Swim Out To Meet Your Ship

There are three kinds of people in this world. 
First kind of people are those who don't react when opportunity knocks their door. In fact, many a time they are not able to even recognize the opportunity. Most often than not, opportunity comes wrapped in problems & an ordinary man looks at problem only as a problem & starts looking for the solution. When any adversity strikes you, the first question you should ask is- "What is in it for me?" Yes, every opportunity, big or small, carries fruits of equal proportion to be had. Your job is to identify & welcome the opportunity. So, these people don't respond because they don't identify opportunity. Opportunity knocks their door but most of the time they are not home. They don't see the ship even when it is at shore waiting for them to board it. 
Second kind of people are the ones who identify these opportunities & respond to these. They know that opportunity will come in different forms & shapes & they are always waiting for it. They grab it with both the hands once they identify it. Not only that, they also keep themselves well prepared to make best use of all the opportunities. So, they are waiting for the ship to arrive & once it does, their  job is to board it & start their journey to success. 
But, third kind of people are those who don't wait for opportunity; they make opportunity even when it is not there. They are the real winners as they never complain about lack of opportunity. They have it in plenty & they also have the ways & means to overcome any challenge & convert it into a huge opportunity. They invite challenges if they are short of the same. Not that they become successful in all their efforts but even when they fail, they make best use of these failures. They become stronger with every failure & every failure becomes the stepping stone to their success. These kinds of people never wait for the ship to arrive;they swim out to meet it !
          "No great man ever complains of want of opportunity." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Walk Beside Me & Be My Friend

We get most of relationships as gifts which we can't choose- our parents, our siblings, and many other blood relationships. Thankfully, there are some gifts that we pick ourselves & enjoy these lifelong. Friendship is one such gift. Many a time, even this relationship starts without any intention to continue for a long period, but once our frequencies match we develop a strong and unbreakable bond with the person. Friendship, by far, is the most pious of relationships established outside blood relations.
We have our own upheavals in this relationship which many times seem to threaten the bond. And sometimes, it actually gets over on some trivial issue. But if someone moves away, don't regret; may be, he was never made for you. 
"If you love something, let it go free. If it doesn't come back, you never had it. If it comes back, love it forever." - Douglas Hortan
True friendship is a gift which one should treasure more than any other gift. A true friend is not a shoulder to cry on, but a heart to weave your life around. True friend doesn't lead & show you the way. The fact is he commits the same mistakes that you commit. He has same weaknesses & worries that you have.  He is also not the one who follows you. He may lend a helping hand or take one but he will do so by being beside you.
Another characteristic of this relationship is that this is devoid of any ego-tussle. Ego is missing because 'I' is missing & 'we' takes the center stage. It is not like two people being one; it is like someone finding another him outside himself- his alter-ego.
"Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You too? I thought I was the only one."- C. S. Lewis
There is no rivalry, no competition; there is only sharing. Synergy is the hallmark of this bond. He is the one who doesn't give advice or solutions, but shares your pain by just being with you. He knows all about you & loves you as you are, not as you ought to be. He may remain silent in your hour of despair but his heart cries as loudly as does yours. 
                       "What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies."- Aristotle

Dream To Live

No one wants to get old and ironically no one wants to die young as well. Age of a person has nothing to do with the number of years he has lived. It has a lot to do with how his thought patterns are taking shape. As long as you are capable of dreaming, you are young. But then, some people never learn to dream. The fact is they never live. They just pass through this planet for a very short duration; so short that they are not even noticed. Even if such people live for hundred years, they would not matter. And on the other hand, we  have people like Anne Frank, Keats, Shelley who died young but left some indelible prints on the surface of time. So, age is irrelevant and an unnecessary topic of discussion. 

What we do when we live is of utmost importance. And our actions have a lot to do with our dreams. A child is a born dreamer & he wants to get whatever he dreams. Initially, he gets everything he dreams & demands but, by & by, we convince him that in life you don't get whatever you dream & this is the moment when a child is killed & an adult is born. This new-born adult starts aging fast as many of his dreams soon convert into regrets. He grows old when all his dreams are no more than a bundle of regrets. So, we may have an old man of 26 or a young lad of 70 depending upon his state of mind.

Life will be a difficult assignment without dreams. We will only see frustration, anger & loss around us. It is in our dreams that we find real life. Many a time, it is while living that we go through the motions & wake up to the reality in our dreams. 

Even if we consider that all our dreams are not going to turn into reality, we shouldn't stop dreaming. In fact, this should be a good reason to dream more & dream big. To most of the successful people dreaming was as natural as breathing. They could achieve anything because they could dream anything. One way to know the age of a person is to know the size of his dreams.So, if you want to keep fit & want to die young at the age of 90 or 100, dream big & dream more. 

We Are Our Thoughts

It has been said time and again that thoughts make a man. I'll go a step further & state they do more than merely making a man; they make him & the whole world around him. 

Thoughts are much bigger in size than they originally appear. The important question to be asked is, if we have a large number of thoughts travelling through our mind every day, why only a few seem to make an impact? Why all thoughts don't affect us & shape our destiny?

A thought alone is not powerful but when it is combined with emotions, it gains strength. It is like if you see someone on the road & think about him it won't affect you but if he does something that makes you happy, it will leave an impact. So, it is not thought about a person that influenced your perception about that person; it was his behavior & your emotions towards that behavior that did it. And once that happens, it has a ripple effect. Remember, your thoughts & emotions don't add, they multiply. So, it can be 'good thoughts plus good emotions' or 'bad thoughts plus bad emotions' that decides your opinion about someone. The important thing to learn is that since thoughts are huge in number, you can't do much about all your thoughts. Comparatively, emotions are lesser & can be easily controlled.

