Life lessons #4

These are entries from my journal that I endeavour to consciously follow/ practice and I share them in the hope that they resonate with you. 

61. Respect and listen to every opinion. Absorb that which makes sense to you.

62. Don’t try to rank, rate and measure everything. Life is more than numbers.

63. Don’t underpromise and over deliver or vice versa. Keep what you say you’ll do and what you do consistent.

64. Think things through and stick to your decisions.

65. Do you feel upset? Dead inside? The world couldn’t care less.

66. There are experiences, behaviours and people that will liberate you and those that will limit you. Choose to be free.

67. Plans work better if you prepare for potential obstacles in advance.

68. If you don’t believe in magic, you won’t find it.

69. There is joy in creating something.

70. If you acquire the learner’s mindset, you have a thrilling journey ahead.

71. Understanding your strengths, in no way, makes you arrogant.

72. It is fun to sass your friends. It is important to lift them up.

73. Looking beautiful may count. But, feeling beautiful makes all the difference.

74. Nothing is as sexy as an unapologetic personality, a good posture and a heartfelt smile.

75. Drown out all the noise, once a day, including the noise in your own head.

76. Just like you won’t deny a diabetic his insulin, don’t deny anyone mental health support.

77. Be self- aware of how you think, feel, speak, behave, learn and cope. Ultimately, ‘forever’ is with yourself.

78. You are more than one end of a binary. You are more than a dichotomy. You are multitudes wrapped in the blanket of one body.

79. Be your absolute favourite person in the world. Deserve the title.

80. Believe that you deserve the world. Now, work for it.

Feel free to add to the list …

Copyright © Roshni Ramanan

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Life lessons #3

These are entries from my journal that I endeavour to consciously follow/ practice and I share them in the hope that they resonate with you. 

41. If you never ask or never attempt, the ‘what if’ will haunt you forever.

42. Pretending to be what you’re not, gets exhausting too fast.

43. So, create a reality you don’t need an escape from.

44. Don’t complain about the ill effects of social media on social media. Deactivate your account.

45. You can build a life that is full of excuses or full of attempts.

46. Feeling curious, happy and thrilled is cool. Feeling sad, anxious and terrified is cool. Feel your feelings.

47. Sometimes, fine is as good as it gets. Be fine with it.

48. Cherish experiences.

49. Acquire skills.

50. Nothing lasting comes from causing another person pain.

51. Speak to your own self like you want to be spoken to by others.

52. Inspiration lies everywhere. Take note of it.

53. Failure teaches you so much more than success ever will.

54. Stand up for your beliefs.

55. Exemplify your values, so others acquire it from you. That is how you seed change.

56. Learn to say ‘So what?’

57. No one has all the answers. There is no one answer to the intangible.

58. ‘Should’ is aristocratic. Remove it from your dictionary.

59. Silence is the most fervent supporter of injustice.

60. Karma is a cognitive error called the Just World phenomenon.

Feel free to add to the list …

Copyright © Roshni Ramanan

Life lessons #2

These are entries from my journal that I endeavour to consciously follow/ practice and I share them in the hope that they resonate with you. 

21. If you claim to be an adult, it is key to behave like one.

22. Celebrate your little victories. Small wins = Big difference.

23. However, remember to be modest. Most of what you’ve achieved has been accomplished before and could be accomplished again.

24. Stop believing in yourself and you’ve found the most certain way of losing the game.

25. Do not give unasked for criticism or advice.

26. It is okay, and at times necessary, to be the person that goes the extra mile.

27. There is some truth in the Positivity Bias and the Law of Attraction.

28. Settling is the worst way to fail because you are failing your own self.

29. Happiness is not achieving an arbitrary X or Y. Happy is right now.

30. Don’t waste time on unproductive mental gymnastics.

31. If you have time to hate someone, you have too much time.

32. No one deserves ten chances.

33. Don’t play mind games that reinforce stereotypes.

34. If you tell me, you can help me understand better.

35. Never trivialise anyone’s pain.

36. We all exist in the same world but live in different worlds.

37. If waking up seems painful, it is time to take a good hard look at your life.

38. Life is not a faraway fairy tale. Your story is today and right now. Write it well.

39. Don’t say goodbye on a sour note. It could be the last goodbye.

40. When something doesn’t feel right, there is a reason.

Feel free to add to the list …

Copyright © Roshni Ramanan

Life lessons #1

These are entries from my journal that I endeavour to consciously follow/ practice and I share them in the hope that they resonate with you. Here’s my first listicle on WP :

