When I'd been a teen, one of my closest friends told me that she wakes up every morning, looks at her reflection in the mirror and tells herself: "I am special. Only special things will happen to me." At that point, I had found it a little odd that one might call oneself special. Is that not something on the verge of arrogance? Why must we tell ourselves we are special? That's what the world around is supposed to recognize and acknowledge on their own. LOL. (Talk about operating from a place of modesty! HAHA!) A few days ago, while I was walking to get in my heart points on Google Fit, I was listening to this Headspace podcast where they spoke about comparison being the rott of most evil. Needless to say, I fully agree that comparison is the reason why we never seem to be satisfied with who we are or what we have. When we compare ourselves to others, we compare our inner life with the others' outer lives - apples and oranges. We do not know how these lives are b...
Parents are one's unchangeable lot. Sometimes, we get lucky: we find people who we are okay to befriend as we grow older. But, most of the time, in my experience with people from my generation, relationships with fathers have been exceptionally hard to navigate. My father is no exception. Since I lost my mum about a year and a half ago, I have come to realise that his only memory of my mother is all that she did for him. He has no memory of her for herself - for who she was. She has written so many things and he has not read a single one of her writings. She loved books, witty articles in newspapers, flowers, good food, desserts, sweet music, TV serials. She was ever curious about the world and wanted to travel to new places and found joy in reading and learning about the places she wanted to visit. He has no memory whatsoever that memorialises any of these things. Instead, he talks about how she prepped for poojas, and becomes especially dramatic about the one festival where she ...