NATURE

Nature has always been man’s best friend since the beginning of time and people have been deriving immense pleasure from it. Great poets like Keats, Woodsworth, Coleridge, Frost got their inspiration for poetry from nature. Elements of nature always find their way into poetry, novels, songs, movies, art etc. However, we who claim to be the busiest of all generations are oblivious of the wonders of nature. 

I am taking nature as today’s topic for a number of reasons. The society we live in today is infected with all kinds of viruses such as alcohol, drugs, violence, indecent assaults, corruption, to name a few. Over population, poor living conditions, divorce, inefficiency of the government bodies, lack of recreational facilities are mostly pointed out and blamed for this. I often wonder why we have this tendency to point our fingers at someone whenever something goes wrong even if we know we are at fault.

Now let’s get into the point. When we are all stressed up and fed up of life because of the above mentioned reasons do we really have to turn to drugs, alcohol or violence? Should hectic days at work, conflicts with bosses or colleagues, deadlines to meet  make us abusive at work as well as at home hurting the ones we love and should protect most?  Jobs are hard to find in today’s economy but does it give us the right to steal, take bribe, sell drugs or take innocent people’s lives? When there are problems at home do we have to get help from gangs and participate in their activities as if it’s the only people who could help ease our pain? Lack of recreational facilities enjoyed by people who are more privileged than us is not a reason for us to spend our leisure time on roads doing nothing except assaulting innocent people. Don’t you agree?

This is where nature comes in. I strongly believe that we can seek solace from nature when our days and nights are filled with worry and stress and when life seems bleak. Don’t you think sitting alone or with friends in a beach, listening to the soft music of the waves crashing against the shore as the cool breeze calms us down would help us to forget all our problems? I should say it would. Watching the sunrise and listening to the singing of birds early in the morning would give that energy boost we need to start a long day.  Instead of allowing stress to take a toll on our work can’t we learn stress reducing techniques? Watching the sunset with its amazing colours would definitely rejuvenate our senses and relax our troubled minds helping us to deal with our problems better and prevent us from making hasty decisions. 

It’s not necessary to get into bad habits simply because we believe that we lack leisure facilities. Nature has provided us with a great number of resources that we can utilize in order to fill our leisure time or even to build a career. We don’t have to get ourselves into trouble by acting irrational. The sky, the ocean, the trees, the flowers, the animals, the insects etc can be the subjects of our artistic creations like poetry, music and novels. Surfing, swimming, jet skiing and other water sports can be undertaken by those among us who enjoy sports. The curious ones who like to observe and enjoy wonderful sights can go snorkeling, diving or pursue an activity like bird watching. Photography is a wonderful way of capturing these magnificent sights of nature and there are many other such activities that we can do. Yes, many of these activities can even be taken as a profession so won’t it be better and wiser if we found healthy and responsible ways of dealing with our problems and turning towards activities that we can undertake with the resources readily available to us like our ancestors did rather than ruining our lives and creating chaos in the society.

I remember the days when my friends and I spent time at the beach watching the sunset and admiring the nature after a stressful day at work. Believe me when I say it never failed to relax us and to bring a smile on our faces taking all our troubles miles away from us. Try this even if you are not a nature lover and let nature work its magic on you.

FAIRY TALES

 

We are surrounded by fairy tales. There are hundreds of books and cartoons about these fairy tales and we spend a great deal of time reading and watching them since childhood. Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and the many other fairy tales are and have always been an important part of our lives. These stories have been imprinted in our minds and they have captured our souls so much so that some of us live in a fantasy world miles away from reality. 

We are sooo fascinated by these imaginary tales that we actually believe they are true. This is most specifically true when it comes to relationships. We start dreaming about our Prince Charming as early as we are 5 or 6, some even earlier. We tend to blindly believe in ‘Love at first sight’, ‘Prince Charming’, ‘Happily ever after’ depicted in these unrealistic stories of princes and princesses. May be there is nothing wrong with this. But it becomes a problem when our beliefs and some of the decisions or choices we make in our lives are the results of too many fairy tales we have watched.  

Life sure is not a fairy tale. Therefore, it is not possible to live a realistic life thinking it is one and expecting fairy tale ends to our life stories. I personally don’t believe in ‘love at first sight’ or ‘a prince charming coming in a white horse to my rescue’ or ‘happily ever after’. So far I haven’t fallen in love at first sight and I don’t either believe there is one ‘perfect guy’ for me. There may be many guys out there who have the qualities I look for in a life partner. Coming to ‘happily ever after’, I assume there are many of us who believe that when we get married there’s nothing but happiness and it is the end of our story. Yeah, in fairy tales the story ends there…..

I cannot disagree more on this. Life is not a fairy tale as I have already said so marriage is just the beginning of another chapter in our story, it is not the end.  It would have many twists and turns, challenges and obstacles and there would be many trials we have to go through. The question is how ready are we for these trials both mentally and physically when we begin this new chapter of our lives? The rising number of divorces makes me believe that not many of us are really ready for it. Soon after the big day we begin to realize that our ‘prince charming’ is not so charming and are far from being ‘perfect’. 

