You meet a lot of people in your life, but there are very few who catch your attention at first sight. ‘Love at first sight’ is a well-known adage. But does it really happen? Has it ever happened to you?
You meet someone, or perhaps just have a glimpse of them as they pass by, and your heart skips a beat. In no time, you start thinking about them. Despite repeated efforts, there is no control over your thoughts, and a seemingly random person becomes a top priority in your mind.
Wherever you go, you start looking out for them. You see perfection in them. In everything you see, or everyone that you meet, you try to find a shadow of that person in them. And when you finally meet that person again, even though they do not turn out to be like the one you had imagined them to be, you are ready to make every compromise possible only to accommodate them in your life.
There will come a time in life when you will become infatuated with a single soul. For this person, you would do anything and not think twice about it, but when asked why, you will have no answer.
You will try your whole life to understand how a single person can affect you as much as they do, but you will never find out. And no matter how badly you hate it or how badly it hurts, you will love this person without regret for the rest of your life.
Breathing Distance
Disclaimer: Again, art recreated. Found it on the Internet.
It was right then – when she asked a tough mathematics question, and all I did was stare at her. I had no clue about the answer because my mathematics knowledge had only dwindled to a dim verge after I left school.
She was expecting an answer from me – for the reason that I had actually approached her to teach me something as tricky as trigonometry. I knew it would be time consuming, and I would get my chances to be with her for a few extra minutes.
I uttered a rubbish answer which made no sense, and she smiled, and then guffawed. As I said, it was right then, just right then – that I realised the importance of curves, of the thousand places where girls’ bodies ease from one place to another, from the arc to the foot to ankle to calf, from calf to hip, to waist, to neck, to ski-slope nose to forehead, to shoulder, to the concave arch of the back… But out of the lot, the one on her face, the smile, catches your attention the most. And when that happens, you know it is love.
I had noticed curves before, of course, but I had never quite apprehended their significance until I had seen her smile that day.
And every time I have seen her since then, I have seen love.
As mortals, we have this tendency to put things on the pedestal. For the ones unaware about the word, to pedestalize (the word does not exist) someone or something refers to giving a person or a thing paramount importance in your life.
So who do you actually pedestalize? Usually, this thing called ‘love’ makes you pedestalize your lover. When it comes to the person you love, you just do not see anything else but them. Your thoughts towards the person become biased, you tend to show unconditional love towards everything that they do.
I have seen people go aww over ridiculous habits of their lovers. While I have found it uncool, I do agree that this is something that just happens to almost every person in love. This is because we make an image of our lover as the most perfect, i.e. ideal, one. Hence, no matter what they do, we do not see anything unusual in it. For us, all that matters is the person.
What happens when you pedestalize someone?
I am not stopping anyone from being in love. But one needs to know the value of oneself. Nothing is permanent. Apart from your parents, there is none who would unconditionally love you, and even this is not true in every case. So when you feel there is someone who has joined this list of people who love you dearly, you tend you give a part of your life to them.
And with chances of them leaving at some stage of life – not all people are fortunate enough and one has to accept the stark reality – this is very risky. I have seen a lot of people get depressed after their break up. The sudden absence of a person from your life will make you feel sad, because there is a void that gets created.
But more importantly, what a break-up essentially does to you is that you lose a part of yourself. How often have you quit doing something because you used to do it with your ex? I know people who have abandoned certain restaurants because those were the dinner date spots for them with their ex-lovers. Similarly, I have seen people not giving a second look to certain objects, be it certain flowers, certain movies, some songs, some ice-cream flavours, and what not – just because they remind them of their ex-lovers.
A part of you fades away.
I am not prophecising not loving anyone unconditionally. But the point here is that in life, you will meet a lot of people. If you let a part of you fade away with the departure of one soul, you are depriving people who are yet to come in your life from knowing that part of you. What if the one you meet next is the actual one for you? Aren’t you being unfair to them by not being your own self when you are with them?
Easier said than done, but try, just try, not letting a part of you fade away because of one person.
About the art – Recreated in 2015. Found it on Internet. With pens, and pencil colours.
Have you ever liked someone to an extent that you cannot stay mad at them for too long? If yes, you are very fortunate.
