Not looking my age- Is that really the question?

“At that age I want to look like you”!- OUCH or WOW- really I do not know what to feel and how to respond when this sentence is hurled at me but the brave person that I am I always make a light banter about it and portray as if I have taken it as a compliment. I hear this lot of time after the first reaction which is “OMG is that really your age”- and I feel really ancient. Is early 30s so old? I was under the impression that the present 30s is the new 20s.

I do not know about others but for me- this is the period of my life when I am actually living and experiencing. Coming from typical Indian middle class initial years were busy completing education and by the time I was finished and achieved that first milestone of adulthood- being financially independent a quarter of my life was already over. Then for a few years- it was a constant tug of war about “settling down in other manner”- yup marry or not to marry. By the time I was done with that I had hit late 20s and that is when I realized enough is enough and it was time I started partying!! Getting a tattoo on my 30th birthday was sort of an announcement of that. I see it as a fresh chapter in my life.

Coming back to the first line of this post, why is it always about how one looks or wants to look at a particular age? How about how one feels? For me that is the question- how I feel in terms of my accomplishments. Now, do not get me wrong. I am not talking about the money I am making or position I have reached or the fact that I have a car or an apartment. For me the benchmark is the people- who have been there and done that. People who have been to places, done different stuff, met different people- basically who can actually claim to have gone through varied experiences that this world, this life has to offer. I always feel an under achiever in that sense.

Why could not I have gone for a backpacking tour after my school – (not necessarily out of the country), why could not I try my hands at few professions or jobs and then decide what I want to do further. There is a lady here in my office who has stayed all over the world- Australia, US etc etc, speaks 6 languages, has worked on a ship amongst other things. When I met her and casually asked her how her life has been- it looked liked I opened a pandora’s box- a good one though! So for me the question at her age will be : “At that age how many rich experiences have I collected”.

Sometimes I feel I am running a race against time, against people who measure success in terms of conventional things like the job you have and the number of children- before that having a spouse who is also in a high paying job, against terrorists, against global warming: all these are out there threatening to snatch away the beauty of this world before I get a chance to experience it. Of course there is this tiny issue of mortality of oneself as well. So before the global warming melts away the snow capped mountains I want to see all of them, would have loved to see the twin towers but now it is lost forever, want to laze around in beaches of Australia before the hole in the ozone layer makes it completely dangerous. You get the drift right?

One might feel that I am exaggerating- maybe I am but how else do I convey my restlessness and the intensity of my feeling on this. When I turn 50 or something I do not want to look younger instead want to be satiated in terms of my quest of “experiencing” and “exploring” all that this world and life has to offer.

So I would like to answer that comment with “Forget the looks baby-wait till you hear about what all I have seen and done”! Till that happens I have got to smile politely and say, “Thank you for the compliment” (You do not look too bad either).”

Love's Labor

One of my favourite books “Road less traveled” talks about relationships and love and one of the key take away is that love should not mean that you become one with your beloved. Instead it means that both of you will remain independent entities with independent thoughts. You need not lose your independent identities for making your relationship successful- instead it should be about growing together in your own space and capacities and helping each other in that growth process.

I was and still am captivated by this thought but do not see many manifestations of this. Why? Because baby it means putting in lot of efforts.

We see couples breaking up or at least the distances coming up. Not all break ups are dramatic- it’s a gradual process and creeps on you stealthily. And frankly nobody is to blame.

Research says that the thrill of early romance tapers of within 2 years. After that one has to start working to keep the relationship alive. In the normal course of time you have different anchors coming up to bond you together. Some anchors are the natural outcomes of the social and environmental fabric that we exist in for example in a conventional marriage you have kids, you make a home...etc. Other times couples have to work at finding new things constantly to keep the bonding alive such as taking up a hobby class together, traveling and so on. What will work for each of us cannot be predicted or prescribed. We have to discover this together with our partners. But that’s easier said than done. As they say it is easy to fall in love but hard work to remain in love!

Normally what happens is that we tend to keep on musing about how it was in the past in the initial years of relationship- that we run the risk of losing focus from the person who is the object of our affection in the now and here. I will call this one’s obsession with love’s lost glory which prevents us in accepting that living life together and carrying on the daily chores is also a form of love.

All of us cannot be a Romeo & Juliet- in any case all the famous couples are failures in a way- I guess the real couples are the ones who build a life together and survive through the challenges life has to offer- biggest of all being the challenge of mundane ness of normal life and lack of romantic adventure.

So coming back to the moot point of working for love, I sometimes feel that most of us approach this as we approach the issue of becoming fit or losing weight. For some weird reason we can find thousands of excuses for not being able to maintain an exercise regime or a healthy diet plan even though it involves something which is so intimate and important to us- our health and well being. Usual excuses being time, tiredness, does not fit my work schedule blah blah! Same with our relationships- we keep on cribbing about things not being okay but also have the excuses to cover up the laziness or inertia for not doing anything about it. I can almost copy paste the excuses from above!

At the expense of sounding like an agony aunt- my 2 pence suggestion is stop cribbing and get up and work out! That will be truly labor of love or love’s labor (whatever)……

Giving in to "too much"

When is something of anything is too much? How do you know how much is too much? Too much information, too much fun, too much sorrow, too much to ask.....

By definition "too much" has negative connotations...but isnt fun positive and so why would having too much fun be bad?

Our society does not accept extremes and therefore giving into extremes is considered to be eccentric and even bodering on mental instability. How do you know the eccentric people and the so called mad people do not think we are the ones who are abnormal.

We hear advice about balancing things out- work-life balance, balanced diet...what not! Is indulging, giving into temptations, crossing the boundary- always bad? If we do not push our limits and cross the existing boundaries how do we know our capabilities? How do we know that there isnt something better waiting there behind the existing wall of familiarity that we have created?

And then how do we define what is too much to bear? Many a times in life we come across a situation when we feel- Enough! I cant take it anymore but ultimately human elasticity of adapting comes into play.

Sometimes there are too many emotions to deal with sometimes conflicting...can they be balanced out?

I want to try out that state of imbalance where I stop resisting and probably give in to too much of anything- though it will be anti "Me"- I try to balance my life to the T. I would love to get crazy about something -go haywire-exhilarate in that rush of freedom which comes with letting go of all inhibitions and caution..

It doesnt need to be "too much" then- it will be just enough.

Second time lucky

A friend recently shared the following on a broken relationship: "She took a bit of me when she went out of my life." I have heard this one before. All of us (well hopefully) have this one time in life when we fall madly in love and think ours is the purest forever kind of love. We build this relationship brick by brick tear by tear only to reach a juncture where you discover it was not meant to be.

Nobody knows why- both wanting to hold on but knowing deep down in their guts that everything is slipping away like sand through the gaps between the fingers in your palm. With agonizing disbelief we think," This cant be happening to me? How will I survive this?" Saddest part is that we do survive- but some part does die taking with it the idealistic notions of true love.

Till the time the next soulmate comes along freeing you from your self imposed emotional exile. Showing you and sometimes teaching you to learn to love again, to make yourself vulnerable again. Maybe the piece you lost in the earlier voyage is lost forever but then you recreate another piece which is unique in its own right.

I think finding love once is lucky enough- finding it second time is plain hitting the jackpot!! And smart people know when they have hit a jackpot and are wise enough to treasure it but this time the trick is to remember this quote of Oscar Wilde, :"..And then they ruin the best of romances by wanting it to last forever!.."