Aesthetics and Nostalgia: A Step towards Loving Self

 

"But how deeply, painfully, irreparably had he wounded her and upset her life, and how restless and violent she was in her determination to re-shape her destiny and start afresh!" ___Boris Pasternak in Dr Zhivago

 As I reread this quote I smell the beauty of truth and love. An old book having eternal flame of truth. The smell is mildly pungent, of tobacco and paper soaked in the spirits of literature. Classics are classics. As I douse my hunger down the pages, a surprise awaits. A huge bonus that makes my day and turns me richer. A surprise gift. The story ends to live in your memory. But then there is a beginning once more. There are 43 pages of poetry, taking the last page of the book to dreamy depths, to last forever. That's how Boris Pasternak surprises and gives a bonus to his humble reader in Dr Zhivago. 

The most profoundly charming things are not about money, power and authority. They are about sweet memories. Create such moments. These may come in a book, in a movie, or anywhere on the broad stage of life. These are the ripe fruits for you. Pluck them. You won't be disappointed.

Even in the darkest phase of life, these little lamps can show you the path. Keep your store of such cozy moments well stacked. They make a very comfortable lounge chair when you are weak, debilitated and feeling low.

Life's grand events, even if they are very paying otherwise, are still noisy and don't give the comfort that a tiny sip of a pleasant memory can give you. Don't just take huge swigs, take little-little sips of solace on offer. Life's real worth is measured by such small sinews.

Your fabric of happiness is spun with the threads of such pleasing moments. As you run on the stage of life, don't miss to pick up these pleasantries and weave your carpet of happiness. It is possible. Nostalgia draws out such brief, suave moments, not huge episodes and gala events of life. Just reflect, even most extraordinary events will not give that soft balmy touch as will a tiny episode of love, care and gratitude. If you don't have the heart to spot beauty in the ordinary, no decked up specialness will be sufficient to make your heart go ga ga. As Rose Kennedy says, “Life isn't a matter of milestones, but of moments.”

Orson Welles: “We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone.”

Well, the golden aesthetics of love and friendliness are the anchor support for our soul as the external self gets tossed in the treacherous bay. The sepia-toned nostalgia of such tiny episodes prepares you to be pleasantly surprised and innocently overawed by the smallest of a thing. It strengthens the basic unit of your being. You don’t lose your footing when you come face to face against the mammoth structures of life. It may sound surprising, but that’s how it operates. A tiny miracle! Enjoy it!

Rise in Love

 

"The trouble with falling in love is that, unlike death, love kills you every moment, robbing you, at first, of reason, and then, slowly, consuming you bit by bit until you lose the sense of time, of the true nature of things, and of all other precious relationships."_Siddhartha Gigoo in Mehr: A love story.

No wonder they say one ‘falls’ in love!

Well, one falls when the offshoots overweigh the supporting roots. You definitely fall when you impose your desires, expectations, fears and insecurities over the object of your love, covering it like a parasitic vine.

Life, dear brothers and sisters, is a well-cooked love recipe. And no conjecture please about me ‘falling’...haa haa... My version of love is ‘rising’. There is abundance of love around, of family, nature, birds, animals, flowers, clouds, honeybees, insects, beetles, crowded bazaars, isolated vales, springs, summers, winters, autumn, everything in fact. If you have the eyes for it, everything is saturated with love like luscious honey oozing from fat honeycombs hanging over wild rose thickets and the nectar dripping. And the honeybees tasting their own fruits as they buzz around collecting pollen from the flowers! Isn’t it dreamy and wonderful?  

When hate vanishes, love blooms and you ‘soar high’ with such love instead of ‘falling’. You love all, simply because you don't hate anyone. You don’t have any enemies because you are friendly to all. If you have only love to offer, you just cannot have hate around you. The hatred that we see in our lives is just the multiplication of the traces of discontent in us. We simply project it over others, coming out clean chit after blaming them for being the cause of it. Mind it, we just make them the screens to project our inner disharmony. The moment we realize it, more than half the battle is already won.

So kill the agents of hate and anger inside you, and as a natural consequence their visible manifestations in your life get killed from around you. You see light around, simply because there is no darkness inside anymore. You smile more, simply because a smiling face still contributes to the struggles of even a stranger coming across the street.

Rumi: “This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet.” 

No wonder, infinite possibilities to rise await you. Come on, take the first step!

Love for a man or woman is the first step in the ladder. Fall in love with your man or woman, and go all the way in pursuit of your passionate craving. Melt in it like butter in the frying pan. Lose your identity, break the walls and surrender your self-driven cart to the free wheels of airy jaunts. This is the fire that melts the outermost stony ramparts that hinder you from the freest flight. No wonder, to rise you have to fall first. It’s the rebound that shapes your destiny. All natural laws say so. Your rebound is just in proportion to your ‘fall’ for your man or woman.

