What is ordinary for half of the world is something that I long for

I was on twitter today, viewing random pictures, and I want time to capture my instant thoughts as I viewed this picture, because my unprompted impulsive thoughts represent something. It represents my present, and that of many other people who live in these developing countries like me, and compromise on a day to day basis. We have nothing but dreams and hopes, for a better tommororw.

And this is what i thought as I saw the picture:

I too want to see bullet trains out of my window. I too want to walk on clean roads and breathe dirt free air. I too want a life free of people peeping out at whatever you do. I too want to wander on the streets at night and not be afraid of being shot. I too want all that freedom which would enable me to use my own two eyes, my own hands and feet - whatever way I want. Is that too much to ask?

You should add a new rule to your rule book: Respect what your elders say and learn to accept what they say, without making them say it over and over again.

Last night as I read these words on my phone, I realized how we all have grown up listening to these kind of statements and conventions all our lives. Since day one you are told, Listen to your elders, Accept whatever they say, do not argue or try convincing them to change their minds, they know better, they know what’s good for you and what’s not. Well honestly speaking, tell me how many of you agree? It really wasn’t a conscious attempt but my mind couldn’t resist the urge to rationally challenge this convention’s authenticity. Forgive me if I am doing anything against the specified moral codes, but I can’t help it. The philosophies to which our society subscribes must be tested and dependable. If it’s going to be just another product of human conformity, than I am sorry, but I beg to differ.

As a matter of fact, nobody knows what’s better for someone; nobody knows if it’s good for me to marry that guy, that family, that business man and a man of so and so specification, in fact nobody even knows if it’s good for me to marry at all! (Don’t freak out, I’m using marriage just an example). Older people use their experience-knowledge to combat this uncertainty, but you know what, it isn’t of much help. I believe in the individualistic school of thought. I believe that every individual is different from the other to such a degree that we cannot go into generalizing things. More than making it simpler, it complicates matters in the long run.

Without any more drifting away from what I intend to say, here I go, declaring it - plain and simple. “I do not think that this rule of accepting whatever elders say is an appropriate one”. Had I accepted everything my elders told me to do, I would have never ended up in a college which taught be so much, I would have never gotten to know the best person living on this planet (my teacher), and I would have never been able to discover so much that I have discovered now. My Mamo, who lives in UAE now, was a rebel case in his childhood. He so wanted to go study in America that he applied to the university silently, applied for visa and everything on his own, and then begged on his knees to his father to let go of him, cause he won’t let him! And this I’m talking about is 30 years ago when children in this part of the world couldn’t even think of breaking a general conversation with their fathers, and weren’t supposed to have an opinion. Today, out of my nana’s three sons, the one who is doing “the best” is my mamo who chose to rebel. He knew that he knew better, because its not possible for anybody else to know what is better for him. He is at one of the most respectable position today, supporting his whole family. He drives a freaking awesome Ferrari, and hasn’t deviated a tad from his religion, values, and morals, as was expected of him when he left for America.

So, If you are reading this, I want to tell you that trying to convince elders is not that I am not respecting them. I respect you, and you know that, I care for you, and you know that, but is it always going to be this way? Will you always consider yourself as someone twenty years elder than me, and so all I say is trash and all you say is to be accepted as it is just because you are elder than I am? That’s unfair, you know it! Had I accepted your disagreement on the idea of communicating after my days at that place were done, had I not convinced you, we would have never gotten to know each other today. Boundaries.. what good do they do? What good are they capable of doing? You have made the last two years bearable for me, you have kept me moving on daily basis, you are the one who has kept me standing on this ground. You know it all so well! but i'll tell you, limitations and rules are the bridges which will only take us half way there, we will make discoveries and spend a time of our lives, we will be capable of laughing and crying together, we will unveil alot more than we ever expected out of each other, but these bridges will only take us halfway there. The last few steps are to be taken alone. These steps are a war against conventions, against the generalization of what is possible, against the impossibility of the idea of what is possible!

“Everything is simpler than you think and at the same time more complex than you imagine”

Relationships are complicated, because human beings are complicated and there is no way we can stop them from being what they are, that is, complicated. Speaking for myself, I am a concrete example of what I’m talking about. Twisted, Self-contradictory, and absolutely abnormal; yeah that’s me. Let’s not forget here that there actually is a school of thought which believes that the only people who are normal are the ones you don’t know about! So basically, we all are abnormal in our sweet ways. Well that was just for self defense, coming back to relationships; I have no idea where to start from. Okay, May be we can discuss what happened yesterday. Well I left her three good text messages starting from 2 in the afternoon and stopping at 9 at night however I didn’t get an answer. This is pretty unusual, because she always answers. So I was basically getting anxiety attacks, and dude I couldn’t take my mind off her. But you know what; it’s not about HER NOT ANSWERING ME! Or maybe it is, but I really do want to give her the personal space she is used to of having, I don’t want her to feel bound to answer all the time when she doesn’t feel like it, I don’t want to seize her freedom of whatever she wants to do. I don’t want her to want me, I want her to WANT to WANT me! Eh? Confused, Okay, let me put in a better way, see I could have called her up anytime yesterday and could have made sure if everything is fine and all, but I didn’t do that, because I don’t want to bother her or make her think something like ‘Oh next time I better reply either I want to or not, or else this little irritating creature would call me up and I will have to bear listening to her unstoppable mushy talks’.

