To Be or Not To Be

A little kingdom I possess,
Where thoughts and feelings dwell;
And very hard the task I find
Of governing it well.
~ Louisa May Alcott

...that more or less describes my situation!

~A Wise Man Said~

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
~ Aristotle
Tuesday, January 22, 2019
 


I have always loved looking at the night sky full of stars and a solitary moon. Looking at the night sky in Dubai on my last day the idea, very obvious though it is, struck me suddenly that though the sky looks so different in my perch in Lancaster in the UK… it has to be the same moon staring back at me as this one… and it is the same moon that stared back at me in Mangalore when I was there for about a week or so… I couldn’t help thinking about how very different all these versions of the moon looked…. In Mangalore it looked a bright and fiery red at a great distance from me across the sea but across …not up… it felt like if I were to walk or sail a long distance, I might be able to reach it…. In Dubai it looked quite white and far above my head…. I had to tilt my head all the way down to see it…. In Lancaster it always looks like it’s hiding behind the two-storey house opposite me…. not somewhere in the sky above…. In colour it’s closer to the Dubai moon… I guess because it seems so different depending on where I am looking at it from it sort of never struck me so hard before…. That they are all the same moon…. What actually made me think about this is the rather sweet idea that when my mom looks at the moon in Dubai and I look at it from Lancaster, both of us would be looking at the same thing… I found the thought very sweet and comforting when I was feeling a bit sad about leaving home…it made me feel like I wasn’t going to be that far away if there was something we both could see from where we were… it’s quite strange that I should find comfort in this rather foregone fact but it’s funny how I never really thought of it in quite this way before…




posted by Sylvia D'souza at 8:01 pm 0 comments
Saturday, January 19, 2019
 
Special day today :)
Guess I have mentioned before… I organise my holidays to spend my birthday with the family… it’s never been so far, in spite of my travels and stay abroad, that I missed even a single time. Though the members of my family have expanded and contracted and spread out in recent years… I try to at least be around the core which happens to be my mom…
I somehow tend to feel wistful and nostalgic on this day, not sure why…where most people are perhaps joyful and happy on their special days, I tend to feel a rather sweet sadness, if that makes sense…not that I remember all or indeed most of my birthdays...I remember certain moments, fragments, scraps, snapshots… but the one feeling I remember overwhelmingly is this feeling of wistfulness… as of something passing that could never be got back but not really knowing if it was worth holding onto, as of wondering what the next year might bring, as of seeing myself as through a prism of time… reflection, contemplation…that’s the mood I usually find myself in… I woke up today thinking to myself that in my younger years I focused on what special things I would do on my birthday… but now I feel thankful if it’s a generally nice day… if I am surrounded by loving people and a cocoon of comfort and warmth… I guess I couldn’t ask for more and if more there be, I would treat it as a bonus… not as something I have a right to demand…
Over the years I have realised that everything must be treated as a boon and blessing… I am entitled to nothing… I feel like it’s made me a more humble person… more detached in a good way… less bound up in expectations… I feel even more grateful when people do nice things for me because I realise it must come purely from the heart… it’s these moments where you feel deeply touched by people’s love and kindness that make life truly worth living… like you have earned something…like you have done something right…a much younger me though sensitive to this may not have felt it as keenly…as I do now.
I feel like I might have started off wanting to build a more rooted and material life…more grounded on solid earth... but having been thrust onto a different path….full of uncertainties, unpredictability, experiences, novelties, difficulties, surprises…I realise now that life is so much richer in movement rather than stationary… so much pleasure in owning memories and experiences rather than worldly contraptions and things… so much joy in enriching one’s mind and heart rather than home…that is probably the biggest lesson I have learnt so far…

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 5:03 pm 0 comments
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