the eyes of the beholder

I've come across just too many dramatic statements by famous authors and intellects, that don't really define beauty.
They just come along, one after another and confuse the heck out of you and me, till we drop this excellent idea of wanting to pursue the real meaning of beauty.

Marie Stopes said : ''You can take no credit for beauty at sixteen. But if you are beautiful at sixty, it will be your soul's own doing''
Awestruck.
what truth !

but then Jean Kerr popped up and slipped another quote in : "I'm tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. That's deep enough. What do you want - an adorable pancreas?"
Laughter. No arguments.
What truth, again.

And of course, like you, i too have come across a lot of scoop on how beauty is brain and vice-versa. That concept has never failed to impress me or make me think. Yet, i wonder why that connecting word 'is' is actually there between two words like beauty and brain which can be independently appreciated. It's an extraneous connection.
I personally have always been of the opinion that beauty is of little importance without intellect.
But bad genes, my dear, are bad genes. Intellect is no consolation for that.

Einstein wasn't the best looking man on the planet, but he was definitely one of the most intelligent. Point noted, Your Honour. We all want to be the smart ones.
Yet, in this world where people are criticizing external beauty so ruthlessly and so many of us seem to disregard it with apparent unimportance....
why does each one of us, no matter how minimally, still want to contribute to better physical appearance and grooming ? here's the truth : beauty may be skin deep, but it bothers us to the core.

Beauty is skin deep. YES. is there a problem ?
Alright, let it be skin deep. However deep it is, it's only the skin that shows it.
So wouldn't it be rather stupid to have that beauty all the way down to your flesh?

And then, for those of us who go around arguing about whether beauty is inner beauty or is it just limited to what we look like...
let's make things simpler for ourselves. there are different kinds of beauty.
physical beauty is what pleases our superficial senses, vision and touch.
inner beauty, as we call it, is what pleases our deep sense, feeling.

Sharon stone is beautiful. Mother Teresa is beautiful. Princess Diana is beautiful. Mahatma Gandhi is beautiful. George Clooney is beautiful. Abdul Kalam is beautiful.With due respects to each person, all of us have our own, special charm. It would be unfair to run either down, be it outer or inner beauty.

Let's not console ourselves for things that we do not have, and instead spend more time learning to love ourselves for the lovely things that we have. Loving oneself makes one beautiful more than anything ever can..

here i come yet again

And we Laugh.
that's just the side everyone gets to see.
when you cry, you cry alone.. not because the world wants to leave u alone but you're too scared to be called a sissy..
I cry. In front of the world..
let them all know that they can frustrate me sometimes too.
see if people have the guts to accept the fact that they can piss you off sometimes.
most of them dont.. that's why they try to make it alright by laughing their not-a-penny-worth's-ass off like they did nothing wrong.
how informational !..sorta makes me glad

infinite emotions...all packed into 1400 cc of gray matter. how unfair !!!

suffocating 'freedom of thought'...

Gregory David Roberts opens brilliantly in Shantaram,
" It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what i know about love and fate, and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while i was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realized somehow, through the screaming in my mind, that even in the shackled, bloody helplessness, i was still free.
Free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn't sound like much, I know. But in that flinch and bite of the chain, when it's all you've got, that freedom is a universe of possibility "

Brilliance, I'll say. Unadulterated.
There's nothing better that can define the freedom that the mind has.

It shows that no potential mind barrier like right or wrong, good or bad, ethical or unethical, or even the feeling of revenge can stop you from thinking and doing what you want to.
There are no red signals or speed breakers. There are no rules.

Rules make people hypocrites. Big hypocrites.
Have you managed to accept rules, in the depths of your being ? Have you ever realised how futile they are and how they weaken your mind ?
Rules are meaningless stamps. They are loud expressions of a certain majority that we pretend to follow, however unwillingly.
They deny a huge array of choices in life. They strangle infinite pathways reducing them to a few and close our thinking at some point of time.

Where there are unnecessary rules, there's confinement.
Where there's confinement, there's hypocrisy.
All this, just because freedom of thought is far more unaffected as compared to freedom of expression which, hides and changes depending on the people who hang around.

Rules makes our opinions untrue and fluid. We're scared of speaking out and being ourselves.
We're moving towards losing self-acceptance.
We're losing dimensions of our identity with every moment that passes by and filling all the empty spaces with meaningless rules.
The same rules stop us, deceive us and destroy us.