Only after touching one summit, you feel like going for the other. So give all you can in your love for your man or woman. Touch your peak. There is no chance for half-bakes. Cook it full. Boil it well. Lukewarm things keep you in a vague haze. Bake it full. Boil it. Vaporize with the heat of your passion. Then you feel like soaring high, instead of crawling piteously in the cauldron.

But don't just stop at this point. It's just a beginning. It’s the path to a bigger destination: from particular to the universal. With your categorized love for your partner, or for your family, friends and siblings, you get a glimpse of the bigger possibilities. The limited love, the so called love defined by your relations, is simply a window to help you have a glimpse of the infinite potential of bliss, the universal love.

Do you know, why do you feel like ‘falling’ in love again and again? It’s simply because you don’t ‘fall’ completely. You go with insecurities and fear. You love your man and woman with lots of apprehensions, fears and insecurities. You are partially into it. No wonder, the delicacy of your affair is always under-cooked. And you always feel dissatisfied, craving for more and more. Then you proceed to cook another half-cooked affair. We rarely complete the recipe. It’s my promise, if you cook one relationship well, you will not be left with any appetite to run for more along the avenue.

So guys keep falling in love. But just falling forever doesn't define you as a human being. Rising will. And rising occurs when you start loving all, when you use your full potential to be a loving being. And the path to hitting the full potential starts with your full love for your partner without any roadblocks of fear, insecurity and apprehensions. The destination of love is to be all inclusive. Your love relationship with the man or woman in your life is simply an apprenticeship to help you become an all-loving person. So keep falling, but learn to rise and love all.

As you enjoy the ecstatic grip of the love chains of your partner, slowly learn to wipe away the names of the people you hate from your little black book. Take a sip of love from the petals of your partner and forget and forgive one name at a time. The honey of love should be sweet enough to make you forget all the bitter tastes driven in your memory at the mention of certain irritating names in your life.  If your life’s bitterness isn’t swiped away by the sweet cherry of your love bites, then you have to objectively assess your level of dive in the love pool. If you are sufficiently deep in the pool of love for your man and woman, you won’t have any reason to be hateful towards even the worst people who have hurt you.

So here I rise high and see all people good in their unique ways.

Love you all!

Love the Poet in You

 James E. Faust: “A grateful heart is a beginning of greatness. It is an expression of humility. It is a foundation for the development of such virtues as prayer, faith, courage, contentment, happiness, love, and well-being.”

Isn’t it romantic beyond words? Come out of the stiff-faced prose of life. It squeezes you too tightly. Delve into the open charms of poetry. There is freedom for exhilarating escapades.  

No guys no, I am not asking you to go out there and be a starving shayar. Expect money from other mundane occupations. Modern manmade system leaves you with countless opportunities to make mullah.  All I am asking you to do is to get in league with harmony, rhythm somewhere deep in you, which is just a replica of the cosmic harmony of stars and galaxies going cyclically as per the ultimate law.

Plato: “Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.”

And as love caresses you, you are supposed to turn a poet. And your life a poem. A life lived poetically nourishes your soul. The prose approach to life is simply to earn the conveniences to support you materially.

Niels Bohr, lost in the endless evolution of atomic possibilities at the subatomic level, surrendered his hardcore matter of factuality and turned a dreamer: "When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images."

If life appears stale and boring, you have got to blame your own self. For you lack imagination in not seeing the endless colors and splendorous charms lying around.

A bit of poetic daydreaming detoxifies the crammed brain because with poetic imagination, a sense of beauty pervades your being, putting all other pinching realities of life at bay.

You have got to believe me, the Big Bang was a poetic moment. If not for the infinite possibility of rhyme and rhythm, me and all you out there won’t have been enjoying this beautiful unfolding of things and phenomena according to self-sustaining laws.  

Without the seed of poetry there won't be any prose. Just like without the tiny seed there won’t be a tree. The canopy, the full foliage of the tree, is just an extension of the dream lying with its realistic potential inside the small seed. The elaborate network of trunks, branches, twigs, flowers, fruits and leaves is nothing but a commentary on the small poetic seed. So all ye wannabe writers of a good life story, nurture the poet in you, who understands the value of pause in life, who moves slowly to watch everything, sight and smell everything. Whose senses are open to the inclusive interplay of wonderful harmonies of the supreme song, the universe, the one song.

The brushstrokes of poetry softly touch the soul without disrupting its restful muse and bring out the nuggets of love, compassion, harmony and peace. If you are poetic in nature, you have the potential to be anything because all these elaborate extensions of your life, your dreams, your professional and personal goals, your milestones, the world around you, all these and more are nothing but a reflection of that poetic pure seed.

