Random

Does pain or suffering really make you stronger? If someone close to you goes through something that is in your mind associated with your darkest thoughts, does it really make you better? Does everything that doesn't kill you, chisel the muscle of mind and heart and take you to a higher plane of consciousness?
It may highlight the moral fibre of the person going through said stuff but does it do the same for you. Is it strength to wish everything away? Is it strength to bury your head in the sand and pretend that it didn't happen or wake up everyday hoping it would have gone away?
Does the incessant searching ever stop? Do you ever stop looking for the latest and greatest out there or blaming yourself for what you could have done and didn't. Do you curse time or fate or God or is there something else out there that's waiting to hang its head in shame should you just say the word. Do you feel the urge to shout out loud at the injustice of it all - why me, why no one else? Or maybe sometimes you recognise that twinge of self pity that keeps harping on about how you should be the centre of everyone's thoughts and universe and maybe no one cares. The world has to move on but you want to hold on.
Yes, I think all of the above is true. I don't think, personally, that there is any more strength or less. Indeed it points out to you what your weaknesses are and what you care about so much. It takes you outside the narrow sphere of self obsession and the small world you've started to inhabit. It gives you perspective - cliched but important. It serves as a reminder - of things that are more important than you. Shows you how temporary everything is and how important it is to love in the now.
For now I guess all of us can do with some more strength. Getting through this will need all we've got and then some more :).

...

The book is closed, the year is done,

The pages full of tasks begun.

A little joy, a little care,

Along with dreams, are written there.

This new day brings another year,

Renewing hope, dispelling fear.

And we may find before the end,

A deep content, another friend.

Of Faeries :)

[W]hen the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies. And now when every new baby is born its first laugh becomes a fairy. So there ought to be one fairy for every boy or girl. ~James Matthew Barrie, Peter Pan

What a wonderful thought :)

A bit of everything ... and then some more....

Hmmm.. that’s the expression of the day! Chasing a million dreams over an undulating rainbow over time and space only to discard them as worthless pebbles of nothingness when that moment of realization twinkles at the corner of the eye? Why does it happen that wishes are endless and boundless and all I want is to endup with a little bit of everything in life?

It's work season these days! Days have warped into months and the definition of time seems to be a pedantic necessity with no real meaning. Caught in a race against time, my days are filled in chasing the deadline which dangles dangerously close now. Thoughts of this imminently approaching deadline seem to fly out of the window sometimes and I have to stretch out and snatch them back and make my wayward brain work towards it relentlessly. I have become seemingly immune to everything around me except work. Driven by a date which hangs overhead.

Sometimes, I guess it's just best to enjoy the the 'here and now' and savor it till it lasts. For, during that weariest part of the day, that teeny weeny dreamer in me still longs for those deliciously gloden sunshine moments of life like idyllic musings, carefree conversations and that warming glow of pals and books. The time for roses will come, all in a moment!

The StoneCutter

No matter how Useful we may be, sometimes it takes us a while to recognize our own value. This can be illustrated by the Chinese story of The Stonecutter:

There was once a stonecutter, who was dissatisfied with himself and with his position in life.

One day, he passed a wealthy merchant's house, and through the open gateway, saw many fine possessions and important visitors. "How powerful that merchant must be!" thought the stonecutter. He became very envious, and wished that he could be like the merchant. Then he would no longer have to live the life of a mere stonecutter.

To his great surprise, he suddenly became the merchant, enjoying more luxuries and power than he had ever dreamed of, envied and detested by those less wealthy than himself. But soon a high official passed by, carried in a sedan chair, accompanied by attendants, and escorted by soldiers beating gongs. Everyone, no matter how wealthy, had to bow low before the procession. "How powerful that official is!" he thought. "I wish that I could be a high official!"

Then he became the high official, carried everywhere in his embroidered sedan chair, feared and hated by the people all around, who had to bow down before him as he passed. It was a hot summer day, and the official felt very uncomfortable in the sticky sedan chair. He looked up at the sun. It shone proudly in the sky, unaffected by his presence. "How powerful the sun is!" he thought. "I wish that I could be the sun!"

