You can see the stars only when it is dark

The saying, “Only in the darkness can you see the stars” by Martin Luther King helps you deal with the hard times in your life. Hardships in life direct you towards better things in life. One can appreciate high times in life only if they have at any time experienced low times in their lives. Every good thing in life essentially comes in opposites: Rich/Poor, Dark/Light, Happy/Sad, Good/Evil, beauty/ugliness. Even the beautiful roses come with thorns. Thus when darkness approaches, one should be assured that light is somewhere nearby and would come soon.

So next time you find yourself lost in darkness and despair, remember that the stars can be best appreciated when the night is dark.

Happiness increases by sharing

Thousand of candles can be lit from a single candle and the life of the candle would not be shorted. Happiness never decreases by being shared.  Happiness always increases by sharing. Similarly depression/sadness always decreases by sharing.  So multiply your happiness and divide your sorrows by sharing.

failure is a blessing in disguise

The failures in life can either make you or break you. It is up to you how you take it, whether you fight with troubles and rise above them or you let those troubles destroy you. Ups and downs in life can make you strong and bring out the best in you. However, they can also completely break you if you let them take hold of you. 

A hero lies within you

A hero lies within all of us. All that is required is to recognize this hero and to assess our true potential. Adversities in life often help us in recognizing and bringing out our best.

Can you identify this with yourself?

Did any adverse situation in life helped in bringing out the hero within you? 

Bitter or better?

Life would have its own ups and downs. It is your choice whether you choose the better and forget the bitter or do the opposite. It entirely depends on you whether you emerge as a victor or become a victim of adverse situations in life.

What would you do: turn bitter or better?

Life is about the choices we make

Life lies between B and D i.e. birth and death. In between B and D lies C, which stands for choice. Life is therefore all about the choices we make. These choices define us, our character, and our worth and impact our lives. The hard thing, however, is to live with these choices. These various choices are described below:

Choice of happiness versus sadness: Only you can decide if you want to be happy or not.

Choice of forgiveness versus ruthlessness

Choice of positive versus negative

Choice of aggressive versus peaceful

Choice of Greed versus generosity

Resilience is a choice

Just as happiness is a choice, resilience is also a choice. Resilience helps one prepare for disruptions in life, and adapt and grow in the face of adversity and setbacks. It will also help one recover from shocks and stresses in life. There is no human being in this world that has not come across an adversity at some point of his/her life. It is easy to give up in face of the circumstances. However, what make a person successful is never to give up, no matter what life presents to him/her. 

Happiness increases on sharing

                                                                                                                       Gautam Buddha

Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle and the life of that candle does not shorten. Similarly happiness never decreases on being shared.  In fact, happiness is the only thing which multiples several folds on being shared. By being happy you tend to make people surrounding you happy as well. Being happy certainly does not imply that one’s life is perfect. It simply means that they have understood the true meaning of life and agreed to look beyond its imperfections. The best way to be happy is not to dwell in the past, not to dream of future, but to concentrate on the present moment and by appreciating what ever you have, even if it appears to be little. Happiness never comes to those people who do not appreciate whatever they have.

Smile is a curve which sets everything straight

A smile is the most beautiful free creation of the God which is bound to make almost everything alright again. Smiling across tough situations helps you explore positivity in life. It can take care of numerous tears and sorrows. Sometimes life gives you no choice but to face your fears with a smile. One thing is sure; a smile would always make you emerge as a winner in life. It does make things easier, it just make you stronger. 

Happiness is a choice, not a result

Nothing or nobody in this world can give you happiness unless you yourself choose to be happy. The happiness can only come from within and you need to yourself decide what you want and whether you want to be happy or not. In fact, the happiest people may not be the richest or have everything they want, they just manage to make the best of everything that they have. 

Life is a delicious ambiguity

“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I have learnt, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what is going to happen next. It is a delicious ambiguity.”

−Gilda Radner

As a child, the most fairy tales I read had a king, queen and a bad person. The hero and heroine usually managed to get rid of the bad person and then they lived happily ever after. However, life is not like that. It may be a continuous struggle or a proportional mix of ups and downs. If you want something, you may have to fight for it and still you may not be able to get it. Life is about not knowing what is going to come next and dealing with it. 

When life appears out of control

If you try to hold the flow of water with your hands, it will break off from your hands and find its own way. It you let it flow, it shall find its own path, sometimes even by craving out the stones on its way which try and obstruct its flow.

Life is similar to the flow of water.….

Life is full of both ups and downs. When life seems out of control, all looks lost and there appears to be no way out, just watch patiently and let life flow like water. In most of the circumstances life would sculpt out its own course. Don’t resist the series of natural and spontaneous changes which the life presents to you. Before you have actually realized, the life would have carved its own path.   

love is blind

"Love is blind because my mother started loving me before seeing my face." 

