What is Emotional Liberation and Why you need it in your life
A short piece on what I learnt about emotional liberation
Musings
Socialising and the importance of the “ME” time
One who has acute knowledge about socialising in different situations, and one who is also comfortable being with oneself – i.e one who embraces solitude and learns to spend time with oneself is truly invincible. While due to the exposure to social medias, and other platforms, more and more people seem to be comfortable with the former, the latter seems to fail many people and by nature is more hazardous to them. In fact some people have learnt to be able to socialise without any Social Medias, but they struggle every day in the company of their own selves. When asked about what advice he would give to young people, famous Russian Filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky said – “I’d like to say only that they should learn to be alone and try to spend as much time as possible by themselves. I think one of the faults of young people today is that they try to come together around events that are noisy, almost aggressive at times. This desire to be together in order to not feel alone is an unfortunate symptom, in my opinion. Every person needs to learn from childhood how to spend time with oneself. That doesn’t mean he should be lonely, but that he shouldn’t grow bored with himself because people who grow bored in their own company seem to me in danger, from a self-esteem point of view.” Often times, due to some subjective changes in lifestyles, socialising and learning solitude seem to be a choice people have to make, and choosing one is always tough. But people need to learn to move with the stream. If you haven’t learnt to be comfortable with yourself, it is fine to take some space, learn new skills, practice art or go on solo trips. If that doesn’t work, don’t worry, you’ll learn it in your own way. I, personally, try to “marinate” my mind, with moments which were a learning curve, relationships which had a sense of “Me” in it ,and with Words and Movie moments which are close to my heart. Also, the ones who learn to embrace the walls around them, seem to be in a better space than the ones who strive desperately every day to break those walls. The idea that your introverted phases are worse than the extroverted ones is delusional and in long term can be self-destructive. What defines you changes and so don’t try to surf upstream. A comfortable Ambivert is often a person who has seen both the extremes and who doesn’t shy away from being what he/she is. In any day, trying to socialise as well as spending time for oneself is going to be a hell of a task. In a time when people find it hard to have a proper work-life balance, allocating time for socialising and for ourselves is indeed almost impossible, but that doesn’t trivialise the importance of a work-life balance, socialising and the “ME” time in our lives.
You’re just one decision away….
In a time filled with uncertainty, anxiety and insecurity, related to almost every aspect of an individual’s life, are we even undermining or neglecting, the options we have over controlling our lives? I strongly believe that we’re just one decision away from “being closer” to everything we desire. And whether you’re going to take that decision or not, doesn’t matter as long you’re constantly aware that you’re just a decision away from being at least an inch closer. How cool it is to know that even though you may not control your dreams, there are a few things, that you can control in the journey towards your dreams? How cool is it to know that you’re just a decision away, from ‘being close’ to everything that others around you, are trying to be – Rich, Popular, “successful“, influential, blah blah blah – and yet you decide to weigh what is right and wrong according to YOU, the self-sufficient individual, and you choose your path in your own way? How satisfying it is to know that you can measure your life based on the decisions you take and not time, and thereby you can minimise the effect of the unforeseen circumstances by patting yourself at the back saying “At least I was screwed up by my own decision and not some illusion called time based on which everyone else seem to be operating”? Will this mindset work? Honestly, I don’t know. But again, I believe that it’s not about whether it’ll work, but it’s about deciding and pursuing it to see if it works and having this thought in your consciousness. Believe. #Decisions
“…And what is done in love is well done”