Then he became the sun, shining fiercely down on everyone, scorching the fields, cursed by the farmers and laborers. But a huge black cloud moved between him and the earth, so that his light could no longer shine on everything below. "How powerful that storm cloud is!" he though. "I wish that I could be a cloud!"

Then he became the cloud, flooding the fields and villages, shouted at by everyone. But soon he found that he was being pushed away by some great force, and realized that is was the wind. "How powerful it is!" he though. "I wish that I could be the wind!"

Then he became the wind, blowing tiles off the roofs of houses, uprooting trees, hated and feared by all below him. But after a while, he ran up against something that would not move, no matter how forcefully he blew against it--a huge, towering stone. "How powerful that stone is!" he thought. I wish that I could be a stone!"

Then he became the stone, more powerful than anything else on earth. But as he stood there, he heard the sound of a hammer pounding a chisel into the solid rock, and felt himself being changed. "What could be more powerful than I, the stone?" he thought. He looked down and saw far below him the figure of a stonecutter.

-From Benjamin Hoff's, The Tao of Pooh.

Tick tock

Every year is getting shorter,
never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught
or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation
is the english way
The time is gone,
....the song is over,
thought Id something more to say ...

Simple things ...

List.

I think Genuine People Personalities on gadgets are an awesome idea. I especially love the idea of lifts that go left and right when they get fed up of going up and down. Spot on!

PS: Life

Change. Spice. Variety ... Something we have evolved with, toward. Something we relish. We fear and crave it. What is it that we really fear though. I think it is the unknown. The fear of what we know naught is the most frightening and yet when we do know it, it becomes dull and boring - nothing like the exciting and heart pounding fear and excitement we once felt toward it. Time blurs the boundaries and speeds us away in a different direction in different swathes of experience. The memories never go away but the feeling itself becomes a fading, distant reflection of the emotion that held sway once. Nothing would change that distant feeling yet maybe if we try to hold on to it we can stop the colours from running and blurring into a has been. ... but then to know something, we have to have felt it and to fear it again we have to forget - but then how do we know change if we have nothing to compare it to! Maybe that's the point, change is not one thing but many things, an everchanging, undefined abstractness that we yearn to discover and when we do - it changes ...

Can you really REALLY ever know someone? Maybe, the better question to ask is whether you really ever want to...

... A life worth living ...

A fantasy takes birth in the depths of my mind
Spun intricately into a fabric of life
Delicately perfumed; Patterned;
Moulded lovingly into airy unreal wisps of loveliness
Rising above this life, mundane
Taking a tour of bliss
Turning bliss into a life force
Beckoning, leading me on to follow
Into visions of what can be, the possibilities
Of a life beyond that which is all around
Away from the madness and rush of reality
A realm of the imagined unreal
Calm surreal and oh so beautiful
Lucious green - what enchantment is this...
Novel each time it appears before me
That which entices me to reach out .. and see what can be
And a LOT of things can, fantastic and impossible - deliciously so...

for happiness is being cared for,
.... Dreams are still dreams!

HMMmm

Life's too short. Isn't it? There is a need to grab it by the horns; squeeze every last drop of energy and opportunity and make it an exciting wondrous experience. It should be a series, rather it is a series of moments, each moment defined in itself and each an imprint on the next. Like Dominoes?

Carpe Diem - that's what we need - take back control, sieze the moment and live each one as completely as possible. None of this half hearted business. Experiences DO make the man (person, I mean)! Are experiences really good or bad or are they just that - an experience. Maybe there are those experiences we wish we'd never had - that could somehow be undone - we could pretend they never were but then aren't those experiences a part of who we are - who we become - our individuality - and is any of it as simple so as to be detachable from our selves.

I guess at the end of the day all we can really choose is to become a better person. Use what we've learnt.... Never forget. Not for an instant.