My approach to life appears to be to make lemonade out of every lemon life throws at me. I have remarked about this in different ways over here in the past 2-3 years. Mind you, it's not an approach I am a fan of. I do it kicking and screaming literally. I would rather God gave me grapes or honey or something instead of leaving me with the onerous task of squeezing and squeezing till my arms hurt. My first response to a lemon is the refrain you are probably now familiar with, why God? Why me? ;)

But I suppose this constant position of being handed lemons has helped in 1. making me already prepared for the task, 2. developing strategic skills for the task. Every time I am in any situation I am interested in minimizing my energy spend. Because I have little energy for physical activities or activities/people who don't interest me. Obviously, I want to reserve the most for things/people that do. With the lemon squeezing situation, which for that reason too is inherently harder for me, I try to look at how to make myself spend less and less energy at every successive such situation. I suppose that's how I end up maximizing the lemons... if you know what I mean!

I wish

I could go back

To those days

Somewhere in the past

Relive those moments

Do them over

Experience them

All over again

If I had one wish

I would ask Him

The powerful one

Can you turn back the clock?

Just once?

And don't erase

My knowledge

Because if I knew then

What I know now

I would be

So much the better

I would make

Every moment count

I would, I swear

Stop complaining

Every damn time

Even when

They were kind

So kind

I would be

Better, gooder, nicer

Gentler, mellower

Not my

Fiery self

Spitting arguments

All the time

Like now

Like I try to be now

While my heart bursts

Because it hurts

To know

There's so little

Precious little

Time...

~Me

It's amusing and irritating when some people try to play a one-up game with me. I am not really into taking them on. I don't mean 'take on' as in put them down or anything. It's just that their game does not interest me nor is it something I aspire to win. It's a bit like them showing off they are going to be the CEO of Fluff and Vapid Co. when all I want to do is write poems at Books Ltd. It's fun to watch them preen at me as if I envy them their CEOship at the Fluff and Vapid. They will never understand my passion for writing poems as much as I will never understand their jubilation at their empty title. I don't expect them to 'get it' but the problem is when they expect me to bow to their (apparently) elevated status. That is what really riles them because I don't. They can't imagine why I am not enamoured by their power and why I don't grovel to gain their influence. It's no use pointing out that status does not impress me if it does not come with depth, dignity, intellect, excellence, or anything of intrinsic merit. Even a donkey can be given a crown (no offence to donkeys). Maybe it is knowing that they don't possess any internal remarkable qualities that triggers their insecurities and makes them clutch even more tightly at fancy titles. When people don’t recognize these, they must be forced to wonder if they appear as undazzling without as they are within!

There are days when just existing feels so hard. I don't want to write on such days because it could seem very morbid. It is morbid. Existence is morbid for anyone who thinks very deeply. The cure then is perhaps to numb thinking or not give yourself any time to think. If you think about it, everything ordinary people do takes them away from the trauma of thinking. Work, entertainment, food, sleep, play, social media... you name it. It's all to occupy one's mind with something, anything, but to not let it be empty. The chap who said an empty mind is the devil's workshop was onto something. Let your mind not be attached to any activity and next thing you know you are pondering on existence. And that my friend takes you to morbid territory. It hits you like a train head-on. What's the point of all of the stuff you are doing to get yourself out of thinking, it will ask. Nothing lasts. No one lasts. They are all speeding away really, bit by bit. You are speeding away too. Just the rate of speed differs so some are moving farther away and some are catching up with you. Imagine us all sitting in different buses looking out at each other. It might seem like we are in the same bus if we are sharing the journey for a bit or a while. But then suddenly their bus is zooming away. You are lucky if you get to wave out or call out. But whoosh, gone. Morbid, right? It's one of those days where I feel like holding tightly to some people so they don't just leave me staring into the distance. Tomorrow I will likely pop out of this mode and decide to revel in the journey again, albeit tentatively. It's a decision one has to make to survive the day to day... if one is the thinking sort.