Love is a beautiful feeling, but love is often blind. We might adorn our love on a person who does not deserve our love at all. Loving such people would only emanate much pain and sufferings. Some people don’t deserve our love and bestowing such feeling on them may in fact result in back-stabbing and hatred from their side.

Have you come across a situation in any relationship which has led you to believe that the love is blind? 

How far can you go in love?

How far would you go for someone you love?

Let’s start by answering the poll on the right hand side of this blog.

What would be your answer?

I will do anything for love

I will do most things for love

I will do only things as per my convenience

I will not do most things for love

I will not do anything

Though it is not possible to measure love, the extent to which the person can sacrifice himself or herself can serve as an indirect measure of the depth of their love. True love stands beyond the boundaries of sacrifice because true love never asks for sacrifice but at the same time is never afraid in even sacrificing everything for the person or thing they love.

Does this kind of love exists in reality or it occurs only in stories? What are your views regarding this?

Expectations: source of all frustration

When expectations arise in any relationship, it is likely to result in much frustration and despair. One must try to love life and people around them without having any expectations from them.

A beautiful thing is never perfect

Anything beautiful is bound to have imperfections. This is a rule of nature, nothing in this world is 100% perfect. It may fade with time…. It would be associated with its own flaws…

No doubt love is a beautiful feeling, but it is associated with its own negativities. One such major defect is expectation. One is bound to have endless expectations from the people they love. Expectations can sacrifice any relationship.  Besides that, like every other relationship love too can be marred with feeling such as anger, jealousy and even hatred at times.

Can love take you places?

Love is a beautiful thing, not a substance, but a feeling, something more valuable than any material substance in this world. Even if you are penniless love can make you feel like a king….It can bring about that joy and happiness which no money can buy.

Love is not to be confused as lust or mushy feelings. True love is always pure, transparent and lies above all the worldly barriers. Love is also not to be sought as an emotion between man and woman or a boy and girl. Pure love lies above all that. love can be described as a feeling which gives you a sense of belonging... someone to look upon when you are in despair, grief or joy. If you have someone to share your feelings, your joys can magnify by several folds and your sorrows can divide by several folds.

What are your views? Do you think that love can really take you places or otherwise. Do you think that love can help you climb the tallest mountain and cross the deepest sea... 

love can take you places

To read the story click the link
love can take you places
Please do vote for me because every vote would count.

Thinking a simple solution to a complex solution

Even the most complex situations in life may have a simple solution.......

To illustrate this, here goes a story...

Many hundreds of years ago in a small Italian town, a merchant had a misfortune of owing a large sum of money to a moneylender. The moneylender who was old and ulgy, fancied the merchant’s beautiful daughter so he proposed a bargain. He said he would forgo the merchant’s debt if could marry the daughter. Both the merchant and his daughter were horrified by the proposal.

The moneylender told them that he would put a black pebble and a white pebble into an empty bag. The girl would then have to pick one pebble from the bag. If she picked up the black pebble, she would become the moneylender’s wife and her father’s  debt would be forgiven. If she picked up a white pebble, she need not marry him and her father’s debt would still be forgiven. But if she refused to pick a pebble, her father would be thrown in the jail.

They were standing on a pebble strewn path in the merchant’s garden. As they talked, the moneylender bent over to pick up two pebbles. As he picked them, the sharp-eyed girl noticed that he had picked up two black pebbles and put them into the bag. He then asked the girl to pick up a pebble from the bag.

Careful analysis of the situation shows that the girl had three possibilities:

1. 1.    The girl should refuse to take a pebble
2. 2.    The girl should show that there were two black pebbles in the bag and expose the moneylender as a cheat
3. 3.    The girl should pick up a black pebble and sacrifice herself in order to save her father from his debt and imprisonment 

But what did the girl actually do?

The girl put her hand into the moneybag and drew out a pebble. Without looking at it, she fumbled and let it fall onto a pebble-strewn path where it immediately became lost among all the other pebbles.

“ Oh, how clumsy of me,” she said, “but never mind, if you look into the bag for the one that is left, you will be able to tell which one I picked”. Since the remaining pebble was black, it must be assumed that she picked up the white one. And since the moneylender dared not admit his dishonesty, the girl changed what seemed an impossible situation into an advantageous one.

Morale of the story

Most complex problems do have a solution, sometimes we have to think about them in a different way. 

At times you need to create your own sunsghine

Not all days of life will be same. While you will be easily sail through some of the days, some of them may prove to be difficult. Life is a mixture of rainy days and days filled with bright sunshine. In order to survive through the rainy days, one needs to create his/ her own sunshine. They need to have a firm faith in themselves, i.e. they by themselves can climb the tallest mountain, dive through the deepest ocean and keep standing tall in front of adversity.

Come whatever……

If such thoughts can be developed, life would be a breeze even in the face of most difficult circumstances.

Can you think of any situation where you had to be your own sunshine in order to survive?