Words Self Reflection

Self-Realization is an important aspect about finding yourself

My summer vacation (so-called) began in the month of May, precisely on 11^th May, 2016. The reason I call this vacation ‘so-called’ is that on weekdays, I’m attending GRE classes, and also pursuing a summer internship. This year, I would be giving my GRE and TOEFL exams, so hence the classes. Classes are not tiresome, rather they are interesting, I get to read various different passages, and critically analyse them. When you have to critically analyze and carefully read an English passage, you concentrate on each sentence of the passage; moreover as everybody knows I need to know “arcane- medieval words”, so that I can appropriately answer Fill-in-the-blanks questions. Here is where I have a story to tell.

You have to elevate yourself, only that gives you enough space for achieving great things!

It is my first ever GRE English class. I’m nervous, and completely unaware of how people would be. Would they be friendly? Would the teacher be strict? Or maybe they maybe cool? I completely unaware of this. As the class begins, my English teacher announces that this particular lecture would deal with question- sentence equivalence, where i have to fill blanks with arcane and medieval English words. At about half an hour into class, my teacher is going on a neck break speed, he is bombarding us with 10-15 rare English words per question, with their respective synonyms, antonyms. I struggle to grasp each and every word. At the same time, I’m awestruck by my teacher’s vocabulary, and confidence. He literally knows the meaning of each and every word that is discussed in the questions. The confidence he exudes while teaching us is amenable and laudable. As much as I’m confused, and fascinated by my new teacher, my mind is on another level. My mind is pondering over the words my sir is telling us. Moreover, unusually a mental switch goes off, I start thinking about my personality. My mind is drifts off from the class, and the words, at the same time my mind is concurrently concentrating on the unusual words my teacher is telling us. A small voice inside my head murmurs, “Can I describe my personality with the weird words I have being taught? Is that really possible? Let’s try!!” My mind goes over the possibilities; some words emerge- cerebral, skittish, solemn, assiduous, and capricious. I’m completely ‘flabbergasted’ by my mind. It is simultaneously concentrating on what my sir is teaching and going over the words that define Me, Myself. As I properly ‘define’ myself, the class ends, and I have a childish smile on my face. I’m unusually sagacious, this is the first time a class taught me wisdom rather than knowledge

.

Let’s do this small fun activity, state the words you first spot! Those words equivocally define you!?

Well I realized that you cannot define yourself vaguely, you CAN’T be equivocal about your life’s goals. You SHOULD be very precise of what you want in life, and SHOULD work for it. Life has no rewind button, a moment lost is an opportunity gone forever, it cannot be brought back. At the same time, this definition of ‘YOU’ is quite unique. The words that define one person cannot define another person; he/she has his or her own set of words. Remembering this fact is important, and you will realize that once you define ourselves , you somehow elevate yourself from the rat race. A rat race where people compete over a limited range of words that can define many people. This is the main reason why people don’t feel satisfied even when they are successful, as they acquire words that mean NOTHING to them. Moreover, you have to seek out your words, because they are seeking you too, frantically searching and scourging for you. And when you find out these words, ‘your’ words, you will realize that they don’t define you anymore. This is what precisely brings you back to square one. You begin your journey again for the search of new words, and this is where self-discovery, complacency and self-awareness emerges.

To move FORWARD in life, you have to elevate yourself

In the Air

Flight, a place where all your inner fears about manners come to life. Moreover, it is at this place where you become self-conscious about your body language, the way you speak to the flight attendants and not to forget the fear whether you are eating properly or you are eating like a boor . I have traveled by flight,  a number of times. One thing I can say with assurance is that each experience is different. Moreover it depends on who you are sitting besides. But, there is one thing in all this, each experience teaches you a different lesson in life. Even if it is for a limited period, you peek into somebody else’s life for a while, you get to know what kind of life they are living. Whether they are sad or happy or tensed or just tired, you observe that in no time. This experience taught me empathy, it highlighted the fact that, we live more or less similar life, the only difference is the phase we are in. The similarity between all of us is that even though we lead different lives, we face a similar set of problems interchangeably.

Sunset from one of my flight rides!

In one trip, I was sitting besides teenage boy. We bonded on a game I was playing and eventually started talking. Innocently he asked me,”In which grade are you in?“. In my mind, I had a small laugh, and told him I was in Masters Program. He was thrilled and surprised. And like any other gamers, we asked each other for game recommendation for android, realizing this he instinctively asked me which PC games do I play.

