In My Company, In Her Company

“I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.” 
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes

Dancing our night away on Istiklal Avenue in Istanbul, Turkey

I am coming to India.

Not to find myself.

Not to seek out something.

Not to win some bragging rights.

I am coming to India to lose myself. I am coming to see how far I can go in the process of relinquishing the very essence of my being. I am coming to see how alike I am to others if I am to ignore my history, my appearance, my dreams, and especially my identity. 

I am coming to see who I am without my own interference. 

Impossible, eh? Probably, but I'd rather learn what's impossible on my own without others telling me. What's the kind of impossibility that forces me to impose a particular identity upon myself? What would I be if I choose not to allow my fears struggling against my greatness? How nothing I can be? How everything I can be? 

India is chosen not because it is the next country on my list of countries to visit. In fact, if you tell me two years before that I'd be roused up into buying an one-way ticket to India, I'd think you're hysterical. 

India is chosen simply because my intuition is crying out for a more powerful experience, for a more mind-blowing perspective, and especially for a place I never dreamt of visiting. 

To be honest, I am coming to India just because I want to. No fancy reasons. No crazy convictions. 

I just want to come to India, so I am doing it. 

All my life, I've dreamt of following my own whims. A job? A house? Marriage? Family? No, all I ever wanted is to follow my heart's desires, however crazy they might seem.

I have to admit that it took me 25 years to finally muster up the courage to do just this: to be a fool for my heart. 

And never before in my life have I been so firmly convinced that I am making the best decision ever.

I do not know whether this journey will be an easy one or a happy one, but I do know that this journey will be the defining experience that will forever dictate a kind of life I am creating. 

Am I terrified? Absolutely, I have my moments of slapping my forehead and blaming myself for my moment of utter foolishness that led me to have this one-way ticket in my hand right now. 

Am I nervous? No shit. I've fucked up before and I just know I'd fuck up somehow in foreign land.

Am I panicking? Yes.  

Yet we cannot forget that I am not going to India just to get cozy with the world. I am going there to get punched in the face. 

I am excited to see a land I haven't ever seen. I am proud for going this far for myself. I am overflowing with energy to go out and to see the world.

I am just grateful to have an opportunity of following my heart's desires in the company of a friend. Without this friend, my dreams probably would be nothing more than cute fantasies to chuckle about. 

She came into my life without knocking on my door. She just came and lost her keys, bringing us into the chapter of finding the key that resulted into our friendship. 

We both had seen each other through our tears, our smiles and our stories. Through her part in my life, I learned how to allow myself feel the roughness of my life, to recognize the light of my inner beauty, and to be more whole than I pretended to be. 

She pushed me to take several more laps to chase after my dreams. She held my hand and commanded me to respect myself more and to validate every moment of my existence. 

The idea of sharing my journey with her filled in me the excitement of discovering more moments that would honor our ever-blossoming friendship, more challenges to shake our souls, and more joys to share with each other. I am very honored to intertwine my journey with her own journey.

Today is her birthday, and I wish her all the best as she takes a leap that will bring her to the destination of our reunion and that will continue teaching her to bless her own existence as she grows wiser, happier and ever truer to herself with every step, every leap, and every journey she chooses to take. 

Dear Violet, may you have a very happy birthday!

This woman in her element

And see you soon in Mumbai! 

What I Have Learned

"It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.” 
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

Today is the sixty-fourth anniversary of my father's birth. 

I must confess that my father was a complex figure in my life. We did not understand each other too well while I was growing up, and as the consequence of this persistent misunderstanding, we did not have an easy father-daughter relationship.  

I did not understand his life choices. To my eyes, he made a foolish choice after another foolish choice, making his life much more difficult and tragic. 

When will he ever stop and turn his life around?

Three years ago, my father went to a doctor, complaining about chest discomfort. This visit ended with him being sent to the hospital. His body was completely ravaged with leukemia and his doctors presented him two choices: undergoing chemo therapy to extend his life for a few more months, alas in great pain, or being medically sedated so he can gently and peacefully decline and eventually his spirit will leave his body within two weeks. 

