Serendipity - A Gift wrapped Catastrophe

It was 8:30 am and the group of 15 strangers-turned-friends was raring to challenge the mountain and experience a never seen before beauty of Triund Hill - Heaven on earth for nature lovers and trekkers. We knew the 6 kms trek was tough and will challenge not just the city dwellers physical stamina but mental stamina too. Still the enthusiasm was too overpowering to be weighed down by the scare of the obstacles. The enigmatic euphoria made us complete a journey of five hours in just three hours. And the top view was so breathtakingly beautiful that it didn't give our mind any wandering space to let  fatigue or negative thoughts creep in.

After soaking ourselves in the natural beauty, followed by lengthy photo sessions, forever ongoing chat sessions,  the soulful live music jam sessions; we decided to call it a night with grand plans for the next day.

We were all too happy to realise that the movie was actually a thriller not a romcom. The serendipity changed into a nightmare. It was bone-numbing cold out there in the open and we were severely under-prepared. The temperature was  zero degree and our tents were not even ready to face 15 degrees.  In between tossing and turning and shivering in the cold with the background score of a storm and dogs howling on a full moon night, we somehow managed to get over the night. Next day morning, we woke up with happy thoughts of embarking on another 60 minutes trek to witness the most mesmerising sunrise from the highest point - The temple of Shri Kunal Pathri Devi but God had other plans. It started raining and snowing, which in other words meant that forget the onward trek even our downward trek was in danger. We were warned by our guide that  downward trek is way too difficult than trekking upwards even in normal conditions. And rain and melting snow would further make it more dangerous as it often leads to loss of control and many mishaps. Following our guide's advice, we changed our plans to safely reach our base instead of trekking ahead.

Being a brave heart, who like to face challenges head on, I decided to lead. I started my downward journey ahead of everyone else. And I was the first one to finish our trek in flat two hours. So the trek which was difficult for many was a cakewalk for me.

During this trip, besides enjoying the nature's moody beauty and making some good friends, I tested my limits too and I was pleasantly surprised with myself. I was really looking forward to this trip for numerous reasons. It was my escape from the harsh reality. And it proved to be one. I had the time of life. Met some awesome people. Forgot all the heartache. I was brimming with hope and joy when I reached the concrete jungle.

However, like always, the joy was short lived. I didn't have an inkling that there was a worse news waiting for me. I didn't have a clue that the news I am going to get after experiencing the most awesome weekend will sweep away the ground beneath my feet. For a second I could not believe my ears. I was speechless. I was numb.I didn't know what was happening around me.

The year 2014 had started on a BIG HIGH for me but since then I have been getting jolts after jolts. And this one is perhaps the biggest.

But does that mean I give up?

NO.

I stand again with a resolve to win again.

Perhaps these jolts are necessary to challenge my limits and discover my true potential.

Also, I learnt one big lesson in the last 3 months that besides being forever optimist, it is good to be cynical too. Oxymoronic? Yeah. But sometimes oxymoron can co-exist. Pay attention to your intuition and observation while staying optimistic because:

What feels like 'too good to be true' is actually not True. It is your intuition's warning to brace yourself for the upcoming catastrophe.

In other words, Serendipity is a gift wrapped Catastrophe.

Though serendipity has positive connotations but you should always take it with a pinch of salt. Prepare yourself to brace the chaos too. Serendipity is not as simple as Oxford dictionary says it. It is far more complicated. There are different stages of happiness and randomness in the Serendipity curve.

So my advice to myself and others (in case anyone is interested) while you enjoy serendipity do take your intuition seriously to avoid the gift wrapped Catastrophe :)

Give life a second chance

Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending. - Maria Robinson

This is not just a line but a life changing statement that has transformed millions of lives over the ages.

Let me start this post with a moral science story which I am sure each one of us would have heard during our school time.

The King and The Spider. 

Vikram, a brave king, once had to fight against a large army with just a few soldiers. He was defeated and had to run for his life. He took shelter in a forest cave. He was very depressed. He was blankly gazing at the ceiling of the cave and suddenly an interesting thing happened.

A small spider was trying to weave a web across the cave ceiling. As the spider crawled up, a thread of the web broke and the spider fell down. But the spider did not give up. He tried to climb again and again. Finally, the spider successfully climbed up and completed the web.

