Trust fall

I was standing at the edge of the cliff, contemplating if I should jump or not. That was definitely what I had signed up for, yet… standing at the edge with just a measly flimsy rope tied to me feet… My body was screaming at me to turn back and run away! Is this enough? Can I trust this rope to hold me safe? Will I become a figure in statistics of failed bungee jump accidents? Will it really be safe and keep its promises? 

It sounds too good to be true... 

On the other hand, was the desire to be free above it all and fly, glide through the air. Falling without any bounds, free-falling into what seems like infinity, this could very well be the end. But with the faith and knowledge that the ropes are bound and that I am safe. It was a mix of all possible emotions within a fraction of time… 

If I could freeze that moment and separate out all my thoughts, it is probably a bit of excitement, fear, joy, curiosity, pushing one's limits, heart over mind, mind over body, priorities, survival, again fear, resignation to possible death, FAITH, I guess I got to know myself better finally when I took that leap!

It was the scariest thing I had ever done. I thought I was definitely going to die for those 5 seconds until I felt that tug of rope at my feet! 

Those 5 seconds of taking the plunge and leap of faith and surviving it, changed me! 

It is a constant reminder that if I look at my fears head on, there is a part of me which wants to just jump, soar and be free from it all.

It definitely helps to have these strong pillars in my life who seem to tell me “No matter what happens, You fall and I’ll catch you. I am there for you”. Wonder what I would do without these people. It is a constant reminder from the universe that I am not alone and that I am being taken care of. 

I guess all of my life are made of these moments, especially something that's new and scary. 

I am standing at the cliff and looking at this scary valley down below which might crush me into pieces if I take the plunge, and I wonder why my body aches… 

I see that I am neither standing on the cliff, nor have taken the leap. I am somewhere in between hanging on to the tine slab for my dear life even though my safety harness is secure… 

I guess when it is painful or a struggle, I simply need to have the faith and see that my ropes are secure! 

Bungee jumping was and will forever remain one of my most special memories! Because, in some sense, I am bungee jumping everyday!  :D

I asked her to be mine...

We had a complicated on-off relationship… and thinking about her, makes me go through a range of emotions ranging from joy, fun, love, bliss to betrayal, lies, manipulation, fakeness. I almost thought that we drifted apart, but I couldn’t completely let her go. Despite all the pain she put me through, she still meant something to me.

So, a small backstory – I have known her all my life as far as I could remember and she was my best friend, and we were inseparable and made each other so happy. My parents and little bro loved her. The friends I made later on liked her too, and I guess I felt proud that “my girl” was loved by all. She was the one who understood me perfectly and we were completely in sync!

I don’t remember the exact day when things started to turn around and I started feeling her pressure on me. The close people around me dint seem to like her much and I had to avoid her if I had to hang out with my new pals. She too ignored me a lot, and started putting me down. Oh those blatant lies which she told me. It stung. You know what’s worse than being lied and cheated to… ? Being lied and cheated by a person whom you considered to be your soulmate. She made me feel that I was not good enough and obviously I reciprocated the hurt and made sure I let her know my piece of mind!!!

I slowly started avoiding her which was difficult because she was someone I run into every single day. I was obnoxious, rude and adamant that I will not talk to her anymore. Though there were moments where I would secretly check in on her quietly to see if she was okay. I am sure she felt the same way, because I noticed that when I leave the room, I could feel her painful gaze follow me across the room speaking of a long lost friendship.

During this phase, a lot of our common friends did their best to patch up our relationship and they failed. Some things are just meant to be left broken…

Yet, I couldn’t avoid her any longer.

Something finally happened and both of us were put in a locked room with no way out. I had to confront her. We fought, screamed at each other, cried and finally somehow got in touch with the truth. We did drift apart, and I started to understand the circumstances which led to our break up. I guess she never lied to me. It was me who was not willing to accept her honesty and I kept pushing her aside. I realized how much I missed her and it felt so good to be back in her arms where I could just be myself. Though I am comfortable with a lot of other people, with her, my smile is a little more genuine, my joy seems even more blissful, my quirks get even weirder, my anger gets more passionate, and my shoulders are a little more relaxed. I realized how much I missed that… This was one relationship which I definitely shouldn’t have broken.