My father chose to live out the reminder of his life in peace. 

Three days after he entered the hospital and less than forty-eight hours after I was told of his illness, he left life. 

I never said good-bye. 

Grief is a funny thing. When my grandfather died of lung cancer when I was ten years old, I was perfectly calm until I saw his cane and then cried uncontrollably for three days straight. After my friend's suicide, I thought about him every day for a full year before I let him go. I missed my ninety-year-old grandmother's vibrant presence after her death, but I was relieved that she finally decided it was time to go. 

With my father, grief was something entirely different. It was far stronger than anything I ever experienced. More heart-wrenching. The pain of losing him was so overwhelming that I just wanted to stab my own heart. More powerful. I was helpless--I could not protect myself from this terrible pain. And more beautiful. 

The beauty of grief was the most astounding part in losing my father. 

For more than a week, I walked around with this strange sensation that I was not in my own body. It was as if someone else took over my body and pushed me to the corner, where I can totally focus on myself. My body was a mere vehicle in which I found myself sitting on the passenger's seat, contemplating the scenery passing before my eyes, while someone else drove for me. Someone talked for me. Someone laughed for me. Someone ate for me. Someone lived for me. 

At nights, this person came to me and held me, whispering indiscernible yet phenomenal messages into my mind and warming me with its comfort while I cried myself to sleep. Never before in my life had I feel so reassured, so protected, and so loved by this person who shared the same residence in my body. 

A guardian angel? Perhaps. My father's spirit? Could be. God? Possible. 

While I do not know how to explain this person's loving co-existence, I do know one thing: I had learned one of the most powerful secrets about life, an inscrutable secret that has been working its magic into my bones for the past three years and will remain with me for all my life. 

This person was disclosing this inscrutable secret to me while I began to realize that dead men do tell tales. 

After my father's death, my brothers and I went through his possessions. These possessions revealed to me an intellectual man desperate to find peace in life and confronted with the challenge of simultaneously satisfying his own desires and pleasing those he loved. The agony of these challenges led him to turn his life in one big catastrophe. 

I realized that his life choices were not the direct result of him being deliberate about wounding us. He had loved us. He did. He tried his best. Each life choice simply delivered its own consequences for him. My father was smart enough to accept the consequences of his life choices and was courageous and hopeful enough to try and to make the best out of these consequences. 

I came to understand and to even feel proud of my father's choice of immediately letting go when it was time for him to leave life.

From this person who lived with me while I mourned for my father, I learned that no matter where I go in life, no matter what I have chosen in life, I will be always and forever protected and loved. Bad things will happen, but I will go on. Good things will happen, but I will let go. This person, my eternal friend, will always be with me, infusing me with its wisdom and unconditional love as long as I live. 

Life is a mystery that will not be solved within my lifetime. What I can do is, instead of struggling to understand life, to simply live a kind of life that, when I die, I can let go of this life. 

This mystical friend's involvement in my grief and my father's bold exit from life healed a part inside me and because of this, I did not regret letting go of my father. 

While my father was a complex figure in my life and it was arduous to respect him, he was nevertheless beloved and special to my heart. I had loved him while he was alive and will always love him. I was grateful for him and for his role in teaching me lessons I would never learned on my own. 

His courage in making life choices without others' approval allowed me to find the courage to make such choices that may not please some and to also recognize the value in discussing these choices, a value that I often wished that my father had recognized. His determination to steer ahead in spite of his personal pitfalls allowed me to believe in myself more as I move through life and to also recognize the value in accepting full responsibility for my follies, a value that I often wondered if my father had recognized. 

All in all, his life allowed me to understand the immeasurable value of my own life. My father may not have a good life, but at least he can let go and that's exactly what I want to do with my life. 

Your Secret

What's your secret? 

Be.

Just be.

No special tricks. 

You are what you are. You are what you are seeing. You are what you are dreaming.