1. Life owes you zilch. You owe yourself everything.

2. Remember your roots. They speak volumes about why you are the way you are.

3. Run away from toxicity. Avoid it like the plague.

4. A therapist and a hundred self-help books, podcasts and films can’t change your life. You can.

5. The only way to find out if a technique, a habit or a piece of advice works, is to implement it.

6. Be you in every situation.

7. If being you doesn’t sound appealing, become a better you.

8. If you keep fighting losing battles, you won’t have any resources left for the ones you can actually win.

9. It is okay to have bad days, bad weeks and even bad months. What is not okay is denying that’s how you feel.

10. Emotional blackmail gets you nowhere.

11. For every reason there is to lie, there is a better reason, to tell the truth.

12. To identify the truly trivial, ask yourself if a bad experience is going to matter in a week, in a month and in a year.

13. Everyone’s path is different and equally important.

14. But, it helps to remember that you have it better than so many others.

15. Equality is a conscious choice. Practise it every day. Don’t be ageist, racist, sexist, homophobic etc. Inegalitarianism looks good, said no one ever.

16. Care enough to extend a helping hand.

17. It’s so easy to break someone. Try keeping them whole.

18. Being ‘manly’ is more about manning up to your flaws and being a man of your word, than any cultural stereotype.

19. If working at what you love is draining, reconsider it.

20. If you keep making excuses to postpone what you say you want, maybe you don’t want it all that bad.

Feel free to add to the list …

Copyright © Roshni Ramanan

Green flag or Red flag?

Red.

Danger. Violence. Sirens and stop signs. Enough already!

Green.

Nurture. Growth. Fertility and freshness. Invite me in!

I meet you for the first time.

You weave stories with dilated pupils and diamond-studded smiles. The narrative arch you’ve painted spills a stream of earnest passion. Green flag.

You drone on, long after you’ve lost me, like a determined ship sailing fiercely to the harbour, with or without passengers. Red flag.

I throw a wholly unusual opinion frisbee at you. Instead of feeling attacked or fleeing, you catch my drift and wheel it back at me in your own unique way. Green flag.

I mention an achievement, a baby step I took. Not to be outdone, you flap the laundry list of your successes. Like a swift counter to a chess move, you retaliate, unmindful of my empty side of the board. There’s more to life than the black-and-white of the game, but you choose not to look up. Red flag.

You guffaw heartily in place of a guarded smile, clap loudly and dance with abandon. You have lost the measuring cups of pretention, spooned by socialisation. After all, composure is overrated and you’d rather savour all the flavours of the spectrum of feelings. Green flag.

You change who you are, based on what I say, outdoing the voltage flickering at my house and the stock market fluctuations, discussed at my workplace. Flexible? No, I’d call it fickle and feeble. Red flag.

I pour into you alien discourses and foreign passions that make me, me. You drink it in as though I quenched your thirst on a particularly parched day. You introduce me to the epiphanies and emotional tours, that make you, you. I take a ticket and ride on the bus of your adventures as we mesh lives. Green flag.

Green suits me best.

I choose green.

 

 

 

 

Should I say ‘should’?

Should. A single striking syllable stressed on, from birth to death.

Should. Should. Should.

They should have ! You should be!

If Should were an object, it would be a fisherman’s net, a rat trap, a hunter’s rifle.

Should reminds me of prison and punishment. Rules and repercussions. I want to run away.

You tell children ” You should do this,” and they question why. You say “Because I say so,” mostly because you don’t know the answer. Maybe you don’t remember why. Maybe you never asked.

As a teenager, you pronounce “This is how I should be” spilling a list of qualities on paper and expecting your mirror to reflect the package. You fall victim to the Should society’s noise, unaware that most of its preachers, who tell you, you should be healthy and happy, rehearse their smiles and never move a muscle.

As a young adult, you discover that life is unkind at times and whine “This should have happened for me.” You pick up the wrapper that is ‘should’ and lick away, lapping up the excuse, and finding no semblance of the chocolaty truth. As you slowly drown in the quicksand of entitlement, you forget that life owes you nothing and you owe yourself everything.

Finally, you determine that the Should sport is not your scene. You throw the tennikoit at others, randomly tossing it away, free of any onus of your own.