"I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them & to dominate them." - Oscar Wilde

So, how do thoughts make a man? It is because dwelling upon a thought also makes it stronger & drives traffic of emotions towards it. If you are thinking about someone negatively & if you keep thinking about him in the same light, it will only attract negative emotions. On the contrary, if there is a person who has harmed you but you forgive him & move on with other activities, it won't affect you anymore. Since you cannot control all your thoughts, it will be important to choose thoughts that affect you positively & reject thoughts that leave a negative influence. Even if we control five or six negative or positive thoughts, rest won't matter much. If you consciously practice it for some time, it will become your second nature & you won't need to make any effort to control your thoughts.   

It Goes On

Life is a funny business. The more we try to understand it, the more mysterious it gets. It being mysterious doesn't mean that it is a problem. Far from it, life is a wonderful experience. It has no beginning & no end. As the birth of a child cannot be the beginning of a life, the death can also not be the end point. It comes from a point & merges into it. The only thing definite about life is that it goes on.........

We try to understand life from a subjective point of view. For us, the life revolves around us, some people related to us and that is all. And for this reason when we lose someone, we are pained. We complain about the departure of the person. This happens because of our linear view about life. When we mourn the departure of the person we presume the departed soul to be a human being. While the fact is that all of us come to this earth as a spiritual being to have a human experience. The length of this experience cannot be measured in terms of years; it can only be measured in terms of moments. But the irony is that we ignore the moments & worry about years. Years remind us about death while moments remind us about life. 

All that you get to live is the dash between the year of your birth & the year of your death. Length of the dash is of least importance;beauty of that dash is all that matters. Anyway, you cannot do much about its length but you can add a lot of value to its depth.

"You can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width & depth."   - H. L. Mencken 

The other secret of living a healthy life is to live it in now. But most of us either live in past or in future while now is all that we have got. Past is too heavy a burden to carry & future is as unpredictable as death. We don't live in now because it demands abnegation of all possessions. But we are so attached to our possessions that we don't want to shed it at any cost. We know that these possessions are stopping us to fly but still we want to carry it. We forget that we were the lightest at birth and will again be the lightest at death. We make our dash too heavy to float.

The only truth about life is that it has no beginning & no end; that it can only be lived in now; and that it goes on.........

Live Forever, Die Today

Living is an art & unfortunately many are not experts in same. We live as if we have come here to exist forever & try to be the richest or the most powerful. We want to have all that we can in terms of material possessions. We reject the concept of body being transient & soul eternal. But when the D-day arrives, we wish we could have lived a little longer to do tasks that were left unattended. We dream too late & too little.

Man is a born dreamer. A child has got billion dreams in his eyes & for that reason he thinks more in terms of possibilities than in terms of impossibilities. He thinks he can do anything & achieve anything. He doesn't hesitate asking for a moon, literally; & cries if he doesn't get it. But as he grows up, he listens to the noise outside which largely suggests impossibilities of things & discourages him to be a dreamer. The noise outside subdues his natural instinct of being a dreamer. It also suggests him to dream when he grows up & indicates towards futility of dreaming as a child. He is told time & again that he has many years to live & when he will grow up he will have power to make all his wishes come true. We not only kill many dreams but also tell him that he has an eternity to pass on this earth. Very soon he gets into a mindset that encourages material pursuits of things & discourages spiritual living.

He starts living for the future. He studies well so that he lands a plush job; gets a job so that he has all the comforts of life; and buys comfort at the cost of happiness. Soon he gets caught in the rut and finds hard to get out of it. Not that he doesn't want happiness or satisfaction in his life but he doesn't set his priority right. For him security comes before happiness; so job always gets preference over family. And by the time he realizes, it's already too late. 

            "Shop for security over happiness, and you buy it at that price." - Richard Bach

We dream as if we are running out of time & live as if we will live for hundred years. We think that we can afford to commit all sins in order to make our dreams come true & will have a long life to make amends later. If only we could learn to reverse the process. Live each moment as if this is the only moment you have. Dream as if you have an eternity to pass.  

Choose Your Company

A man is not only known by the company he keeps; he is also shaped by it. There are few things in life that you cannot choose e.g. you can't choose your parents or your siblings; but you can always make a choice about your friends. We spend a lion's share of our time with our friends & they influence our thinking, our behavior & ultimately our life. 

"Choose with whom to be accompanied; it's your free choice,

  Choose with whom not to be accompanied; it's your right."   - Angel Gutierrez

Though it is important that we choose people that we spend our time with, more pertinent is to choose people that we should keep the distance from. Both are choices; but of different kinds. The former one is to help & support you in your cause; the later one is to save you from people who take you away from your purpose. The former choice is an easy deal as you only have to select a group of people from a large pool who not only are your type but also share the same purpose or at least, second the cause that you are living for & are ready to die for. Keeping away from people who play a spoil-sport is a real task. Sometime, you do it quietly but some time you need to look them in their eyes & tell them to their face," I don't need any of your crap & perhaps don't need you as well."

In case, you don't find anyone who shares your vision, your calling, not to worry. There is someone inside you who is always ready to talk to you. Have frequent conversation with him. In fact, he is the best pal that one has got but irony is he is one of the most ignored one also. He suggests & shouts but his voice is muffled by the outside noise. Despite our continuous ignoring him, he doesn't keep quiet & wants to continue the conversation. The only problem is that we are busy talking to someone else. Sometimes, solitude can be a real gift; something to treasure. It is when you are alone that you can have a dialogue with your inner self. Keep aside thirty minutes for this pal inside you & the best time to spend time with him is in the morning. This is the time when you have no other disturbance to muffle this voice.

            "I have never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude."

                                                                                                               -Henry David Thoreau