Fight only to be. Deserve only to be. Love only to be. 

Let others be. Let yourself be.

You are what you are. Your history. Your desires. Your dislikes. Your failures. Your successes. Your memories. They are just what they are: your universe.

You are the universe and within this universe, everything resides.

You are everything. 

Everything blossoms into your view while you explore yourself, your universe. 

They come when you learn that what you are seeing are nothing more than love.

Nothing less or more than love.

Life is the curriculum designed specifically for you because you are the one who designed this curriculum. 

Things you do not like happen because you interpret them as something else than love. 

They call for your love. Learn to love. 

Things you like happen because you interpret them as nothing more than love.

They offer you love. Learn to be loved. 

Nobody instructs you to blame yourself for the curriculum you've designed for yourself. You want to discover yourself, to dare yourself, so you challenge yourself. 

This curriculum, this journey filled with joys and sorrows, is exactly what you want for yourself because you want the best for yourself and out of yourself. 

Your sorrows are equally welcomed as your joys for those emotions are meant for you to experience, to explore, and to embrace. 

Make peace with them both and you shall see peace in your universe.

The curriculum you've created for yourself is different from other curriculums created for others because you are bigger than you think you are. Your universe is far larger and much richer than you think it is. 

Others who are learning along with you are your universe, too. They are connected to you. They are you.

You are extending and expanding beyond yourself. Your universe is the total sum of many yous. Others are discovering  themselves, daring themselves, to open more doors for you. 

They have their sorrows and joys so they can experience, explore, and embrace for you. They blossom for you to see. They are discovering peace for you to discover. 

They are what they are. Their history. Their desires. Their dislikes. Their failures. Their successes. Their memories. They are just what they are: your universe. The universe of all yous. 

They are what you are. They are what you are seeing. They are what you are dreaming.

Fight only to be. Deserve only to be. Love only to be. 

Let others be. Let yourself be.

No special tricks. 

Just be. 

Be.

That's your secret. 

You and Me

Sometimes it is hard to live.

I understand that. So do you.

Sometimes we find ourselves in one of our darkest and most painful moments, but I promise you this moment will pass. 

Sometimes we feel so sick that we are afraid to survive, but I promise you that you will realize you are stronger than you think. 

Sometimes we long for others to share our burdens and could not find one willing to bear the weight of our burdens, but I promise you these burdens are not so heavy if you choose to view them as challenges intended to strengthen you. 

You and me, we may have our moments when we feel so desperately alone in this mad, mad world, but I am telling you the truth when I say we are not as alone as we fear.

It is within you where the power lies. This power allows you to change the only thing that can be changed in this world. 

This thing, the only changeable thing in the world, is you.

Your mind, to be exact. 

You as a person may not change. It may be even impossible to transform yourself into someone else. It may be just as impossible as changing the world you are seeing before your very eyes. However, your thoughts can and do change.

Dare yourself to forgive and love yourself. Dare yourself to forgive and love others. Dare yourself to forgive and love the world. 

If you choose to forgive and love yourself, others, and the world, you may begin to witness the greatest miracle of life: the beauty of your inner spirit. 

Through this beauty, you may find yourself managing to smile even in the darkest and most painful moments in your life. 

Through this beauty, you may recognize the sickness as a period of much-needed rest and self-care to allow you to recollect your strength. 

Through this beauty, you may feel the springiness in your feet as you carry the weight of your burdens.

It is of utmost importance that for every situation that comes to pass in your life, you must always choose love. 

Shall you ever fail in making such a choice in a situation, forgive and love yourself immediately. Often. Always. 

You are more loved than you would allow yourself to believe. You are forgiven more often than you thought you deserve. 

It happens because you are the most important person in your life. No one is truer than you. No one is you.

Because no one is you, you feel alone. However, because no one is you, you are the truest and most important person you would ever know in all your life. 

Offer yourself nothing but kindness, friendship, forgiveness and love. 

And the rest of the world will follow you.