All my life till now, many people have told me this – “Bhuvanesh, your interests are very scattered. Why don’t you fix something you love and do that thing very well and be successful in that field?” And every time I heard this, I either told the other person or wanted to tell them that “I don’t do anything that I don’t love and hypothetically, even if I did something out of coercion or out of hate, I wouldn’t be talking about it all the time with you with such zing and passion” All my life till now, I had to give up one thing to be able to pursue another. When I was in 4th standard, I had to choose DCA (computer application course) over Karate as an extra-curricular. While growing up I had to choose one particular sport – Cricket/ Football/ Table tennis/ Badminton. Table tennis and Badminton went out of my life in the same pace it entered and then I chose Cricket. My close friends would have definitely heard, at least once, about the love-hate story between me, my cricket and the decisions which screwed up my cricketing dreams. I have taken innumerable decisions like that right from my schooling days. What hurt me more was, when I thought of the opportunity cost that I incurred in taking up one option. What if I put equal effort, time and dedication in all sports? What if I learnt karate from some other academy and not from my school? What if I had chosen the other one and became successful? “What if, what if, what if”. Other issues such as financial factors, transportation, time, etc. added more logs to this. All these anxious thoughts brought down my self-esteem and somewhere down the line and I found myself as just another person who was just average in almost everything. During those days, the parameters of measuring whether you are average or below or above were if you were exceptional in it, whether you being exceptional in it, was a popular thing, whether you have participated in competitions and won any awards. Things are changed now. The stereotypical questions still linger around me, I still need money to pursue the art forms I love, but my perspective about my interests and passion has changed. People still tell me to “Be passionate about only one thing and be great at it”. But I have started to ignore it as this pressure to be great is what withheld my inner strength all along. I write, I have started to paint and I will make a film someday. But I am not doing it to be a great painter or a great writer or a great film maker. I am going to do it because I LOVE it, because I want to EXPRESS myself and because I really don’t care about the parameters anymore. I believe that if you put in love and if you make art with dedication and if you expressed yourself honestly, greatness will come and knock your doors until and unless someone else with your identity, your love, your pain, your experience and your mind is born somewhere else in this planet. Bruce Lee said “I don’t fear for the man who practised 10000 kicks once, I fear for the man who practised 1 kick 10,000 times” and what I am trying to say is if you love all the 10,000 kicks, never hesitate to practise all 10,000 kicks, a 10,000 times or more. People have ridiculed me for this opinion I carry. “Who are you trying to impress?”, They ask and the answer is I want to impress my own consciousness and I strive every day to be as free as I can of the numbing social conditionings in my life. I am going to say this and be done with it – I want to make films; I write and I want to write more, I have started painting, I want to learn Violin someday, I want to travel a lot, read a lot, I want to buy a proper DSLR camera and pursue photography, I want to learn Jeet kune Do someday, I want to learn to cook, I want to set up my own company, I love learning about Firearms and I love flowers as I think they are very personal, beautiful and genuine as gifts ( literally, Guns and Roses 😛 ) and I want to have lots and lots of real conversations with many honest souls. I want to and I’d love to do a million more things. Bruce Lee said “I don’t fear for the man who practised 10000 kicks once, I fear for the man who practised 1 kick 10,000 times” and what I am trying to say is if you love all the 10,000 kicks, never hesitate to practise all 10,000 kicks, a 10,000 times or more. Thank you for reading keeping aside all your judgements. If you believe that you will love to do something, then by all means please do it. Van Gogh says – “If there is a voice inside you which says you can’t paint, and then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced”. A few days ago I spoke about this at an open mic and someone came up to me and informed about a quote which has been very highly misquoted. The original quote is – “Jack of all trades, master of none, is oftentimes better than master of one”
To The ‘Idea of You’
