I Am Responsible

Look what I found on the internet the other day. Ladies, I say we must all read this, listen to this if we can’t read it, but somehow imbibe ourselves with this powerful message. It worked up a little fire in me yet again. I hope it touches you the same way!

“Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you…it means that you do not treat your body as a commodity with which to purchase superficial intimacy or economic security; for our bodies to be treated as objects, our minds are in mortal danger. It means insisting that those to whom you give your friendship and love are able to respect your mind. It means being able to say, with Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre: “I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all the extraneous delights should be withheld or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.

Responsibility to yourself means that you don’t fall for shallow and easy solutions–predigested books and ideas…marrying early as an escape from real decisions, getting pregnant as an evasion of already existing problems. It means that you refuse to sell your talents and aspirations short…and this, in turn, means resisting the forces in society which say that women should be nice, play safe, have low professional expectations, drown in love and forget about work, live through others, and stay in the places assigned to us. It means that we insist on a life of meaningful work, insist that work be as meaningful as love and friendship in our lives. It means, therefore, the courage to be “different”…The difference between a life lived actively, and a life of passive drifting and dispersal of energies, is an immense difference. Once we begin to feel committed to our lives, responsible to ourselves, we can never again be satisfied with the old, passive way.

 

“I have come to accept the feeling of not knowing where I am going. And I have trained myself to love it. Because it is only when we are suspended in mid-air with no landing in sight, that we force our wings to unravel and alas begin our flight. And as we fly, we still may not know where we are going to. But the miracle is in the unfolding of the wings. You may not know where you’re going, but you know that so long as you spread your wings, the winds will carry you.” 

– C. Joybell C.

My Gift

A friend asked me yesterday: “What do you do best?” A thousand things popped up in my mind ranging from marketing to humanities research to cooking, but as soon as I uttered one of these, he just stopped me and said, no this is not the answer. Deep down, in your heart, you know there are so many people who can do all of these better than you. Tell me something that only you and you alone do with such excellence that few can say they stand a chance in comparison. And so, in the blink of an eye, the answer came to me. The best I do is to tell tales.

So simple. My gift is so simple. All I can do is tell you a tale and that is where it seems to end, but it doesn’t. I don’t know how that tale would enter your mind, what ways it would affect you in and what you might do after you listen to it. Who knows what it shifts within you and what you become thereafter? I may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone’s soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows what they might do because of it, because of my words. That is my role, my gift.

So, I ask you now, “What is it that YOU do best, where most will fade in comparison to you?” Find the answer, embrace it afterwards because in the tapestry that is the world, this is what you are truly meant to do.

Forever

Your gaze warms me up like

the sun on a winter morning,

Suddenly the world alters, 

I see a hundred rainbows

shining all around me.

In a heartbeat, I realise:

Forever is no longer a word.

Nay, its a place where

I shall bathe in the light

of your eyes,  for all eternity

no mater what form I take

A Friend Who Cares

When we honestly ask ourselves which people in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.

 

Muse and the Painter

I spray a fizz of red,

the canvas becomes a pool

of blood, the essence of lilies,

the spirit of sacrifices, the hunger

for power, the ravishing romance.

But I paint you, and you are my

Muse.

 

I pour a pint of blue,

the canvas seems like the

endless sky, the tormented ocean,

the sweet blueberries’ juice, the

sparkle of sapphires, the depth of

her eyes, yet I just paint you;

and you are my Muse.

 

You fleet through my senses,

you surge through my blood,

you capture my mind

and ensnare my heart.

You are my Muse and

I am your Painter and

so we stand reflected within

each other, through a veil of glass.