Being poetic is being the master of all the best-ever possible emotions as a human being. No wonder love and poetry are almost synonymous. Poetry is the common soul of all the art forms. It’s a smiling and loving approach to life, not just rhymes on paper. It’s about being in tune with the soft chimes of your soul. It is impossible to visualize an unpoetic artist. It’s impossible to have an unpoetic visionary. It’s impossible to have an achiever who did not dream poetically.

Poetry is the womb that mothers all that has ever been loved and appreciated by the mankind and Mother Nature. To be poetic is to love. You taste godliness by being poetic. The mankind has pictured heaven just as a huge poetic dream. All the myths, gods and goddesses are marvelous poet philosophers and poet soldiers. So learn to be a poet.  Love yourself as a poet. You will find love shielding you with its soft power making you the best of a human being.

Irony is that our language is a poor carrier of the ultimate truth. But ultimate truth is best summarized by the word ‘love’. Within written styles, poetry lets loose its open invitation to invite truth. Even though it smiles hazily, yet it has its charms; some poetic outpour to reach out to the ultimate with your love.

The Elixir of Life

 

A look of hate snatches and steals a part of life; a look of love adds something good to life. A hateful thought kills; an idea of love saves life. Hate is the evil collaborator of death; love is the bright-smiled custodian of life and living. Nurture the good and the best in you, it will in turn make you more loving, the latter qualifying you for the real ‘living’.

Like most of the things, it can be practiced and learnt. Practice smile. It’s a small pill of wellness. Learn to look at things with love. Start with your food, water, whatever you drink, or whatever you eat. As you take a sip or chew a mouthful, keep smiling and feel the friendliness of the thing just beginning to be a part of you. Feel the bonhomie because it will soon become a part of your physical self. Your receptivity and acknowledgement will bestow nourishment beyond the mere calorific value of the food and drink.

Before you eat or drink, take a minute’s pause and look at the thing. It’s the instrument of life, the soldier of your survivability, the keeper of your physical self, resting before you on the table. It’s there for you, to help you get strong and survive and live another day. At this moment there is no better friend to you in the universe. Accept its friendship and brotherliness. Embrace its camaraderie. And it will become a part of your system with far more nourishment than you can imagine.

As you chew and swallow, it is ready to become a part of you. It’s something that will become you once you have it in your guts. During the moments before being eaten, it becomes a sacred part of your extended self. Accept it. Look with love. Take it as a blessing from your guardian angel to help you beat the negative forces hankering for your demise. The food taken with such love and affection becomes the elixir of life.

Practice smiling. It will pave the way for you rolling with real laughter later on in the journey. The tiny, feeble lines drawn by a delicate smile will lay the foundation for miles and miles of undisturbed peace and harmony in your persona. No wonder, I have a little smile glued to my face while I type this. And a surge of contentment and happiness overtakes the hitherto untouched, unlit and gloomy parts of my being. I feel happy and once you get the feel of real happiness, you simply cannot help distributing it. You want each and everyone out there to be happy and smiling. There is no bigger nourishment for your loving self than this.

All the problems out there, born of differences and misunderstandings, are born not of hate but lack of love. Turn more loving, smile more. Hate is the darkness that just vanishes the moment you light the tiny lamp of love. It vanishes like darkness from a pitch dark room once you light a candle.

Hate is the phantom. The only reality is the lack of love and smiles. By taking up a smile, you symbolically blossom a flower for mother existence. And believe me, you yourself will be the direct gainer once you decide to turn into a flower. Guys, let loose your alchemy of smiles and love. Believe me, humanity will need more of smiles than the mega-bombasting leaps of science and technology in future.

I tried a small experiment of love and smiles on a plant. I had planted some marigold flowers in my little garden at the start of winters. Yellow and orange marigolds sprinkled their unrestricted charms. All these turned out to be robust flowering plants except one. The poor plant appeared stunted, malnourished and didn’t grow. A few buds remained unopened and the odd one that tried to smile, just bore a famished one-quarter smile.

I tried the alchemy of love and smiles. I started to sit by this plant for a few minutes, giving it kind, sympathetic looks, caressed its leaves, and sprinkled water droplets on it. I just tried my level best to turn as much loving to it as I would to a little child. And no miracle is beyond the reach of love and smiles. The buds that hadn’t opened for a couple of months burst forth with unrestrained hilarity. It turned out to be the best flowery plant in my garden. This is what love and smiles are capable of!

So guys, go and capture your share of life’s real worth through the simple technique of love and smiles.

The Magic Pill of Love: Smile

 Mother Teresa says, “Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.”

Burning in the agony of anger with your whole self ready to explode? Try to smile. Like a bolt of light sizzles across the blackest domes of clouds, a sinewy smile will cut across the hard façade and the castle of anger, a temporary madness, will come crashing down like a sand fort erected by kids playing on a beach.  