We finally met!

So now, after all these years, I looked at her and confessed how much I love her and asked her to be mine… she looks right back at me through the mirror with the beautiful happy smile and finally said “Yes!!!!”. My close family and friends cheered loudly!!

… and they lived happily ever after.

Happy International Women’s day! All you dear ladies, look into the mirror and love yourselves

When history repeats itself…

What do you do when something unpleasant happens in life? That sickening sense of Déjà vu when you are hoping that it is just a bad dream and will pass away very soon… You carefully planned your moves, words, actions, behavior, picked your team, it should all work out THIS TIME, but no! 

History repeats itself… It looks like you are winning, you have reached the peak… but your path becomes a bell curve which keeps going down after the peak. You lost the war.

But of course you don’t let this bog you down. Everybody face setbacks and failures right. You can’t make this about yourself and be too hard. You just brace yourself for the next wave to hit you and handle it this time. Hence, you learn from these lessons and move on…

The next time you face a “situation”, you are ready now. You plan your moves, words, actions behavior, team + valuable inputs from your last failure. You have to win now. And it looks likely, because you have now gone beyond your last failure and reached new heights.

Unfortunately, it ends up being a bell curve.

This happens again… the same rigmarole. Get ready, plan your words, actions, behavior, team + Valuable inputs from last 2 failures… get higher than before, but then crash down… next attempt… yada yada yada, get higher than before but crash again…

Again, the bruised ego wants to protect you and says, “Awww… this wasn’t about you my dear. X Y Z went wrong and you did everything you could. Right? Open quora, get on Tumbler, Subscribe to dailyinsirationalquotes on Instagram to pump you up.. #nevergiveup. Do you know how many times Edison failed before… Do you know how many rejections JK Rowling…”.

This is my answer not to the many collective battles small and big (Heck, for me even uttering a word of “hi” to the person who sits next to me at work is a victory) which I lost, but to the ones which became a pattern. 

The ones which I lose time and again… passions that I never completely pursued, decisions that I was too scared to take… This one is for the relationships that I lost or people that I was too afraid to hurt and ended up losing them anyway. 

This is for holding on the things which don’t matter or ignoring the things which actually do. This is uneasy because they happen again and again. So what do you do when you hit some rock bottom? Get up and try again right?

Accepting failures and moving on to an seemingly unexpected but inevitable way down…  Not anymore. I am frankly tired of a bell curve. I don’t want to get higher than before. I want to become an exponential curve which gets to the top and stays put… saturation point!

What was the common unifying factor in all of the above? The individual themselves right? The cycle of “preparing for the battle” … planning the words, moves, actions… being careful. That cycle never changed much did it? We somehow always follow the same pattern thought from some level it seems to be all different.

A wise man once said that you cannot keep doing the same thing and expect a different result. Quotes like “Fake it till you make it” became my mantra. And it actually do help open up and get over inhibitions. But the point to be noted here is the word “fake”. At some point you won’t be sure where your real self ends and the fakeness begins. Some people are getting judged for being real, while others are getting all the love for being fake!

I have seen a lot of people who are nice, say all sweet words, super fun to hang out and get drawn to them… not being a true judge if their “niceness” was their nature or something which they were faking. This is my new magnet – Watching people just being real even if it comes off at the expense of not sounding so nice. Not being rude or hurtful – but being real, honest genuine and unapologetic about it. Polite and understanding enough to live and let live… but strong and confident in who they are. They don’t try to blend in at the expense of forgoing themselves.

I hope I have the guts to be that person who can be true at least to my own conscience. I really do. And I guess to make that shift from a bell to exponential, the only way to do it is to break the pattern. Do something different. That thing which shakes you to the core, but deep down in the quietest of moments, it feels right… just got to do it!

When history repeats itself, break free and make history instead.

PS: I just wanted to record this inner monologue. This might end up being a total failure of an idea. But if all works out well, I will be so happy to tell myself “See, Told ya!”! It all worked out well. If not, well… I should try something different.