The Idea of You It’s been a long time and I still can’t believe that I even thought of writing something like this. I don’t even remember the last time I thought about you. Human mind is so strange isn’t it – All those memories, and after all that effort I had put in to forget and after moving on, in a minute it all came back to me like some kind of a flash back from a 90s dramatic movie and here I am, writing about the one thing I always thought I wouldn’t write about – The idea of you. After you deserted me, it’s quite obvious, I guess, that I did throw in a lot of curses at you for everything you did but after all these years, this Idea of you inside me, never faded away, but instead has somehow convinced me that maybe it was hard for you to leave me too. Just, Maybe. How much ever distant it is to reality or how much ever it really relates to you doesn’t really matter because it’s much more comfortable for me to think about it this way. After all, all that remains of you is just an abstract thought. I have changed so much ever since that I don’t even remember how I used to be. People have left me because they thought I was not being me and that I changed too much, for them to find whatever they wanted to find in me the 1st place & people came into my life because they resonated with the changes that happened to me. Hell, some people left me because they judged me as being the same old person and some stayed because they thought I was the same. It’s fair to say that even you would have changed but this idea of you, the idea of the person I loved never changed in me, but only grew very fond of me. I convinced myself that you had “died” because I really couldn’t find the person I loved, under this same old Chennai sky and all that was remaining was nothing like how you used to be. But somewhere down the line, this whole idea of the person that I once loved grew up with me and it said, “I’ll never leave you, Bhuvanesh. Even if you will “- Only that this time I truly knew it in my heart that it might actually turn out to be true. Ironical to all those poems I wrote about your looks, sometimes I don’t even remember how you looked unless I see that one picture that you sent me once. But I didn’t think a lot about you because, ironically, life was way too beautiful for me, than I ever imagined, to think about you. Life gave me a lot of souls to think about, than to think about you. Strangely, I was no longer alone in my dreams, I was no longer alone in conversations, I was no longer singing my songs alone and I never sat in a corner of a coffee shop all alone. Life gifted me many opportunities that I think you never deserved a minute of my mind space to think about, but strangely, I believe that this “idea of you” waited patiently, hiding behind some mystical memory waiting for something that I am still not very sure about. Things were so ugly back those days that I seem to carry a stern opinion about it. I think it’s obvious that I wanted to stab this idea of you. I have cursed you more number of times than I have ever thought of you in a loving way. But this idea of you, endured it all, and kept convincing me that maybe the real person would have done all that nonsense, but this idea of the person I loved was never guilty, but guilty of love. It endured everything I threw at it and it has become a part of me. I do agree with V, from “V for Vendetta” – Ideas are bulletproof. I still do remember those goodbyes you used to say via your eyes, those late night texts, the way you proposed me, those many last conversations we have had, those idiotic dreams and the many heroic things I used to think to get you back and now after all these years, that favorite song of mine doesn’t remind me of you that often, that song ( Kal ho na ho) which I introduced to you and which you listened the entire trip you went with you friends, never bothers me; your name doesn’t remind me of you as much as it reminds me of that actress with the same name and yet today, this moment I seem to share too many memories with this “Idea of you”. Do you know how beautiful it is to know that such painful thoughts with someone can still have such beauty inside it? Do you know how it is to think and have an idea of someone, that you know will never disappoint you? With a one whose maybes mean maybes? Everywhere I go, I search for this idea of you inside the people I meet. Many people came into my life and many of them wanted to replace you, and I did believe that some of them will replace you but let’s face it, you’re replaceable but my love for this idea of yourself can never be replaced. All the romantic drama that happened in my life after you, never made me fall in love. I was truly in love with you and that has given me the hope to look out for love with whomsoever I will spend my life with. “A girl like you deserves a prince charming from the heaven”, I said. “Bhuvanesh, you’re my prince” you said before calling and expressing your love to me for the very 1st time. But maybe all that you ever
Relationships – Big Boss?