Thich Nhat Hanh: “So brothers and sisters let a smile kiss your lips. Because of your smile, you make life more beautiful.”

A smile is like the sun on a cold, frigid and gray day. Comforting. Warm. Healing. Soothing. It dispels the gloom. It absorbs the pain. Its nonjudgmental rays embrace you in your totality, the way you are. It touches you with sympathy. It becomes your lenient confidante. You can hardly realize a smile’s mammoth power.

Mother Teresa holds a clue for us: “We shall never know all the good that a simple smile can do.”

As Yoko Ono says: “Smile in the mirror. Do that every morning and you'll start to see a big difference in your life.”

First of all you will like your smiling face more. A good beginning.

As Anthony J. D'Angelo sums it up so smartly: “Smile is the key that fits the lock of everybody's heart.” So guys hold your great key to unlock the biggest chest full of treasure.

You may not be enjoying a rollercoaster ride in life. There are pains and problems and of course you feel like crying. Agreed that you are not in a position to laugh. Well, if laughing seems too much, you can smile at least. Even a sad, resigned smile will do to begin with. Smile just to yourself, without any reason. Or at least try. A fake, feeble smile is better than no smile. It reshapes the lines of your tensions, your worries. You will instantly feel its warmth, its light. It cannot be the other way. A maneuvered smile at least cannot give you more pain, cannot aggravate your messiness, however hard is the situation.

 And then there is always something or someone around who can help you in building up a smile. There are more reasons to smile than cry. Just that we overlook them. So give yourself a reason to smile. It’s as simple as picking up one tiny bit of tension from the overloaded basket and throwing it away with a muse. So move away from the big garbage dump of worries and smile as you walk away.

Mind you, a smile is the best ornament that you can put on yourself. A tender smile is the universal language of love. So guys meet people with a smile, because it is the first step on the ladder of building lovable relationships. Aren't these colors in nature the replica of the eternal smile? Go, enjoy the therapy.

Your smile is just the hoarding out there telling people that here goes a happy, loving and caring person. Generally your happiness creates a smile, but if you learn to smile, it may even start your joyride. These few lines of curve on your lips oftentimes set puzzling chaos straight. So go around smiling, who knows someone is looking at you and since people love smiles, you may come across unexpected boon also.

This is the best face job. Even a fake smile is better than a morose, brooding and suffering look. Don't you think everybody looks at his/her best with a smile? And believe me, a warm smile makes you appear younger also. 

 Forget about the little world of your problems. This creation is not human centric, and within the human system the thoroughfare is not you-, me- or anyone-centric. In fact, it’s not bothered about anyone or anything at all. So why should we? One big reason to start smiling more often.

 The cosmos around you is too big. And you are just a tiny part of its endless bounty. But luckily the things of beauty are as good for you as they are for any other happy person around. Claim your share. Observe. Look around. Pick out from the unassuming treasures lying around in bits and pieces. A flower. A child’s pure smile. A bird chirping. A gust of breeze. Rustling of sun-baked pale dry leaves. Some green tree. A sparrow’s free dart in the sky, the sun, the stars, someone helping somebody, or anything for that matter, provided you have the loving eyes to see.

Everything is just drenched with beauty; it’s we who throw the jibes of ugliness born of our biases, greed, hate, jealousy and anger. Remove these blots from the screen and you clearly see the perfect beauty around. And once you see the beauty, love oozes out of your spirit in copious amounts. It’s as natural as you have light once the sun shines in the morning.

 There are infinite reasons to let a smile kiss your lips, to help you, to sympathize, to emphasize the cool hold of goodness inherently holding the system together. Just open up the door for a smile. It will open up a huge gate of comfort for the inner self. Light will enter the dungeon of real and imaginary problems. There is no logic for this. It just happens. Just like you feel the healing warmth of sunrays on a cold day! So try to smile without any reason. Immediately you will get a feeling of so many things to be smiled at, to be felt euphoric about, or even laugh about.

Do you know there is brain-brewed whiskey: Anandamide? It’s the chemical of happiness, ease, comfort and contentment produced in the brain. By learning to smile more often, you start the brain brewery in motion. It’s a simple practice, just like you get habituated to go for invigorating early-morning brisk walks. So let your brewery of joy become operational at full capacity. Believe me, it can be done by simply starting with the belief that it’s possible.

The world is full of those who need narcotics, drugs and alcohol to enter a pleasant, forgetting and easy-going state. These definitely give you some temporary solace but come with huge physical and social side effects later on when you crash-land on the rock hard surface of reality. Count upon your own self-made, brain-brewed chemical of bliss and happiness, Anandamide. It's available free to all of us. Just that we need to look within for the joys that we seek outside! So seekers, happy days and nights! Brew your own Anandamide and stay blessed permanently. Happy spiritual boozing! Booze makers, beware!

I have started to smile more and brew mine quite copiously...