To succeed in this journey of our lives we need to focus on the reality and free ourselves from the ideas put into our heads by these so called fairy tales. We need to have realistic expectations and accept the fact that no one is perfect. Each person is unique and we need to learn to live with these differences. Disputes would arise and we can’t avoid them no matter how hard we may try, so our best option would be to solve them as a team and stop playing the blaming game. There would be many occasions where compromising could resolve many issues so learn to compromise often. Sometimes we expect our partners to change for us or in the worst case scenario we try to change them driving them away from us. I have learnt over the years it is not easy to change a person. Think about how hard it is for you to change some of your habits or things about yourself. I have tried to change certain things about myself which I am not so proud of, and if I am honest I must say that I haven’t succeeded much. Imagine how hard it would be to change someone else.

In fairy tales the fairy godmother with a wave of her magic wand solves all problems but this doesn’t happen in real life. We need to fix our problems on our own. Good communication, respect, acceptance, trust, understanding, ability to listen patiently, being non-judgmental and working together as a team are some essential tools which we could use to create ever lasting relationships that would survive even the worst storms.

 Break the spell cast on you by some fiction writers, come down to earth, live a real life with real people, choose a partner who is real and live with realistic expectations.   If you do this I’m sure you have already prevented you and your partner from a lot of unnecessary hassles.

 

"Life isn't a fairy tale, you don't always have happy endings, but you can make the best of what you do have and accept it for what it is, and just keep living, that's all you can do." Me Quotes

CHOICES

Life is full of choices (ya, I know it’s a cliché), some good, some bad and some that are of no significance to us. When life presents us with these choices, more often than not, we have a hard time deciding which ones to choose. And who can blame us when there are so many and they don’t come labeled as ‘good’ or ‘bad’.

Sometimes some of us have the idea that in some aspects of life the choices we make may not have any significant effects on our lives. For instance the food we eat, who we hang out with, the activities we do daily, the time we spent watching television or at the computer. But I must say that all these ‘little’ things add up to the big picture, meaning to say they do influence the life we lead and the quality of it. Giving an example may help you understand my point so here it goes. When talking about food, the racks in supermarkets are filled with variety of food that one can choose from. If a person continually chooses the same types of food which are not that healthy would result in diseases caused due to deficiency of certain vitamins and minerals which the diet lacked because of poor food choices. Similarly our friends do influence us in more than one way (I’m sure we have all heard the saying ‘show me your friends and I’ll tell you who you are’) and the time we spend our eyes glued to the television or to computer screen prevent us from many productive activities such as socializing, exercising or learning new skills or a sport.

However, as most choices we make have no immediate effects on us we tend to give little care or no thought to them at all. I agree we live hectic lives but that doesn’t give us the right to put our future in danger. One might say few bad choices once in a while are ok and we learn from our mistakes but this one bad choice may even cost us our precious lives and what could be worse than this. So don’t you think we should do some thinking before choosing from the choices that we are offered with? Unlike other creatures, we are blessed with this amazing and extraordinary gift of superior intelligence that if used when making decisions (big or small) would make our lives better.

Hence my advice to you all is to avoid making bad choices. In order to do this, think before choosing and choose wisely, weigh each choice carefully and then choose one which would benefit you most, your today and tomorrows as well. Make your choices bring your life meaning, joy and happiness, prosperity and everything that you have always wished for, for you deserve them. Good Luck! :)

Now I will conclude this post with a quote by the famous novelist J. K Rowling, “It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”

Life is a Journey

Today I’m going to write about an incident which happened months back…

It was around 9 pm and my friend was driving me home after I spent the weekend with her. It’s refreshing to have a change of scene once in a while and be away from books. And wish I could do it more often.

Being women we started our usual talks, about our school days, friends, family, etc. And guess what would happen when you don’t concentrate on the road especially when you are not very familiar with the route. Ya, she took a wrong turn and we almost got lost.

Lucky for us, she had GPS and it saved us. But we had to drive for more than an hour to find our way back and it was sort of scary.  I’m sure you could imagine our fate if she did not have a GPS…

I want to relate this incident to our daily life. We have so many things on our plate and we hardly find time to pay enough attention to everything. Or sometimes we pay attention to the wrong things ignoring the most important.  And in the process we lose sight of the path we are supposed to be taking and take that wrong turn or path absent-mindedly paving our way to great loss. Although the fortunate ones ultimately find their way back, the less fortunate ones continue their struggle to find the right path in vain.

Now let’s talk about the GPS. We all need one to guide us in our journey. There are moments we are totally lost and in need of someone to show us the right direction. Our family, teachers, friends, colleagues and sometimes even complete strangers come to our rescue and lead us to our destination.

There are other times when we are frozen in the middle of the road with no idea what the next move is. And we keep wishing for a little push to set us in motion again. And our walking and talking GPS comes along and do us the favour. And think for a moment about how our life would be like without these people…

Therefore, no matter how chaotic our life is, we must always pay attention to the important things in life. We must keep a destination in our mind and take the fastest route which would take us there. We must not let petty things distract us. When we find ourselves drifting away we must seek help and guidance.

Most importantly, we must make our decisions wisely for those decisions determine how smooth or rough our journey is going to be and whether we reach our original destination or not.     

“No amount of travel on the wrong road will bring you to the right destination”. - Ben Gaye, III