2012

Neil Gaiman’s New Year Wishes that are highly applicable to all of us.

A decade ago I wrote:

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art – write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

And almost half a decade ago, I said:

I hope you will have a wonderful year, that you’ll dream dangerously and outragerously, that you’ll make something that didn’t exist before you made it, that you will be loved and you will be liked, and that you will have people to love and to like in return. And, most importantly (because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now), that you will, when you need to be, be wise, and that you will always be kind.

And for this year, my wish for each of us is small and very simple. And it’s this:

I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.

Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re Doing Something.

So that’s my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.

Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, Do it.

Make your mistakes, next year and forever.

On Philanthropy

“What’s important is how we use our time on this earth, not how conspicuously we give our money away. What’s important is the energy and courage we are willing to expend reversing entropy, battling cynicism, suffering and challenging mediocre minds, staring down those who would trample our dreams, taking a stand for magic, and advancing the potential of the human race.”

~ Dan Pallotta

Love

Triangular theory of love developed by psychologist Robert Sternberg:

those selected few

There are those selected few who always get to you. Actions or inactions. Words expressed or held back. Somehow, they have manage to crawl under your skin and pick at the scars, softspots or whatever it is that rile you up. Heck, you can’t even deem them the “selected” few because you don’t always choose them in your life. They appear, they piss over all that you thought have been true and they own you for a long, long time.

Often, you try to be brave and fight with all the ways you know how. However, there are moments when you remember that you are the broken child, never quite figuring out how to put the pieces together and the day falls apart.

There are also those whom you are paid to deal with who have the propensity to cause brain aneurysms. Everyday, you question why you put youself through so much pain for so little.

For women who are difficult to love

you are a horse running alone
and he tries to tame you
compares you to an impossible highway
to a burning house
says you are blinding him
that he could never leave you
forget you
want anything but you
you dizzy him, you are unbearable
every woman before or after you
is doused in your name
you fill his mouth
his teeth ache with memory of taste
his body just a long shadow seeking yours
but you are always too intense
frightening in the way you want him
unashamed and sacrificial 
he tells you that no man can live up to the one who 
lives in your head
and you tried to change didn’t you?
closed your mouth more
tried to be softer
prettier
less volatile, less awake
but even when sleeping you could feel 
him travelling away from you in his dreams
so what did you want to do love
split his head open?
you can’t make homes out of human beings
someone should have already told you that
and if he wants to leave
then let him leave
you are terrifying
and strange and beautiful
something not everyone knows how to love.

- Warsan Shire

Farewells

Never really good at them. I get either too emotional or too falsely cheerful. There is never a middle ground.

By 12noon today, there were already two. One was cheeky because we knew we would hang out again soon enough. And I outgrew the previous melodrama. Another was sombre because 365 days later, everything might have changed. And it was difficult to lose one of your best friends.

But I am grateful that at least for today, I get proper farewells.

Everything and nothing changed

“We are still a hateful, war-waging culture that denigrates women, celebrates killing, despoils the planet, plunders the resources of less powerful people, keeps a permanent underclass in virtual economic slavery and wages imperialist wars abroad.”

Scary isn’t it, when you bother to sit down and ponder upon the fact?

When I look back

To quote Abby Perkins: Will I regret these encounters, if I will find as I grow up that these boys have, at some point, slipped into my heart and dug out something that I will miss later. The days filled with worries, anxiety and overall discomfort, I would be inclined to think that I already have my regrets. Then I saw how care had glimpses of impact. And I need to learn that that would have to be enough.

Al Capone

“You can go a long way with a smile. You can go a lot further with a smile and a gun.”

Life sometimes throw so much at you that being armed (physically or otherwise) becomes a necessity. And if you have to go down, what better way than with weapons hot?

Perceptions are everything

Truncated from bnet.com

It’s nice to talk about an ideal world where we’re all judged on our work performance, but we have to live in the world that exists. And in that reality, coworkers don’t appreciate others’ long leaves of absence, bosses don’t reward bare minimum performance, and your appearance affects how others perceive you. It doesn’t really matter if such perceptions are “right” or “fair”.