Well ok I admit she won’t think anything like that, she’s been very nice to me all this time and the truth is that THIS is what I am afraid of. I don’t want to take advantage of her consideration, I want to be happy with whatever part of her is with me at this moment, but then, there are my beliefs, the schools of thoughts I believe in, and I believe in reciprocity, I want to return what she has given to me time and again, which includes support, happiness, meaning, compassion, advice, guidance, suggestion and all that stuff, but for that I need to know when she wants that, I need to KNOW and she would never tell me anything. When I need support I tell her, I plainly tell her what went wrong and how I mishandled, how I was hurt, how someone did this or that to me, but she would never tell me anything. I try digging in every day, every single day I ask her to tell me how her day was but every day the answer is just fine or busy or okay. I can’t assume when she had a bad day and needs consolation, I can’t assume when to support her, I can’t assume when to be there for her, unless she tells me and she wouldn’t. I thought that asking was a good option but you know, it’s not a good option. Ever filled a questionnaire about anything? People who have would know, how direct questions do not help and besides it can really irritate the hell out of the other person, and I am in no position to cause any sort of irritation here, I already am a very irritating person by default.

Sometimes I just wonder if this is the person I wanted to be. Well, I don’t think so! I am the person who used to call my sister an Emotional fool every time she appeared emotionally inclined towards something or someone, I am the person who would never cry in public or show myself as a weaker body, I am the person who would never tell people I love them, I would never utter those words, not to my own mother as well, cause that makes me appear weak, vulnerable, and emotional. I preferred being insensitive, I was that kind who you’d say is full of arrogance, stubborn, unbendable, bossy and someone who would never suck up to people for any reason what so ever, but now, I don’t know, what is becoming of me. Was I not I then? Or am I not me now? Or maybe we just change with time; maybe we adjust our sails with the new winds and maybe at times, no matter what our history is, we do find ourselves bending towards people to blow for us when we are falling short on a lungful of air.

"To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance”

The other day I wrote an unpublished post on self-love, inspired by a blogger (adhisha’s) recent post on love and the like. The message I deciphered from that post amounts to the idea that we all must love ourselves in the first place before trying our hands on being the apple of somebody else’s eye. Reason though is very plausible. It voices out the fact that those who cannot love thy self cannot possibly be capable of giving love to others. And I have nothing to disagree here. Although I must cleanly confess that even after spending a good twenty years of my life in the sheer company of my body and my soul, I haven’t really drawn closer enough to be friends with myself, let alone the idea of loving myself! And this certainly is a quirk of fate, very demeaning I must say. But well I have a valid argument which proclaims how awfully hard it is to love yourself considering you are well-aware of “all” your shortcomings and transgressions which disgust you every time you make an effort to step ahead and give yourself a try. And then no matter how much you resist, the counter argument does pop up in your head, making you realize that nobody ever said it’s going to be all beer and skittles every time. Love, after all, is not a synonym for perfection.

Today I just happened to bump into this another blog where I read the writer’s painful account of coming face to face with the underlying truth in Oscar Wilde's assertion that perhaps the only lifelong romance is 'to love oneself', and once again I couldn’t agree more. The truth is that all our lives--in the name of love, we try to seek comfort in other people. Our whole life starts to revolve around that one person and nothing else seems to matter to us. Not even our own selves! Everything we do then is an attempt to please our beloved and we go as off limit as mortgaging our souls to make things work out. Bear with me if you think I may be generalizing too much here, but the point is, do we still find the comfort we were looking for in the first place? Selling ourselves (as some of us would do by being vulnerable and compromising on things which cannot be compromised) to gain love can never bring any sort of comfort; in fact we fall even deeper in the abyss and then on a later date when we realize that the comfort we had been running after—seeking in some other human body is not to be found there, and that’s when things start to fall apart. Bonds crack, yet we still do not understand what went wrong. We put the blame on who-so-ever and after we are over the ‘getting over’ phase, we once again venture out searching a dwelling in another heart which shows potential to provide comfort that we long for.

After life long experiments, it all comes down to this little fact that the most delightful and satisfying of comforts made available to human beings lies not in other people’s liking of us, but in our liking of ourselves. Because the truth is that only one form of love can lead us to the next! And only after loving ourselves can we find that famous version of being loved that is known to bring comfort to the human soul.