Vikram began to think, "If a small spider can face failure so bravely, why should I give up? I will try with all might till I win". This thought gave strength to the defeated king.

Vikram again and again fought against the large army and finally, after many attempts defeated the large army and regained his kingdom. He had learnt a lesson from the spider.

So the moral of the story is – Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.

Life is all about second chances. 

We don’t live in a perfect world. We’re not perfect people.

If we don’t achieve in the first go then it doesn’t mean we give up on our dreams. We should try again the same thing or try afresh something else. The key is never to give up. 

We rarely get things right the first time.  We might not be successful in the first go but perseverance eventually turns things around.

Personally I don't even remember the number of second chances that I have taken so far but I’m not ashamed of them.  Even though I’ve failed a lot, it means I’ve tried a lot too. I might have failed in different spheres of life – relations, love, job, health etc. but I have not lost faith in any one of them.

What transmutes an obstacle into an opportunity is your attitude.  Giving a second chance in life is showing a middle finger to failures in your life. 

As Lou Holtz rightly said “Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it.”

When I was in school my parents dreamt of me becoming a doctor. I too tried hard but life had better plans for me. I couldn’t crack the medical exam but I did get through physiotherapy. However, had to let go of that opportunity considering that time it wasn’t a popular career option.

So instead of taking it negatively I decided to move on. I tried my hand at a different stream. I settled for a graduation in Industrial Microbiology. It was an interesting exposure as it made me realize that I am not cut for science stream. Next I moved on to do my Post Graduate diploma in advertising & communication. Again I entered into an unknown territory.

Whatever decisions I took in my career or my life I have no regrets as they have made me a wiser person. I have learned more from my mistakes than from my successes. But that doesn’t mean I don’t like success. I am very competitive by nature. And I take life in a challenging manner. Giving up just doesn’t exist in my dictionary.

People enter a relationship with rosy dreams but when it doesn’t work out, they try hard to make it work for some time. Some more time…and…some more time. When they realize that it’s not going to happen then the best thing is to move on. This decision might be extremely harsh as it affects not just two individual’s life but others lives too. 

Sometimes facing harsh reality today carves a beautiful path for tomorrow.

So give life another chance. Don’t compromise.

 

When Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupati partnership didn’t work out then instead of letting it drag and affect their game, they amicably decided to part ways at the peak of their career.

And the result is in front of our eyes. Recently Paes captured 50^th doubles title.

There are innumerable stories wherein people kept faith in themselves and embraced life not as it came but what they envisaged.

Here are few motivational stories:

Christopher Reeve. The actor who played Superman became paralyzed as a result of a riding accident. Ironical! Reeve used to cry every day dealing with the reality of being in a wheelchair. But after cryinh hard daily, he would tell himself, “And now, forward!” Despite his handicap, Reeve was an exemplary model of courage. He continued to travel, gave public appearances, raised funds, became a director and served as a voice for the quadriplegics in the United States.  

Elvis Presley. Elvis Presley, the King of Rock and Roll, got fired after just one performance. His manager, Jimmy Denny, told him, “You ain’t goin’ nowhere, son. You ought to go back to drivin’ a truck.”

 

 But your ambition has nothing to do with your age. It’s to do with your pursuit for excellence.

Below few examples illustrate the same:

 

Colonel Sanders: KFC lovers might find it unbelievable that Colonel Sander’s idea was rejected 1009 times over a period of 2 years.  He was 65 when Kentucky Fried Chicken was launched. Before turning into a successful entrepreneur Sander took lot of second chances in life - his  many jobs included farmhand, army mule-tender, motel operator, aspiring lawyer, failed political candidate and, amateur obstetrician. Today, more than 12 million people eat at KFC each day in 109 countries.

Walt Disney. The founder on whose cartons many generations have grown up was fired from his first job because he was told that he lacked imagination.

 Dr. Peter Mark Roget: Age is just a number when you talk about Roget.  He invented Thesaurus. at Age 73. Till 61 he was an accomplished doctor, lecturer and inventor. Thereafter the second lease of life happened.

 

I have come across many people who have compromised with their dreams, life and love because they found it convenient and non-disturbing.

My urge to those guys is that life is too precious to be compromised for anything. What is not working today might work tomorrow. The important thing is to listen to your heart. If it says give it a try then go full throttled. If it says it won’t then the best thing is to streamline your energies in other things that could give you a better future. 

