Mothers love

When a someone in the world knows that they’re about having a child, they usually turn their lives a whole 180 degrees, specially if they’re heading down the wrong path. I wouldn’t really know exactly, mainly because I’ve never experienced it, but so I hear. There was something I always wanted to say on this topic, but its hard to put into a few words that comprise a poem, but a blog post is perfect.

A lot of us live with our mothers (for those that don’t, I’m sorry), but we don’t get how much they do for us. Maybe our little minds begin to slightly comprehend as we grow up, but they do give up a lot. Some give up their education, their career or their entire life just to raise us. They know what they’re giving up and they do understand, but they still go ahead and do it. They fight to protect us, they keep us safe, they stay awake at night when we’re sick, because that’s who they are.

Now take us. We’re care-free, and most of us take our maternal love for granted. We use it to get what we want, but we rarely care about they think. We’ve been so used to receiving that we think that’s what mothers are; portals leading to stuff we want for example money, going out, a new device or gadget we want. A father can more or less handle us. They’re more firm with their decisions. They put their foot down, and there’s little you can do to change their mind. Mothers on the other hand, put on a puppy face and a few tears, and you’ve gotten what you wanted.

We don’t listen to our mothers much, because of their maternal instincts, they let go, till we think we have power. So we don’t listen and do more or less what pleases us. They think about our lives, our future and us as a whole even when they make the slightest decision about us. And we, we just care about the present. What thrill will going out with our friends tonight bring us, or what will it be like to go to a trip to Dubai with our friends, and then we use that puppy face and tears to convince them to go against their will, even though all along they know they’re right, but they cannot help to displease us.

And that’s what concerns me. They gave up their life, their potentially everything, just to raise you up, and you, you being the ignorant fool that you are just let that love slide by and only reciprocate when we want something from our mothers. I know I do take my mother for granted sometimes, but I also know all the sacrifices she made for me. She helps me during the day, and at night she cries for me as she prays to god. Mothers. They’re a gift we should cherish. Ask those who haven’t really had their mothers around, or those who never had mothers. Ask those who had to raise themselves without that maternal love, ask those who wished they had just a hint of what you did ,and you’ll know what you have is special. What you have cannot be bought or sold, what you have is literally priceless. Shame on those who raise their voice above their mothers, shame on those who disrespect their mothers and shame on those who take them for granted.

The cliche of happy birthday

So today was my birthday. Actually it still it. But there was nothing very much happy about it, and got me wondering, "happy birthday". What if you were dying and this was going to be your last birthday, how exactly was that happy? Or what if you were having the most terrible day of your life, how exactly was that happy?

Here's the background on my terrible 18th. I woke up terrified, I had an exam I had barely prepared for and I was pretty sure it wasn't going to be a walk in the park. It was going to be more like being dragged on a rusty lead infused tarmac while being chained to a pick up truck bursting at 100 miles an hour in a cris-cross motion. And I wasn't far from prediction; it was a terrible nightmare. I mean while studying for the exam, I didn't get a word, instead my brain was imaging potatoes. Literally. Potaotes.

And as if that wasn't enough, I hadn't slept for 3 days in a row properly, courtesy of my high schools examination boards messed up schedule, and I was in for another aweful afternoon; preparing for chemistry. I got bored mid-way studying, so I decided to take a break and started talking to a couple of people I know from my childhood. We laughed, we joked, we had a fun time. I even met my friend who had just come back from abroad after 6 months. Happy birthdays floated around, but there was honestly NOTHING remotely happy about it.  The day went by, and more wishes piled up on my phone, calls, messages, Facebook, Twitter, DM, inbox, all that stuff. They didn't make me feel better the least bit.

But you know why they call it happy birthday? Because its only a happy birthday if you have that one person in your life that can make your day just by saying it. The rest of the world said it because it was social protocol. Few meant it, but still, just the words happy birthday mean so much when they come out a person that means so much to you. And that's all I needed. That one message, that one phone call, that one text. And it came. Albeit a little bit late, but it did. And it made my night. For a moment I sat there smiling like a foolish idiot, and it made me forget about my horrible day for a second. I didn't need the worlds wishes when I had the person that makes my other half beside me. I didn't need the empathy or the sympathy of the people that were going through the same hell as I was. All I needed were two words from the right person. That was my happy birthday.