The next time you write on a ruled sheet of paper..you'll grasp the degree of confinement..
an empty sheet of paper gives you the freedom to do what you can't do with neatness on a ruled sheet of paper..
the only difference being, life is more than just paper.

Food for thought is... think whether you're thinking often enough about what you really want to think, or are there rules even in your mind ?

in case you're wondering what conviction is about, if it isn't about rules...conviction and rules stand miles apart. they're parallel but nowhere close to being called 'similar' because, conviction is what you make..meaningfully, by yourself and for yourself. and they're what you should really stand by.

''Where the MIND is without fear, and the head is held high...''
lets learn.

-aarthi

hobbes says....

''somethings just don't need the thought that people give them''

definitely worth thinking about :)

the green light at the traffic signal

On an afternoon of free flowing thoughts, my fingers are delightfully typing away the thoughts of a day in the week that just passed..
The story about a little green light, that helped me sort my life.

Before i go on to it, here are 2 questions you ought to ask yourself :

1. Do you REALLY stop, and take time out for yourself and your problems ?

to think about all the amazing things you have..when you needn't have been lucky enough ? to think of your problems and find a way to solve them..

your problem may be SMALL..
or something really BIG
and most commonly as it occurs, it seems small to the rest of the world, and only you know how much it annoys the life out of you.

anyhow, it's just there..hanging around..
and you claim to think about it. but if you think about it at all the wrong times..
-during lectures
-at work
-when you're out for a coffee with friends
-or maybe out on a date
-when you're spending that rare 'quality time' with your family or a loved one..
does it get you anywhere ?
NO.
your lecturer sounds like a moron...your coffee tastes bitter, your date turns out a bozo, and your family doesn't seem to understand you.
do you realise how substantially perspectives change when you think about your problems at wrong times in the day ?

it may sound stupid when i say that it's better we don't think about our problems at particular times of the day..the reason being, the mind's not really under the control of what you wish you could always think of.
on the contrary, reality shows you that your problems occupy a huge chunk of your consciousness. you keep thinking about them and magnifying them, blowing them out of proportions till your life seems to be suspended at the edge of a cliff..

2. More importantly, do you think when you have to think ?
Do you think of what troubles you before you go to sleep ? do you think of it when you get back home from college or from work ?
think when you're alone. it helps you think better.
think about it when your mind is clear. when you're low, never come to a conclusion regarding problems..
just phone a friend and talk.
if that's not possible,take a small walk..you'll be cool again.


My little experience :

last friday, on my way back home from college, there was an unending traffic line at sion..
and to make things better, my green signal was really short.. talk about bad luck.
the GREEN light appeared and the deafening honking began..i was, like what it seemed, miles away from the signal. my cab moved with the infinitely long traffic line for a few seconds..and the RED took over
the whole process repeated twice and I was quite frustrated at the end of it.
after a lifetime of waiting, we crossed the green light..
strangely, it seemed to relate to my problem..that though i was crabbed with the frequency of the signal, i knew, all the way, that i was definitely going to get that green somehow.

my problem with life, was my impatience with regard to my expectations..
and this, is the real problem with most of us.
you don't wait long enough for what you want. you don't wait till the situation bends your way..

so, here's what you'd like to be reminded about..

When you want something to happen, just work for it. And wait.
put your best foot forward..
It has to go your way, because there's no other way it can.

Things may seem to stop you or take you backward, but it's upto you to have faith in yourself.
I totally believe in the green light at the traffic signal. Do you ?

-Aarthi

the first breeze that blew across the bay..

you've wanted your early relationships to start as smooth as the love between Prince Charming and Cinderella...and thereafter work out as ''happily ever after'' ? but you finding yourself living in a twist. One month passes and you love them beyond the earth. Two months, and you love them beyond the ocean. Six months, and their quirks just bother you a bit, but a few years, and boom !

welcome home !

you're not the only one
it's just that all of us hope for the easy way out, though just a few know how difficult it is to find that person.
although we hope we can like and overcome, rather than tolerate each other's shortcomings..
although we feel we can cross over and ignore incompatibilities..
it's all easier said than done.

people who are...well, more practical, can I say, or more experienced about relationships...don't really care about how many relationships it takes to find the right one. Life is anything but a coincidence.
and out of the 2 billion people of the opposite sex, what chance have we of finding the so-called right one ?