You can restart your life at any given point. Here is a quick checklist to fast forward >>>>>

• Let go of the baggage and move on from the past.
• Learn lesson from your experience.
• Get rid of the negative attitude.
• Bravely accept accountability for your current situation.
• Focus on the things you can or want to change.
• Figure out what you really want.
• Eliminate the non-essentials.
• Be specific and concentrate on the main thing.
• Focus on DOING instead of NOT DOING.
• Chalk out a to-do strategy.
• Maintain self-control and work on it for real.
• Forget about impressing people.

Lastly but most importantly is to stay happy and to be open minded. 

Do not sulk and be cynical. 

As Oscar Wilde said “cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."

Adoore Sapne

Ae dil sambhal ja zara…

Kyun tu khud ko tabah karne hai chala…

Kyun dekhe sapne jo kabhi na honge poore…

Kyun sochta hai iss baar anzam alag hoga…

Kyun tujhe lagta hai ke iss baar koi tujhe samjhega...

Kyun sochta hai mehman ke jagah iss bar tera humsafar tere saath hoga.

 

Majhi badal jaane se toofan nahi ruka karte...

Teri zindagi to sabse bada toofan hai…

Tu kyun toofan mein kashti chalata hai…

Teri kismat mein sirf tootna likha hai aur wahi hoga… 

Kyun sochta hai tera pyaar kissi ko badal dega…

Behtar yahi hai tu sambhal ja aur khud ko hi badal le…

Why life is so multidimensional?

When adam and eve were alive then their life must have been linear with just one aberration- apple. Which later on changed their life for forever.

Today we live a life of cobwebs where every moment we have to fight multidimensional problems. There is absolutely nothing simple in our lives. Right from waking up till the time we travel to dreamland, we are always fire fighting. We are always living on the edge. Personal life is sacrificed for professional life and vice versa. Still we face criticism and apathy everywhere.

Then there is a huge gap between expectations and deliveries. In every match we hope sachin to score his 100th ton but what we get to see is the entire team getting out on 192. We hope that we will get good appraisals but what we get in hand is peanuts with sky high inflation. We start working on a new business thinking we'll change the world. But we end up fighting over a logo size. We buy a house thinking we'll have a place to call it OUR AASHIYANA but we end up getting EMI life sentence.

We get into a relationship thinking it to last long, if not eternal, but what we get is a bitter lesson. Which we keep experiencing again and again without drawing any lessons from it. When we fall in love with someone we think that we are going to love an individual but we end up dealing with a barrel of problems related to that one individual. We try to solve that for a bit. But eventually the plural problems take over the singular love.

Multidimensions confusing the linear thought process. Somewhere we loose out the heart-to-heart, soul-to-soul connection. More than sharing and enjoying the simple pleasures of life we fight over trivial issues. All the time we are fighting for something worthless. And in the process losing out the biggest treasure of life - pure unadulterated happiness.

It is not so difficult to lead a happy life. You just need to fine tune your frequency with the one that you love. But if that someone special is entangled with a worldly mess of problems then it's better to try for a while and then just leave it at a beautiful end. Linear decision taken with the right amount of objectivity is always a better option. No point making an issue out of those multidimensional issues.
Writing this post my mind seems to have find a solution to an entangled mass of thorns :-) hope i can continue with the same clarity of thought for some time.

Let go!

Sometimes, no matter how hard you treasure someone, they’ll never treasure you back the way you do, and sometimes, you have to be okay with that.

In the process of loving and committing ourselves to the other person the worst mistake that we do is to completely forget about our own identity and start relying on the other person completely. We forget that the most important thing in a relationship is mutual respect for each other and that the other persona shouldn't start disrespecting your feelings and take you for granted. Because to stay true to oneself is the most important thing in a relationship.

We think that we are always at the receiving end in all kind of relationships. Sometimes, no matter how hard u treasure someone, they’ll never treasure u back the way u do, and sometimes, you have to be okay with that. At such a juncture in my life when we lose faith in every and any kind of relationship we end up thinking that maybe there’s something horribly wrong.

Letting that feeling creep in is the worst punishment that anybody can give himself. We should introspect but never suspect our self. Instead we should figure out a solution to give it back to the undeserving people who hurt us because after all  life is too precious to be wasted on people who don’t care for us.

Let the quest to discover oneself begins from here on!!!!!!!!!!!!!