In any kind of relationship, whether it is with your best bud from school or a new colleague in your office, it is always going to be hard if you are going to have a mind-set which is definitive about everything you share with people. Such people are always noticed defining things, for example, like what is closeness, what is care, what is expression, how much you should express, how much time it should take to declare out as being close and so on, everything based on all the relationships they’ve had previously. This creates a tendency in their minds to extract out what they want from the other person in the equation than understanding what they actually are. In such types of relationships, “Being yourself” is a luxury spa zone, which you get to enter only when the other person is not much into the equation. It’s just like a Luxury Budget prize which you get to win once in a blue moon (just adding something for the Bigg boss fans) Few equations just click instantly and a yeah few other equations may take time, no doubt, but having a predetermined mind-set about it is only going to create some unwanted tension. This mind-set is often confused with “Having Expectations”. Let me inform you, that this is an entirely different topic. Having expectations out of someone will turn out to be something very natural, as time goes. In simple words, if the issues relating to these expectations are like Speed breakers in a relationship, determining and commanding as to how the other person should be and how they’ve to behave or any such definitions, is like a road block. It might open up sometimes, but if you’re going to travel in the same road, you’ll be left to pay a hefty toll fare someday. In most cases the “victim” in such relationships is the person who believes that “it’s completely normal and that it just means a few adjustments for the other person and which by the way is also normal”. It is not normal and you shouldn’t fool yourself using this “Adjustment Trump Card”. If you have to forego this in order to sustain a relationship, pay a heavy Toll fare that leads you to nowhere or take a detour and let that surprise you while you keep yourself intact.
Positivity against Hatred – Random Thoughts
Look, maybe contrary to what others say, sometimes you might feel that the “love” others express to you, is a weakness as you tend to reciprocate more of it and that the “hatred” people show towards you, is what strengthens you. You aren’t wrong and you needn’t be totally right. I have been there too. But if you feel that way, use it and “start learning to change that hatred into positivity”. Some years ago after my schooling, when I was not at my best, and was just a broken human surviving with no hope or motivation about my future, I was fortunate enough to have learnt this lesson. I started using the hatred around me to build up my positivity and I still feel that is my biggest strength and I have also grown up to be a person who accepts love, as it is. It’s much similar to what we learn in our commerce classes – competition is always healthy if you know how to handle it. If someone is bitching behind your back, don’t react much for you don’t have to prove yourself to anyone. If someone criticises you directly, sends an abusive message, etc etc, feel the pain, give it back in return if you feel your self respect is at stake, realise how tall you’re than them, ask yourself if you’re being true to yourself and use that hatred towards building up your positive attitude. This is exactly what I told in a write-up I posted previously about Isaignani. This maybe looks so simple to you given the amount of words written in the net trying to express the same, but you would feel so damn good in the future when you are wielding a super power of processing hatred into positivity and not just that, you’d be starting to think more before hating others. But it’s not that easy, as we humans tend to hate hatred. It is indeed tough, but that’s how it is supposed to be
Are We Afraid to Think More?
Are we afraid to think? Or is it because of a blind egoistic trust we have on our statements that we don’t find a need to think an inch more?
An Insecure Mind: What-ifs and Maybes
Just when we feel that we have got it all sorted out, this uncertain life of us, throws at us some situations, people, etc and disrupts the clarity..
It’s like the popular quote, “When you find the answer, life changes it’s question”.
Out of the blue you meet someone, you get attached to them, time creates illusions and unsettlement, you start to feel insecure, you start missing them and your mind starts to over think.
Most of us have gone through this phase of ‘insecurity’. Such phases are one of the best learning curves in our lives.
So What exactly does a person feel or think during those insecure phases?
I have listed down some of the “What-ifs and Maybes that run in an insecure mind”
“It’s good to be nice to everyone. But…”
“No matter how strong you’re mentally, you can never be the shoulder to lean upon for everyone you care and it is a harsh truth we all have to accept.” No matter how much time you invest in being that person for some people, after a certain point, you’ll feel as if all you’re just a punching bag for them and that you can’t take any more negativity! There’s always this pressure on top of us to be the strongest support system and to take all of it. For some special people in your life, of course, no matter what it takes, no matter even if you’re in the worst of times, you’ll be there for them, and it need not necessarily be just for our own satisfaction of being there for them! But that’s not the case for everyone you care isn’t! Maybe that’s another reason why they are really ‘special‘. The most important thing we’ve to understand is that we can never take the risk of losing ourselves in the process of being there for others. Sounds selfish? You’ve to be! It’s good to be nice to everyone. But it’s even healthier to be nice to yourself first.