I said, “Well I’m quite old and I don’t play any computer games.”

To which he said, “Well my mom warned me that I could play computer games for only 1 more year after that my access to computer would be delimited for 3 years or so“.

After hearing this I  was intrigued, so I asked him in which standard he was in, he told me he was in 9th grade. As he replied, his expression frowned, I understood what he felt, I too felt the same way when I was in 9th standard, my games were also shut down for 3 subsequent years. This just vindicated a notion I held dearly, everybody faces the same set of problems at one point of time or the other, and that everyone lives in more or less the same way. Thinking about all this, my flight time was up, an announcement from the flight deck said that the flight would land in 15 minutes. My thoughts rather my thought process which was relaxed for the entire time changed, now I felt a little tense, the reason for this being my routine would restart again. It is weird as much we want to run away from a routine, we too want order in our life. The flight landed, I went to the belt where my checked in luggage would be arriving, I again saw that boy, I smiled and told him to study well and wished him luck for his coming years. Hearing this, his face was a mixture of anxiety and fear, but he smiled, I immediately recognized that he must be hearing this from a lot of people. I too felt the same way when I was his age, I realized I was old now. I was not in the same phase,I was in a different phase of life. Yet I had experienced that phase too, after all everyone is relatively different but on a larger scale we are all the same.

Nativity

On a bright and hot summer evening after cycling, I saw this amazing mother nature’s creation- banyan leaf. I took a lot of photographs of that leaf in various angles, and this is one of the photograph. As I took photograph of that perfect leaf it was getting pretty late and I had to go home.From the place where I cycle, my home is about 4km so it is a long way back, so I had to leave. When this time came I felt really bad to leave that perfect leaf in the place where I found it, I felt wildly attached to it, and I thought that I should take it home, but I resisted that temptation, temptation to take it back home. That is the most basic human sentiment to take any nature’s creation to our house to store it and preserve it. I left that leaf in a spot so that nobody would find it, because I didn’t want anybody to take it and damage it. It reminds me of the time when we were naive and completely new to this real world. At that point of time we are free from any injuries or scars from this real world, we are like this leaf – perfect, unscarred and free from any deformity. But as we go on in this world, we experience some things that change our perspective about this world, it changes our attitude of taking on this world. We become more and more pessimist, rather we become more and more realist and at the same time we lose our nativity.

This is the photograph which I took of that banyan tree leaf!

(Banyan Tree Leaf viewpoint!!)

A fresh leaf which falls from a tree is green and free from any injuries, but as it spends more and more time on the ground in contact with Earth it starts decomposing, decolorizing and loses its perfect state, that is it loses its naivity. But we should remember one thing, the way we become scarred or rather realist matters. We can do it gracefully or we can do it in a bad way and unhealthy way. If we do it in a right way, we become a optimistic realist or we end up hurting the people that we love and care about. Our final destination is the end of time, but the journey that we undertake to that place differs according to each person. Doing it the right way makes us a wise man, and doing it the other way makes us a scarred soldier, this all depends upon you and your attitude. In the end, we have to lose our nativity but the way we lose it distinguishs one person from another

The last chapter of 2014

In a few hours, 2015 begins, new 365 days to write your chapter of life, new memories to create, but now in this article well I would like to reflect on how this year-2014 has being. To summarize this year is a tricky task, but all i can say about it is that it has by being a difficult year for me, emotionally and symbolically. All I can say is that this year was not the time of my life, but it is the first time I’m saying that.

It was in this year, I stayed away from home for 2 months straight for a short stint,  I also learned another crucial lesson- Don’t speak as loud as your heart. These are the lyrics of the song- the scientist by Coldplay, but these words have stayed with me. Moreover as this new year begins, in 6 days I turn 20 after that I have a performance lined up to my college fest for which I’m very excited, as this would be my last performance on my college stage. Musically this year was not again not a great year, I didn’t learn many things, but did the same thing over and over again. This particular piece might appear to be a self-pity article, but 2014 has being an year of wisdom, a year where I learned lessons about how this world actually works, and more importantly, this year will be remembered for yet another reason, it is that I can ACTUALLY survive without my home, which I hold close to my heart and soul. As I pen down the last few words of this article, I’m quite optimistic about the brand new ‘blank’ 365 days of 2015, which I plan to utilize more efficiently than 2014. Wishing you a very happy and prosperous new year!!!!! 🙂