Its that time of the year

Can’t wait to be 25 in a week!! I absolutely go gaga over birthdays-celebrating mine as well as others. Cakes, candles, gifts, treats and a total recall of the all shit done last year… I simply love the frills and ruffles of this occasion. But this birthday has more reasons to be special.

a)I enter the first quarter of my life (Someone once said, when you are 25 everyone will stop advising you..phew finally!)
b)I get to celebrate it with my cul-de-sac group in Goa! Gonna dance my way into 25..woot!woot!
c)I got accepted in my dream MS program. I never imagined I could make it.
d)Leaving home soon(or, rather running away) and happy to be on my own again. (Living with parents has its own perks, but for me, last 6 months was a personal hell)
e)Physically, I got my mojo back. It feels great to get conditioned and be back in the game!
f)My financial condition is still in the gutter. But this time, I m a poor in a zen-like state of life.
g)Emotionally, I m more sure of myself now. All my wants and needs have been neatly separated in rows and columns, never to be mixed and confused again!

But the only downside of being 25 is - marriage, that too arranged! It’s the curse of the Indian society. The assortment of over-zealous parents, relatives and nosy neighbors kindda makes life of a 25 year old singleton hell. Its not like I don’t have faith in this constitution. But everything has its place and time. For me, in the next 2-3 years I don’t see myself getting hitched to a guy and then be the CEO of his DNA. This is the “me-time” of my life, where I want to completely devote my energy and passion for my personal-growth. How difficult is it for the elders to understand this? Bah,humbug!

Anyways, leaving home and everything familiar behind eliminates the whole marriage scenario for good. Because I think I deserve more from this life. 24 saw me through a roller-coaster phase of my life. And there was ruin. But turns out, it was a gift in disguise. I got challenged to test my own limits, get out of my comfort zone and face the scary unknown. Even though I was kicking and screaming then, I kindda of like what it eventually did to me. I had my fair share of lemons thrown at me..but its tequila time now!

And I learned the most important lesson till date.

"You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you might find- you get what you need" ~ The Rolling Stones

Sunday morning thoughts..the Physics of the Quest

When I woke up today, I just had two desires : coffee and blogging. The first was easy to satisfy. But the latter..not so much. Its been ages since I wrote last. I have been denying myself the sheer pleasure of writing. It was like being on a writing-abstinence, an act of blasphemy in my blog shrine. Anyway, my original desire to wake up early on a Sunday morning and have coffee while blogging is turning to be a disastrous affair. By end of the third line, I burnt my tongue with my piping hot fix. Not what I exactly had in mind for this morning, but still fairly happy nonetheless.

Speaking of this idea, I suppose I feel quite the same of where I'm at in life right now. Life is so funny that way. You just never know where you'll end up. The ancients used to call it “fatum” or destiny, as we know it. This reminds me of the book I read recently, Eat, pray, love (by Elizabeth Gilbert), and let me tell you blog dost, this is not a typical chick lit( even though the tagline boasts of, one woman’s search for everything). Its more of an example on how to deal transformations in life. There are many idiologies in this book that I neither accept nor can relate to, since the ingénue was a 30 something divorcee. But there was this one short monologue towards the end of the movie, based on this book:

"I've come to believe that there exists in the universe something I call 'The Physics of The Quest' -- a force of nature governed by laws as real as the laws of gravity or momentum. And the rule of Quest Physics maybe goes like this: 'If you are brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting (which can be anything from your house to your bitter old resentments) and set out on a truth-seeking journey (either externally or internally), and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue, and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher, and if you are prepared - most of all - to face (and forgive) some very difficult realities about yourself... then truth will not be withheld from you.' Or so I've come to believe. I can't help but believe it, given my experience."

Don’t ask me why, but I was deeply moved by this line. Maybe because I feel like this is all I ever do. If you have been on such a journey for long time, it is really easy to feel like you're running in circles... that you're simply going nowhere, that you just run and run, chasing after whatever seems to be the right thing for you at the time. Being in this grey zone is not that bad. But do you know what is more annoying? People asking me almost incessantly, “What do you want to do next in life?” And then I realize I am in serious trouble here. I really don’t know where I see myself year from now, let alone life.

Going back to our protagonist of the book, she keeps repeating this catchy Italian phrase "Attravarsiamo", which means lets cross over. Something she did to follow what her heart wants. Easier said than done concept, because crossing over in reality often leads to transgression of many norms of the society. But when I do crossover, I hope to find it although manifested in different forms-to be happy and content in life.