We meet a lot of people in our life, but there are very few who stay close to our thoughts. Fights are inevitable, for the reason that argument and disagreement forms the base of human thought process. If we do not disagree with each other, the world surely will be a calmer place, but one with no scope of improvements.
I see arguments and disagreements as perfect forums for opinions to emerge. While a particular thought might seem outrightly incorrect to you, there are serious chances that you might change your perspective towards that thought later.
You argue with the one you love over an issue. Obviously, in the heat of the moment, you put in arguments to prove your point somehow. Later, when the tensions drain down, the entire argument keeps running in your head. And this is the time when you realise that maybe, maybe, maybe the other person was correct too – not to entirety, but to some extent.
You feel like approaching that person to talk again, because they mean to you. One odd heated discussion cannot take anything away from the fact that they actually hold a special position in your life. But then there is this thing called ego, which holds you back.
This feeling, this very feeling of wanting to talk to your loved one, but also not wanting to talk to them because you want them to talk to you first, is just amazing. I find it cute, and this is what makes the fights bitter-sweet.
About the art – Recreated in 2014. Found it on Internet. All blues, from pens to paint, to sketch pens, to markers.
This one is quite special for me. I created this quite some time ago, about a decade ago, to be precise. I made use of colour pencils only.
The picture is easy to comprehend. It depends on how the viewer sees it. From the outlook, it looks like a beautiful face of a lady. But when you take a closer look, you find nature in it.
Again, this is not something that I thought of. I found this on a social media page and felt like recreating this one.
So why is this special for me? Well, this very picture helped me crack a big interview. I had reached the final rounds of the interview process at an MNC. I had messed up the final Managerial round to quite an extent. It all boiled down to the final set of questions which turned things in my favour.
I was asked about my hobbies and I was quick to mention ‘sketching’. Without any delay, the interviewer handed me a marker and asked me to draw something. I had never expected this to happen. And for a fake artist like me, who can only recreate stuff, this looked like a tough nut. I could not think of anything to sketch. This image flashed in my mind and I drew it.
The Interviewer loved it so much that the interview started all over again. What seemed like ending in 5 minutes, lasted 45 minutes. And those additional minutes were good enough for me to leave a lasting positive impression on the interviewer.
One of the most commonly found trait in almost every human being is the one pertaining to acceptance of one’s actions.
When things go well, we love to talk about it. The moment something goes wrong, we find ourselves in a situation looking for a scapegoat. It is very hard to accept that you have erred somewhere in your actions.
Imagine how simple it would be if we all be brave enough to take ownership of what we do, and how we behave. If there is anything that you may feel is not morally upright, or something that can potentially put you in a ‘false position’ later on, just don’t do it.
And if you accidentally err somewhere in your pursuit of doing something good, be humble enough to accept it. If your intentions were not wrong, there is nothing that you should fear about. If people still judge you for the apparent unwanted end result, despite you trying to do something good, it is their game to lose, and not yours. You just have to accept your mistakes, admit them.
The very same thing is applicable to speech as well. If you are bold enough to make strong statements, make sure you are equally bold to stand by your words 10 years down the line. If you cannot validate your own actions, and your words, there is no reason why you would ever be respected, by others, and your own self.
When you think everything is someone else’s fault, you will suffer a lot.
Disclaimer: Idea is not mine. The original art was created by someone else. I found it on the Internet.
‘The used’ is very close to my heart. I had created this back in 2010. It conveys a very strong message, and the meaning of it totally depends on how the viewer perceives it.
There will always be times in life when you would feel let down by someone, or some situation. You will feel betrayed, and you will feel that you have been ‘used’.
It is one of the most depressing thoughts that one can ever feel. When you know how bad it feels to be ‘used’, why would you inflict the same pain on someone else? Let your actions do only as much as you could handle if you would be at the receiving end of the same actions.
About the picture – I did not create and will not take any false credits for it. I just recreated it. The idea, obviously is someone else’s. I found it on the internet, and it appealed to me big time. I decided to recreate it.
It is about a girl who has been used, and abused. For the society, she is at fault. There is nobody to help her. The telephone line is disconnected. Her voice never reaches anybody. And the pain that she carries in her heart stays.
Minute Musings 