. It is an exhausting subject for me and to the best of my ability, I rid myself of the tremendous impact it has on everyone. 

I have been in this bubble of happiness for a while now and I think that is all that should matter to me. Why would I want to create a chaos for a burst? 

I will end this entry with a short message to all. 

Find pleasure in minimalizing and edit your life frequently so your life will create the masterpiece you choose to become.