Being Practical is Being FEARFUL..!

All these days, I had been evaluating everything that was happening around to find something worthy of mention. Today out of nowhere I had my small eureka moment.

I discovered something seemingly ironic!

Well, blame on my current schedule, I rarely find the time or enthusiasm to converse on long drawn phone calls. Today, being a day off I thought it best to spend sometime chatting away.

The first call was an obvious choice, while we spoke, we landed up in a discussion where this dear one insisted on, me doing something risky, assuring me of support if by any luck I landed up in a mess. I would have blindly gone ahead with the idea, had it been the previous me. However, today it did not quite go down well with me. Precisely why I chose to share it.

No, the idea is not bothering me at all, it flew out of pure emotions and it got me an adrenaline rush. For the almost routine life that I currently have, it was a good enough dose of feel good hormones, in my system. What actually got me thinking was my reaction to the idea and how immensely different it was from the previous times.

Be it because of my starsign or the genetic coding of my cells, I am a natural dreamer and have excellent imagination skills ( I am a trained human resources person, guess now you know where the "skills" came from). But, off lately I have been training myself to being practical and to live in the present. Guess, I have advanced quite a bit in my training.

So, when this idea was presented to me, my natural reaction of diving carefree into the idea was taken over by my trained practical self, who then went on to dissecting the situation and calculating probabilities of success and failure. While the probability of success was considerable, my newly acquired self was consumed in the fear of failure. Though I gave the idea a try eventually being naturally attracted to it ; but quite differently this time - by having a solution ready for each kind of probability to mitigate chances of failure.

My way of dealing with the idea made me look around to find if there were other people like me or was I the only one. What got me to share this feeling was the fact that it is more or less a phenomenon.

While people say being practical is being fearless I have a diametrically opposite thought. To me, risk taking stems from imagination which in turn calls for adventure and attending to that call is being fearless !!

The more practical people become, the more calculative and speculative they transform into. Adventure is not merely climbing a mountain or braving the waves - it can jolly well be anything small that can shake up the status quo.

While I close with this thought for today, you folks can set your sails to take a plunge into the sea of imagination ....... Happy Imagining !!

The dark corners of heart

"She is a carefree. She is headstrong. She is successful. She is always full of life and cackle. She cannot possibly be scared of anything."

I know, the first thing you might have gotten uncomfortable with is my gender bias. Well, yes I would be biased here, not because of any ulterior motive but simply because I want to talk about my fellow gender, because much of the urge to talk about our fears stemmed from a conversation I had with one of my juniors at B- School, while we were driven back to the hostel from an outbound team building exercise. We were having a rather usual "getting to know each other" type of conversation, when we bumped into my desire of experiencing a deliberate failure.

Okay..!! A quick recap. I had recently taken this resolution to try pushing myself to experiencing those situations, the thoughts of which dread me to death. Failure, being one of them - I deliberately brought myself to such a situation. Yes, it was a relatively easy one and the stakes were not very high, however, I hope  it would serve my purpose.

Now, getting back to where I was. As I spoke about my seemingly crazy idea, I found her more and more intrigued. The subsequent change that I observed,  was her increasing level of comfort and her mounting confidence to bare the darkest corners of her heart in front of me, fearlessly - she had gone past her fears of being judged, misunderstood or being made fun of ! We spoke about numerous things, but what lingered in my thoughts was the openness with which she shared herself with me.

Almost all of us have a flair of judging people - positively or negatively, but we do form an opinion about everyone we cross roads with. I started speaking about a girl and I am sure we would have already humanized her in our mental space.

The girl in the picture above, I don't know, who she is but she fits into my description of the girl according to Google and may be quite a few of us.  From the picture we may perceive she is fearlessly confident. Is that really true, is she really not scared of anything or does she pretend not to be scared? 

The second assumption to me, seems more plausible. All of us I am sure are scared of something, the elements of fear may be very unique to us; our fears might not visit us every moment but they do choke us down, make us struggle for that gasp of breath in those lone moments sometimes. Many among us are alive, because they cannot die - apart from their physical self they possibly do not have anything earthly to hang on to; they too are scared, afraid of having to confront failure or loss all over again.We might be engulfed in our fears, but nothing provides more peace and calm than, daring our fears and finally winning over them.

Over the years,I have had the opportunity to share the stories of a bunch of women, at various stages of their lives. What I realized every time was - no matter how open she might come across to be, those dark corners still exist, those are lit only when someone dares to hold the torch, cares to listen and share theirs...!

Who are we...?

All of us or at least most of us are not who we are!....sounds strange?

No, I am not out of my mind...it is a fact,  not many of us would like to acknowledge. From the day we are born, with us takes birth the other us. Yes, we are twins technically but there is a shade of difference - they grow way faster than us. While we stumble to take our first steps , they are already a doctor, an engineer, a bureaucrat, an entrepreneur or a famous personality!

Such strong is the bond, that we are never jealous or insecure about the twin -  rather we see ourselves as one. We dream about walking hands in hands with them - while many actually do, many imagine ! Isn't it so much more easier? A perfect world and the perfect us. We are free, nothing stifles our potential, nothing pulls us back.

It sounds lucrative and enticing, but soon we realize that the twin keeps leaping and jumping to greater heights and while we sit surrounded by a mind and heart full of wishes and desires, wondering how to reach there. The gap between both continues to widen and finally one day we either break out of this web of unfulfilled desires or break down.

By the time we have broken out, leaped and jumped, barely reaching where the other one sat, they would have climbed few more flight of stairs - and the cycle continues...

The twin is our imaginary self...it is created by our parents but grows with us and in us. The other self plays multiple roles with equal dexterity and competence - it is a CEO one moment and a wanderlust traveller in the other.

The real world is imperfect and we might not be transitioning so smooth but that's not the idea....the idea is to make the life of your dreams and live it to the fullest...!
Wouldn't it be great if we could make ourselves so flexible, so agile, so fearless and so free!!

About growing up!!

Sitting alone amidst a room full of stuff scattered around, waiting to be put into bags and carried to a new place...lots of thoughts cross my mind - about life, about growing up, about future!!

With so many thoughts trying to rush out of my lips, I would have otherwise had the urge to pour my heart,shed some tears and long for a warm hug. But, today before I could run to that soul, I stopped myself to think if it was the right thing to do - the pouring out of whatever I had in my heart. Shouldn't I think about the other person too - the state of mind , the stage of life that the person might be in and whether I would be adding to their existing dilemmas about life ?...And I don't go !!

Today and many other days in the recent past did I stop myself from speaking up what I feel, I am trying to be more accommodating - not to comment on whether I like doing it or I take it as a part of growing up. I now, end up doing a lot of things that probably I would not have earlier - when I sit to think of the reasons behind acting so...I sit blank. There is an unknown feeling inside - I fail to recognize if it's loneliness, gloom, anxiety or mere silence. It scares me, bothers me but yet again, I don't share....I'm growing up!!!

I see people madly high on life, I ask to myself - "Have they found the purpose of life?". If they have, why haven't I?
What is it that I'm waiting to achieve, where is it that I'm tirelessly walking to reach? And some voice from within me laughs, a mockery filled laugh - it says - I'm running after a mirage that has never been, "a normal life"! 

As I grow up, every new day tells me how pointless my expectations are - there is no normal and how can something non existent be my destination?I realize that the journey of complexities that I'm struggling to keep myself abreast of is LIFE...

With this wisdom ..hopefully I have grown up!