I know this is more personal, but we've had a rocky few months. A few ups and downs, a few weird things going on between us, but that message there is what keeps us going. It doesn't matter, because I know that we're still there for each other, and that's all that matters. And like I said, I needed two words from the right person, instead I for a whole freaking paragraph longer than a Harry Potter series. Needless to say, I run around thinking I'm independent, but to hell with that, I need my other half more than anything in the world, and she came through for me today, so as my birthday ends, I want to say thank you for everything. From the spec of the dust to the universe, you mean everything to me, I hope I have remotely made your day like you made mine with your words. <3

Finding yourself

Finding yourself

“I’m taking a year off to find myself.” That was a phrase that always annoyed me, partially because I never understood what it meant. What is finding yourself? I think even blind people know where they are, or have these people who are finding themselves suddenly become demented and assumed the identity of Waldo without knowing?

It wasn't until much long ago when I had to make my university choices that I understood what this phrase meant. It was more like “what was I born to do, and who am I” kind of question. And I’ve given myself quite a few good hard looks in the mirror, but I don’t know who I am. There’s nothing but a bare reflection looking back at me. And even though I know I’m whole, it was the very first time I felt empty. I didn't really know myself. Who was I exactly? I needed to find myself.

We go about our lives, doing what other people have dictated for us, and live by their set of rules. We've molded ourselves into becoming what others have wanted, perhaps for themselves, and I remembered the phrase from one of my favorite songs “Curtains are drawn but we’re still dressed.” There are a million ways to analyse this, but here’s one of my theories. We have been put on show for so long, that we’ve become used to it. It doesn't really matter who we really are, what our niche in life exactly is, because even when no ones watching, we’re still playing the characters we’ve been built into. We don’t try different roles to see which one suits us, because we’ve never gotten out of our original cast.

What happens if one day we get fed up of who we are? What if one day we want to find who we are, and just understand ourselves, but its too late? What if we’re so iron clad into this fixture that we never get out of it till it fully sets and drills us into itself? And I’ve heard people say “I know what I want to be. I want to be a doctor,” or “I want to be an engineer.” Honestly, I envy the people who say “I want to do arts,” or “I want to play music”. We stare down at these people like they’re inferior, when really, most of us are the lost souls who have no idea what we want to be.

For me, I heard the sounds of people saying “doctor, doctor doctor.” Sometimes at night I might’ve even heard whispers of people telling me that. And so I went for it. I went for what the world intended me to do, because it seemed like the logical step to take. Money, job security and a good name; it seemed like the perfect package. Except I was the unhappily wrapped gift inside it.

I feel it inside me. I feel that I’m made for a reason, but I wish I knew what it was. And when I say made for a reason, I don’t mean I feel like I’m chosen, or I’m meant to be famous, but really made for something, a purpose. Kingdoms have fallen because the menial slaves couldn’t get their jobs done properly. But I still don’t know my true happiness. I still don’t know my true calling if you like to call it that.

And throughout this passage I’ve said we, us, you and me, and so far its just been a figure of speech really. But are there others out there who’re looking at a reflection they don’t understand, or is it just me? Because I bet there are many people who get something.Maybe not a full picture, but even a hazy one is fine. Maybe pixelated, maybe shaky, but I just feel like I wish I knew who I was. I go into exams and I come out of them wanting to rip my own head off, because I don’t get what’s going on. I don’t understand the reality of the matter. I don’t know who I am. Maybe if I did, I’d do something I love rather than something that is conventional. I really want to know who I am, I really want to understand the reason for my existence, but I feel it would take time, and I’ve always been taught time is money. Granted that I most probably will do nothing useful in this time, but thats the illusion I live in, becuase lets face it, giving up on a dream ( in this case finding yourself) because of the time it will take to accomplish is foolish because time till pass by anyway, but for now, I will find the comfort in knowing that I’m not alone, that I have someone beside me in this ugly world of unknown.

I don’t usually do this, but to end off, here’s a little … thingy, I honestly don’t know what to label it,song, poem, whatever, called “lost soul”. I hope you like it :)

Im trying to find myself,

In this ugly world,

I’m looking in a mirror,

But there’s nothing to be seen,

I hear people saying,

They’ve known who they want to be,

Is it just me,

Or are there people,

Looking at a,

Reflection they dont understand,

I think I was made for greater things,

I wish I knew for once what they were,

There’s a hollow form looking back at me,

And sometimes I look back and think,

Is this really me?

I really wish I knew myself,

I really wish someone would hold my hand,

And take me to the light,

Sadly I’m living a fantasy,

Sadly this is reality,

I guess I’ll have to live with,

Just someone being there by my side,

Someone who's just as lost as me,

Maybe we’ll find ourselves together,

Maybe we’ll even become a you and me.

Poverty: A Curse Or A Blessing?

When I was a child, my family and I used to take a road trip to my dads village every year back in India. There was something different about living in that environment, it was calm, quiet, and most importantly, it made you appreciate what you had. There were many things I learnt there, but there was one thing I will never forget. 