You say

“You should fall at the feet of elders” to the kid in the neighbourhood. Why? You don’t know.

“You should spend money that could feed families to throw a grand party and call it marriage.” Why? You don’t know.

At this age, you should ….  At this stage, you should … You babble on relentlessly.

People succumb under the iron weight of your persistence and flatten from a shirt with flair to a pressed, suppressed cloth.

You spend your last days, mourning the loss of time and missing out on accomplishing all that you should have and so begins the self- whiplashing.

Do yourself a favour and go on a should fast for a week.

Replace the shoulds in your life as an experiment.

Strike “I should be doing that.” Say “I want to be doing that.”

Strike “This should happen to me.” Say “This is one of the possibilities.”

Strike “I should be this person.” Say “I aspire to work on becoming this person.”

Would you like to reconsider saying Should?

Hey, it’s up to you. Who am I to say that you should ?!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Strangers exchange- Poem

Strangers meet at an airport

Lugging their own trolley bags,

Spilling its contents :

Butterflies they had caught,

Causes for which they’ve fought,

Epiphanies and reality checks,

The experiences of foreign treks;

The footprints of all that they’d left behind,

Beliefs of the body, soul and mind.

Somewhere in the exchange,

The strangers are encased

In a hybrid bubble

with scents of both their lives :

Together, afresh,

They Blossom anew.

Imprint- Poem

Thrill of the chase ?

This ain’t no race !

Irrespective of time and space,

My presence, you can never erase.

Find me flowering,

In the lush gardens of my praise,

the freshness of the evening breeze

and the sweet scent of the petals

I leave in my wake.

Find me jubilant,

In the hugs that reach the heart,

the courage you’ve to restart

and the triumphant punches

you throw in the buoyant air.

Find me dancing

Across the moles on your countenance,

In smiles left on crooked teeth

of strangers you please.

Find me wanting

When you settle for less,

Then crumble in distress,

As my voice in the backdrop reproaches

that you indeed deserve the best.

WordPress Daily prompt : Trace

Wafting away – Poem

Sure, there’s safety in the wharf

And many a peaceful sight.

In the capricious waters though,

I find the exciting invite !

There’s comfort in surety

But I’d any day take a scare.

Diving in despite the dread,

reassured that I dare.

For inertia soon becomes dull

With its slumbering sing-song lull.

Its activity that has the exciting bait,

Hooks you into journeys that can’t wait !

Anchored and happy, that’s what you say ?

I’d take Unmoored and awaiting any day.

Now I’ll follow the stars and waft into the sea,

For I hear its cacophony calling out to me.

Wisecrack in the cheese

“Did you scrape your knee in your descent from heaven ?” and its other cringeworthy variations prove to be one of the cheesiest pick up lines that has outlived generations. Once we’re done with the eye rolling, let’s take a closer look and ask ourselves, “Why can’t we live up to be the angels that the chat up line claims us to be ?”

We certainly could, in the glory days of childhood. Remember the happy abandon with which we flew kites in the terrace and built our own camp fires ?  There was also the unshakeable faith in our artistry, fashioning dolls out of clay and boats out of paper. It was a simpler time when we wore our hearts on our sleeves and stayed true to the things that spoke to us. Amidst growing up and its calculative self-centredness, the angel within us has succumbed to slumber and we leave her drowsy and blindfolded, lest she started asking uncomfortable questions.

There’s a huge irony though. Look at who you root for. We put on our best cheerleader suit for characters in virtual and actual reality, hailing as heroes those who chase outside only that which warms their insides : representatives of the ‘heavenly.’ So why don’t we take a step and join the club ? Surviving on exhibitionism and social credentials- read someone else’s reality– has become a cold cliche. True culture is to do things that make you look forward to tomorrow so much so that approval and survival are goals of the past.

The upgraded search is a hunt for the ‘spirited’ and the ‘soulful.’ Search hard and search deep within, and when you do find it, pass it on. Be vocal about the elation in being a hero, the confidence in embodying all that you believe in and the beauty of a life tailored for yourself, mush like the wondrous doll house you personalised with the undeniable power of a child. Realise that the angel is much better off when she’s wide awake, steering your way from her golden chariot, and so are YOU.

The next time someone hints that you’re angelic, do me a favour and believe them. Own it and your reality is all yours to own !

WordPress daily prompt : Descend