The Chase

The “chase” is never ending or ever satisfying. If you’re a chaser, you chase for life, you chase life, love, attention and contentment; you chase happiness. And they, with their slithery tentacles always slip out of your hands, escaping through steel grip and iron resolves. If only you were stronger, perhaps your entire body clad in metal, heart of silver, if only you could just hold on to fleeting memories… if only.

Nothing ever stays though. Nothing ever stills. So, you begin again and chase the next big thing, a little harder, feeling a little darker. After a lifetime of chasing, you look at your hands, stare at the deep ridges of your palms, not entirely human and entirely self-carved and realize…

–

happiness dances better on an open surface.

The Truth about Love

Close your eyes

if your heart so desires,

the surrounding forest

does not disappear.

The trees stand tall.

The grass still grows lush.

Animals make a home

and the birds a nest.

If I close my eyes,

the forest remains;

it lives.

As does this forest of love

I keep hidden

within the parts of me,

where light has no reason to travel.

It grows still, for the ways of nature,

life and the sun,

though easily perceived,

are seldom accepted.

©️Romancing Life

The Lilac Sky

‘The Lilac Sky’

I seek the path that

takes me through

the lilac sky

framed in rose coloured glass,

to the road beyond

the limits of the eternal sun.

I seek the universe within you,

that something, which

you seek in me;

the light catching fire

in your eyes

and the dance of a smile

on my lips.

©️Romancing Life

Who?

Who is the sea and who am I,

I do not know.

I just know how to flow like the waves,

to and fro.

I flow without question,

I flow without hinderance.

I am destruction.

I am absolution.

I am the cradle of life.

I am a cemetery.

The giver of life

and home to death.

I am. I am. I am

I am beyond thought.

Where comprehension ends,

I begin.

©️ Romancing Life

Foolishness Knows No End

Have you ever heard of the Dunning-Kruger Effect? For those of you who haven’t, “The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled people make poor decisions and reach erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to recognize their mistakes.”*

While familiar with the basics of the concept, I was never so intimately introduced to it as I was in the past couple of days. I am someone who by default runs on intuition; I tend to make decisions based entirely on strong hunches and feelings. I have spent all my life under the illusion, “I feel…,” therefore it must be right. I say things without thinking them through. “I am right”, I say, “being wrong isn’t even an option” and so it has been all my life until of course life finally decided to show me the mirror. In the past couple of days, a long string of conversations, a couple of forwarded articles have all lead to a single conclusion.

I have been a fake. A pretender. An ignorant fool. I thought I knew all there was to know because I felt it. It has to take someone wholly simple, someone utterly unaware of the basic universal principles to make claims of such kind and have the nerve to boast about them. I must thank my stars for Lady Luck has been kind to me, and so far I have not had to pay for my erroneous ways.

Socrates once famously said, “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” I am a fool, I realize. A fool for whom there is yet hope for the universe is never ending source of knowledge. Some of it is within my reach, so I will endeavour to scratch the surface but there is only so much I can grasp in the short time I have been granted on this Earth. Though, I am no where near wise, never have been, but now, this I have no shame in admitting, “I know nothing.”

© Romancing Life, 2018

*Source: “Why People Fail to Recognize Their Own Incompetence” from Current Directions in Psychological Science

Love Me Forever

The Truth

If I do not say it,

you do not listen.

If I do not show it,

you do not see.

If I do not express it,

you do not perceive.

If I do not live it,

you do not believe.

It matters not,

what I do,

or do not do.

Your mere wish

not to hear it

will not change

the truth.

©️Romancing Life

Something Bigger than Myself

I have always wanted to be a part of something. I wanted to be a part of a family, a group of cousins and siblings. I wanted to be a part of a group of friends. I wanted to be a part of a community. I have always wanted to be a part of something bigger than myself. By default, I fit into all of these categories and none if I take a deeper glance at the truth.

A sense of loneliness accompanies me everywhere I go. It is a sense that comes to life by not being understood, not just for a while, but for every second you have been alive. It is a heavy thing to carry with you everywhere, this loneliness.

I have tried to empty the bag of thoughts I carry in mind. I have tried to scream the words out and I have tried to pull them out forcefully. But, they, like a faithful lover, do not abandon me. They stand next to me in my deepest moments of despair and they hold my hands just as well at the zenith of my happiness. So, I suppose, I lie when I say I wish to be a part of something bigger than myself. I realize, the loneliness has become bigger than me and I have become a part of it.

©️Romancing Life

What is beauty?

There is beauty in this world that is more than what the eyes can perceive. This beauty is as natural as nature, as apparent as instinct, and rare, much like common sense. This beauty is of and beyond this world. To understand it, you have to let go any preconceived notions you have and wipe your memory clean. Forget what you know of beauty, to understand and feel that, which cannot be seen.

©️ Romancing Life

A Postcard from Paris

A Postcard from Paris

I consider myself not to be a materialistic person, odd for someone who places so much value onto material things; onto material things that represent memories. Take this postcard for example, bought of a street vendor lining the ever charming streets of Paris some six years ago. I intended for it to be sent to a dear friend, which you might have guessed from the forewords, never happened.

I found it recently, sitting pretty at bottom of my memory box, collecting dust. Albeit well preserved, a sad little thing if you ask me, holding onto something meant to be someone else’s memory. I never let it have that opportunity. I never let that special someone’s face light up with joy because I was selfish, that too in a way that served me no purpose.

My memories have a home in mind, in my heart, far more precious than a piece of cardboard with no address label or message of affection. All these years later, I wonder why I held on? I wonder why am I still holding on? Was I simply being selfish or was it because I didn’t want to let go of the dream?

©️ Romancing Life