The tires of our 1990 Marshall Jeep trudged through the uneven muddy road, and the engine that I never gave a heed to before in the midst of the city noise was louder than ever. I heard the familiar noise of children and I turned around to looked back. They were running after the car; I guess the engine's noise attracted them. It wasn't everyday that cars rolled up into the village, it was something rare for them, and they looked like little children on the morning of Eid or Christmas Eve eagerly running after it. 

We got out of the car, and they ran off away from us, laughing and enjoying themselves. It bugged me how happy they were. After all, I was the special boy. Our family got the special treatment of rich sweets, a generator and high quality food, so why were they happy? I looked at them outside the window. They had found something else to chase, and off they went, yelling and laughing again. I thought what did they have that I didn't? Up until now I never knew that the answer. Little did I know the answer lied in the question that I was asking myself; they had nothing. 

You and I, we do have images to upholster or at least maintain. We will buy a new iPhone if it means we are more regarded in society. We get flashy cars so that people see us and respect us more. There's a race, even if subconscious, to get to the top of the ladder of materialism. But they, they have nothing to maintain and upholster in a niche society were getting from day 1 to day 2 is the biggest accomplishment that they achieve almost daily. 

We have something to lose, we have something to gain. We need to be careful in what we do or say, but who's going to look at the poor man? They only have something to gain, their lives have little give to become worse, so why worry about it? They have accepted the fact that they are poor and they have moved on to look at the positive side of life. We, we will never be content with our lives, we will never be happy with who we are because we want more. We want bigger, we want flashier, we want to be at the top of the world. We can't, neigh, we don't want to accept who we are and that keeps us going in a circle of an unhappy life. 

We have the stress and tension of a million things for example jobs, studies, where will our lives be in 5 years time and our plan to get there yadayaday, and with every milestone we finish, we feel happy for ourselves.

But our happiness isn't real. Our happiness is like shots of heroin. It gives us that high of happiness for a second which is then subdued by the stress and tension of the next milestone. We'll strive for that shot of success to be happy every single time, and the next high of happiness will need a bigger accomplishment and a bigger goal to being achieved. 

It all boils down to one question really. Are we happy? When we pass by a homeless person, we feel sorry for them. Some of us might throw in a dollar to the poor man, try to indulge in his sad life for a second or two and then move on. But should we feel sorry for them, or feel sorry for ourselves? The answer is we should feel sorry for ourselves, because no matter what happens or what we do, they will be truly happy. And honestly put, no matter how many Benjamin Franklins we collect, it wont buy us happiness, and no matter how much we educate ourselves, we'll never be able to learn happiness like they have. I'll end it off by saying I envy every last one of them, but the materialism of this life has gotten to me so bad, that even though deep inside I know they are truly happy, I'll still run around looking for that high, looking for that next shot of happiness.    

The Legend Of Problems

Whenever we see a Ferrari pass by, or lay our eyes on a mansion, we secretly hope we had the lifestyle of the owner. Money, a lavish lifestyle and no problems. And its at the last one where we go wrong. No problems. No matter who you are or what you do, no matter where you live or where you go, you'll always face problems. From the most powerful man on the plant, the President of the United States, to the beggar with the small stature , we've all got something in our lives that pries on us and keeps us awake at night.

Being a person who loves helping others, I've learnt one thing over the years. One of the biggest problems in the world is disappointment. Disappointing yourself, the people around you, your family or friends or those who mean more than the world to you. The reason is I believe, is that the disappointment eats away at you. Its like cancer to be frank. It starts small and gets bigger and bigger and bigger till we cant handle it anymore.

Some of us learn to adapt to our problems. We work around them. We incorporate them into our lives and treat it like a normal everyday scenario. Others cry it out, let it live for a little while and in the end let it go finally. These two methods are fairly short termed. They last at maximum a day or so and then you go about living your life as if nothing happened. And its fine really, till the next problem arises. Then all the past starts re-surfacing. Little by little and one by one the problems start hatching from the eggs you forced them into.

Truth is, you haven't helped yourself. You buried your problems and they're now coming out. The reality is that you never tried addressing them properly, you just thought about them, and after a while let go. You threw the boomerang, and came back and hit you in the face. But even after this, people keep on going. They get back up, brush themselves and keep walking.

 I can see the fake smile on their face, I can see the sorrow and the pain in their eyes. I understand them, I get where they are coming from. But that path leads down a single road. The brain is sophisticated beyond our imagination, but there is so much 8 pounds of meat can take before its hardware snaps. Some of us can take it more than others, but still, you'll reach a point of psychopath-ism. You'll come a single point where you start to lose it all. You either couldn't be damned anymore and accept it, or you let it take over you and let your problems make irrational decisions that you'll regret all your life.