fortunately or not so, life isn't that easy. Then first many relationships are the ones that demand a special attachment and memory. As much as people may dream to want to be together forever, in the very first go, things have a fair chance of not working out.

let's get real.
i totally admire people who found their lifelong loves first, are happy and still live with them. this is a matter of pure coincidence, congrats. I'm done talking about you.
with due respects to these exceptions, i can boldly tell you that the world is made up of people who've mostly been in more than a single serious relationship.
that's solely because of the fact that it's all a gamble.

first relationships are generally due to sparks, attraction, and elementary feelings. most people tend to make a mistake here, by thinking it's that mad love. (not to mention that we learn from our mistakes) their physical needs cloud their emotional needs, the needs to satisfy ego, self-respect etc.
the sparks are anyway extinguished in a few months or a year.
that's when all the small things you liked about the other person start to irritate you.
that's when the things they do seem to target your 'ego'
that's when you realize you made the biggest mistake in the whole darned world.
that's when you realize you're sad about the wrong person

there are a few people whom i know...who happen to be prolonging lifeless, meaningless first-time relationships.
for the sake of the world-just to show the world that they've achieved a big deal by being with each other for half-a-decade.. little realizing that they're not happy, that they're cheating themselves..(the world doesn't give two hoots about what you do....it's all about yourself. be yourself. like what you like. do what you want.Who cares that your friends saw you together ? What your friends think or saw isn't life at all ! )
for the sake of the habit that the other person has become in their life.. it's all a matter of habit. the phone conversations at half past 2 (a.m.), the shoulder, the couple lunches, the dinners, the movies..
for the sake of their 'i-am-feeling-lonely-and-depressed' phase that they fear after breaking up..

So..
who is the right one ?
how do you know it's the right one ?
does our opinion of the 'right one for me' change over time ?

'who is the right one ?'...is a question that cannot be answered to the point.
of course you know, that only you can answer it most closely.
- we do give descriptions of what we want in our ideal match...but little do we realise that none of us really know what we want even when we see a manifestation of it. It could pass us by and we wouldn't know.
we prefer laying our eyes on someone whom we've already met and mould our 'wants' according to what they are and then we realise we're thinking, ''ohh wow..you're the one i'm looking for....'', but it's so momentary that it's only when you grow out of someone that you realize they WERE the one but they are not the one.

it's easier for a girl to MEET a warm, charming, intelligent guy and LIKE him, rather than picture someone completely IMAGINARY having all these qualities and like Mr.I-exist-in-wonderland.
something similar applies to guys.

how do you know if he/she is the right one ?The irony is, you may not know it instantly. You could cross paths over and over and nothing might work out till it does. You might tear each other down to the floor or just remotely have existed in each other's lives forever and never even notice each other as potential till once fine day you feel deep down, what if they're the one ?
It's all a matter of time. It takes time to peel out their petals and see what they have to offer you inside..see if they're really what you wanted. See their worst, show them your worst, give each other a chance to see your best, and then a relationship slowly figures.
And to all those who want to argue saying , ''no, no. not at all. I'll just know my right person when I see him/her..'' please, get your feet back on the ground.

does our opinion of the right one for me change, with time ?yes it does. it really does.
I'm not talking about something drastic...basic ideas do not change.
you might start liking people of a different profession at another given time. you might start appreciating people who are settled in a different country, though you'd once thought that you never might.
you may want a partner who drinks 6 vodkas bottoms-up now, but three years down the lane, you might want a teetotaler.
it's all a question of time.
of how your likes and dislikes change.
of what your life demands out of you.

never give up hope. love happens after a long journey, after many, many lovers, all of whom are just many different beautiful flavors of "wrong".
Don't live for others.
Don't live hanging on to anything because you had put effort into that relationship and love into that relationship for so many years, and now they're just out there, with someone else.
Don't hang on to your ego..it makes you self-destructive without your knowledge.
Don't live to show the world anything. If at all life has taught you anything, it has taught you that if a beautiful girl is no more in your life, a more beautiful, intelligent, lovable girl will come along, and you've to just keep your eyes open. If a guy who you love doesn't see it in you, a more wonderful amazing guy who is far more capable of understanding your goodness will come along.
Don't compromise on your needs in the beginning or you'll regret it later.
and if you can help it, don't fall in love

after all, it's not just about the first breeze that blows across the bay...

and definitely read this small article...go : andrew boyd's 'loving the wrong person'

-aarthi kannan