Expectations v/s Hopes

When I was very young I heard and since then remembered two sayings from two of my different teachers. The sayings go as..."Expectations are the root cause of misery" and "Never loose hopes, coz hopes are the only ropes that'll support you". I thought a lot over these two and weighed them considering numerous instances from my own life as well as others life in general.

What I noticed was that sometimes I was hurt because I expected too much from others, that indirectly means there is a limit in every friendship that I should not cross. If it were in my hands, I would brush aside this limit...but unfortunately it needs two to tango!

Moreover, friendship needs time to grow...even I can't be a best of a friend to everyone who comes my way, although it varies that some people may turn out to be very good friends in a very short span of time while others just remain strangers even in years' relationship!! My initial friendship with anyone always turned out to be good... but then over time when I knew the person truly and better, I found most of them to be mere role players. In between these two phases I remained the same self... and that didn't prevent me from being demanding. The cases where friendship is true are very pleasing and euphoric, I mean nothing can make atleast me feel better than possessing a true friend. On the other hand, cases where friendship turns out to be something different, are very hard and uneasy to handle...they just break me.

I once had a dream to perfect (and include in a stereotype) the search and selection techniques into a science so that one can predict almost infallibly on the very first meeting with any person, whether or not the person is worth making a friend. The stereotype was a joke but the search and selection thingie is something everyone should be aware of. I try to strain my brains as much as I can... but still sometimes I make wrong decisions...after all I am a human being ( I hope u agree with this).

I dunno what I have written and how you would interpret it, but to recapitulate, I would say that I still live with hopes in my heart rather than living with the fear of getting hurt on expecting and not getting the expected.

Be positive, its in my blood (B+ve)

LIFE: what is it?

Life isn't about getting good marks in college. It is not about how many people call you and its not about who you've kissed, what sport you play, or which girl likes you. Its not about your shoes or about your hair colour or the colour of your skin or where you live or go to college. Infact its not about rank, money or clothes. Life isn't about if you have lots of friends, or if you are alone, and its not about how accepted or unaccepted you are. Life just isn't about that.

But life is about who you love and who you hurt. It pertains to how you feel about yourself. Its about trust, happiness and compassion. Its about sticking up for your friends and replacing inner hate with love. Life is about avoiding jealousy, overcoming ignorance and building confidence. Its about what you say and what you mean. Its about seeing people for who they are and not what they have. Most of all, its about choosing to use your life to touch someone else's in such a way that could never have been achieved otherwise. These choices are what life is all about...

Just as I am about to post this note, I remember a line from a famous hindi song:
"zindagi ek alag cheez hai... zinda rehna alag baat hai.."

To sum up... life is strange!

The pursuit of happYness

“I apologize for spamming you all with this. This is something that's been churning around my head for a while now, and I needed to write it. This little rant is not really intended to make big differences to you, instead its just an introduction to happiness”

[1] Stop assigning blame.

This is the first step. Stop assigning blame and leave the past behind you. You know whose fault it is that your life isn't perfect. Your boss. Your professor. Your lover. The ones who hurt you, the ones who abused you, the ones who left you bleeding. Or even yourself. You know whose fault it is — you've been telling yourself your whole life. Knowing whose fault it is that your life sucks is an excellent way to absolve yourself of any reponsibility for taking your life into your own hands.

Forget about it. Let it go. The past isn't real. If we're not talking about something that is real and present and in your life right now, then it doesn't matter. Nothing can be done about it. If nothing can be done about it, then don't spend your energy dwelling on it — you have other things to do.

I may sound cruel, I may sound simplistic, I may sound like I'm saying you should just “get over it”, by suggesting that you should let go off your past. I'm sorry for that. But life won't hold still and wait for you to lick your wounds. The race is still being run. Get up and keep moving. You can't do anything about yesterday. You can do something about tomorrow. And about the next day. Focus your energies there.

[2] Surprise yourself. No — amaze yourself.

“I don't have time to write.” “I can't dance.” “I can't talk to new people.” “I'm not attractive.” I hear this all the time. I always hear the people around me sabotaging themselves, drawing lines and borders and boxes around themselves. To which I say, make the time; dance; just talk to people; be attractive!

Yes, again, it's simplistic of me to say that. But it's simplistic of you to so easily say what you cannot do!

We're excellent pattern-matchers. That's what the human mind does — it's a pattern-matching engine. So we look at ourselves, at our history, at our behaviors, and we draw straight lines between the points — we assume that just because we've done things a certain way in the past, we'll always do them that way in the future. If we've failed before, we'll always fail.

Screw that!

You don't have to keep doing the things you hate. Why go home and beat yourself up for, say, not going over and saying a few words to someone you find really attractive? Can any damage they could do to you by rejecting you possibly be any worse than the damage you're going to do to yourself for missing the chance?

[3] Find the demon.

Do you know what I'm talking about? It's the little voice in the back of your head that's always whispering, “You can't”. You know the demon. You may think you hate the demon, but you don't. You love it. You let it own you. You do everything it says. Everytime there's something you want, you consult the demon first, to see if it will say, “You can't have that."

What you don't realize is that your demon doesn't know anything. It's an idiot. It's nothing but a parrot, repeating back to you anything negative that it's ever heard, anything that makes you hurt, makes you squirm. If a teacher once told you “You'll never accomplish anything,” it was listening; it hoards words like that and repeats them back to you to watch you jump. It doesn't know what it's saying. It doesn't care.

[4] Exorcise yourself.

You can take me literally or not, as suits you. But do, please, the next time you hear that voice in your head, imagine it, visualize it, as something physical that you can get hold of; tear it out of you, feel its fingers weaken and lose their grip on your spine, and grind it to dust, to nothing, under your boot heel on your way out to dance in the streets.

You can. You think you can't; but it's telling you that. You can.

[5] You don't exist. You just think you do.

We're nothing but the stories we tell ourselves. We know in our hearts what kind of people we are, what we're capable of, because we've told ourselves what kind of people we are. You're a carefully-rehearsed list of weaknesses and strengths you've told yourself you have.

(Self-confidence, for example, is a particularly nebulous quality you can easily talk yourself out of having.) You owe no allegiance to that self-image if it harms you. If you don't like the story your life has become — tell yourself a better one.

Think about the person you want to be and do what that person would do. Act the way that person would act. Amazingly enough, once you start acting like that person, people will start treating you like that person. And you'll start to believe it. And then it will be true.

Welcome to your new self!

Despite everything I've just said, self-examination can be paralysis. Don't “remember to breathe” — just breathe. It's a Tao thing. It's the paradox at the center of all this — remember that, “Am I living up to being the person I want to be?”, is not a question the person you want to be would ask.

If I can leave you with just one thought, it's this:

Stop wasting your time fretting over not being happy. Just be happy!