Maybe your problems don't come back all at once. Maybe they take time, or maybe they just need that trigger, that one last straw or that one big thing that sets light to the hay. And here is where the spiraling starts. You start going into deep depression modes and you lose yourself in your sorrows. You start feeling bad. You start hating yourself for all the mistakes, and you blame yourself for whats going on in the world. You pick up the weight of the world along with yours on your fragile shoulders and off you go, because you need to make something right to cover up for all the wrong that's happening in your life. You feel like if you cant help yourself you have to help those around you. And that's the most positive spin on it.

Ill admit it, my life story in buried in each one of the things I've just talked about. I'm somewhere between broken and whole, and its not just me, a lot of those around me are the same. Somehow I believe those neck deep in problems attract others of their own 'kind'. But I've realised, going about everyday like nothings happened and everything's alright isn't the solution to the problem. We need to grow up and own up to these problems. We need to understand the severity of the matter, or else one day that damned boomerang is bound to come thrusting back and we wont have time to evade. Its up to us to salute our problems goodbye, wave at them as they pull away from our bodies and become separate identities. Its not up to the neighbors that we casually say hi to when we pass by, or the co-workers/best friends that we meet everyday, its to us. Its up to you and me to bury that horse in the ground.

Being Normal: The Phenomenon

"Why can't I be a normal human being for once?" She asks me, and secretly I pray this question is rhetorical.

"Why try to be normal when you're so unique?" I try to convince her of the reality of the situation at hand.

"Unique is so over-rated," she replies.

I might not be old and wise, but I've had my fair share of this conversation with people. More often than less, it’s the people that stand out the most that have this feeling. People who feel like they don’t really fit in with the rest of society but want to. Their fear is that if they're caught being who they really are, they will be disbanded from society and frowned upon.

The reality of the matter is, I'm not normal, hell, I'm a lunatic 90 ways to hell. I have phases where I run around making stupid noises, I make the world's lamest and stupidest jokes, I'm weird and freakishly emotional, and I express myself by who I am and I get by just fine.

The question that comes up here is what is normal really? What exactly are the parameters for being this so called 'normal'? If I were to barbeque a cockroach (whose name is Bob by the way) and eat him, I'd be classed as a nut job on this side of the world. Now let's move to Asia where people have this on the street as if it was a snack or a delight. There I'm normal. There I'm just like one of them.

Not satisfied with that example? Alright, take my mentally ill brother. He has a condition that his brain is that of a 3 year old, and no matter WHAT street he walks on, he's always viewed as being special. He might not talk like me or you, he might throw tantrums like a 3 year old, but he's way more than the cover shows. Last week, I finished 15 years of education at school, yet with his un-educated mind, he still finds ways to fool me, and as if that’s not enough, there is a reservoir of fully qualified MDs and PhDs in my house that are just as easily fooled by him.

Truth be told, this whole 'normal' thing is something set by society of a model person who they would like to be. This 'normal' doesn’t really exist. It’s a combination of the majority of people and their own standards pooled together to form this phenomenon, and whoever doesn’t follow this 'normal' standard isn’t part of society. But we're not machinery that you throw the defective piece away because it didn’t meet the quality checklist and let it rot in the junkyard. We weren’t born in a standard setting. We're all different.

Since we were born, we had the 'societal handbook of normal living' drilled into our brains. How to act and react, how to respond, how be this and how to be that, and some people who were an inch out have hammered themselves to fit in and succeeded in doing so. Others on the other hand, wake up every morning and look at themselves in the mirror, and pick up the pieces off the floor and shape themselves the way society wants it, pulling it together to fit into normal, all the while breaking down inside.

What isn’t normal is forcing people to get into skins they don’t fit into. Let's take Albert Einstein, one of the greatest minds of physics. He wasn’t normal. If normal was a circle, he was a 50 edged shape. His teacher abandoned him and let him go because he was different. Had his mother thought the same way, some of the great revolutions of the world wouldn’t have been possible. There are millions of things out there that depend on E=MC2, things we use in daily life. As insignificant as it seems, that single equation is what a lot of modern technology is based on.

I'm not standing here saying lets diminish all societal rules and live like animals. Even animals have ways of life, but what I'm saying is, being different is fine, being different is the real normal. What I'm saying is that society should give people a chance before they judge a book by the cover. Maybe get into their boots and understand them before they start putting every different person on trial just because they don’t suit and/or match their standards. And let me end with this, we're ALL different. You, me, my brother everyone, it's just that some people are more closely related than others, and those who are not normal are usually the most amazing people to get to know, and my fellow writer to whom I tribute this piece to, normal is a cliché, and guess what? You're awesome.