Thanks to Deepesh for the images and for being a "curvy(Mathematical)" awesome designer and for being the cool guy that he is!!! 

  

Honkers - Back off!

One of the most vexing experience of my life, just picture this. Waiting in standstill traffic with no place to budge, while the person behind you feels that honking continuously would magically change the signal to go, or create an exclusive path for the supreme entitled being that he/she is. Rules are not meant for them. They need to go somewhere ASAP, and feel that their destination is worth more than the scores of others around.

Just another view on Indian roads at peak hours 

So, this post is for such people who feel that honking is the answer! You might be one of “them”, in which case you would either be in denial of being one and hence you need to pay more attention to this… or you agree with what I say and hence feel the need to share this post to other honkers out there (He he… this is more than a strategy for higher views! )

Ambivalence is like a prevalent theme across mankind (why man“kind” ? maybe later). We as a totality are strife with contradictions. And usually that’s what we celebrate and cherish. That’s probably what made us evolve to dominate the planet (Yea right! And see what’s become of it). I guess people still have the primal need to fight, dominate and get through. Even if we no longer fight for food, shelter as did our cavemen ancestors, we feel the need to dominate the random person on streets through those honking wars. But of course most people would be in denial of their own inherent honker nature.

Apparently people have creative ways to justify their own behavior and consider themselves misunderstood. So, I tried to get into those misunderstood shoes of those honkers… Trust me, I tried. Hear me out…

India’s population is ~1.3 Billion and we account for ~20% of world population despite accounting for ~2% of land area! Now tie this up with noise levels out on the road. If a quiet office has a decibel level of 50 db, the busy road is 80 db. Now it there are studies which show that 5 db (16.66%) is solely contributed by excessive honking. This is huge! So I hope you agree that honking is something of a problem. Now about the people who actually honk… The probability of encountering a bigger honker than you, is extremely high right? And two negatives make a positive? So honking at a honker is alright and this automatically excludes you from the category right? Killing a killer leaves the world with the same number of killers, but killing more than one killers and becoming a serial-killer-killer is like doing the world a favor right? Or maybe the louder you are, you can dim down those “other” idiots on the road?

In an ideal switch traffic signal which lasts for 111 s, assuming that that cars takes 7.77 s to cross the signal and bikes take 6.66 s, adding 2.22 s at alternate vehicles for a potential time lag for safety reasons we can estimate that 22 cars and 33 bikes could go through peacefully. However, there are additional 4 cars and 7 bikes after the signal has turned who decide that “hey, it turned red *JUST NOW*, and hence its ok to cross. The ends up taking ~14 s from vehicles from the other lane who are blocked and thus irritating them. This “irritation” has been proved to be a definite instigation for a person to turn into a honker with a statistical significance of 0.00001% (I escaped).

Now about those who decide not to put on the indicator when they make a sharp turn… I guess they have telepathic powers, and hence assume that the other commuters also have telepathic powers to know that just because they are in the further left side of the road, they still want to turn right suddenly at the signal? Unfortunately, most people DO NOT have telepathic powers!

Of course there are some who are eternally lost and confused and turn on the wrong indicator! Ah, I couldn’t find a justification for this except “some people just want to watch the world burn”, or “just plain vanilla stupid” or as Aristotle said “No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness”. However, for practical reasons, I wish such behavior is monitored for a month before making the driving license permanent.

This summarizes some of my main on road concerns. I now realize that I should provide counter arguments, but I hope that the absurdity of these points bring those honkers to shame and starting tomorrow, everybody have an almost perfect road sense (99.99999% is fine)

People… chill out. Shift your focus from the horn to the brake maybe. Just for a bit. Patience… take a deep breath… Let them go when its their turn and your turn will definitely get yours. Let us try to be at peace and not just that, be a reason for someone else’s peace of mind too!

Note: Just because my other blogs are deep and full of symbolism, this blog is just about honkers, and NOT to be construed as an analogy for loud people who talk out of turn. The on-road situation should NOT be compared to any real life incidents just because life is a journey! :P