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One Year Without Winter

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Photo attributed to Thenix

Photo attributed to Thenix

When Thenix and I first started speaking about travelling to South America for 1 whole year, he was extremely excited about one notion and one notion alone. He wanted to see the beautiful places, the beautiful cultures, and the beautiful monuments. He wanted to explore this world that we’ve been placed on for a very brief period. He wanted to learn a new language, and become fluent in it. He wanted to have time to explore his hobbies and interests.

But at the top of his list was, He wanted a year without winter. How simple is that request? While I have been lamenting about finding my passion, taking time away from the doldrums, discovering my true nature, and all of that bogus stuff, Thenix had one simple request. He didn’t like the cold. He doesn’t like the winter. He wanted to have a year where he wouldn’t have to experience winter, unless he chose to. I mention this request, because often times, we make something out to be more difficult or complicated then it really is.

‘Keeping it Simple’ isn’t hard for most people, it is impossible. We find it easier to deal with situations or circumstances if they have a lot of drama in them, if they have to dealt with delicately, if you have to tip-toe around them. We know how to deal with complicated. We know how to deal with convoluted. We do not know how to deal with simple. We do not even know how to let it remain simple.

When I first began dating Thenix, it was simple. He liked me, and I liked him. Simple. But I had to complicate it in my head. I bought up my ex, who was his friend, I bought up my recent breakup, I bought up the fact that he had recently broken up with someone who hurt him, I bought up our different cultures, I bought up his good nature. I bought up anything and everything that I could to complicate the situation. I couldn’t leave it alone. I had to un-simplify a situation to be able to deal with it properly.

The next time you are trying to bring some drama or complicated into a situation, step back and stop. You deal with enough complicated in your life. You deal with a lot in your life. Do not try to complicate every situation that comes into your life. Sometimes the objective should be to just trust and let go. Trust and Let Go. Assume, you know that the simple situation is happening as-is for a reason.

Trust and Let Go. Try it and see. It is definitely harder than it looks.

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Resistance Falls Away

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Photo attributed to Thenix

Photo attributed to Thenix

Everything is happening for a reason. It is so easy to see that in hindsight. The reason I was late for work was because there was an accident on the 401 that I missed. The reason I wasn’t able to sell the car to the first offer, was because I was about to get a better offer from someone else. The reason this guy broke up with me, was because I was able to meet a much better man. That is easy to say when you are able to look back over the last few months or years. But, it isn’t very easy in the moment. That is the problem isn’t it?

I try and try to think of everything that happens in the moment as necessary, not good or bad. It is what has to happen in order for the next thing in the order of things to happen. You cannot force a child to start walking before he/she has learned to crawl.  You cannot hurry up life by skipping a few steps. Those steps will come back to haunt you in your sleep or daydreams. But sometimes I falter as well – I have a hard time with accepting everything as is. I resist, I try to change the circumstances too fast, I get frustrated when things are moving too fast or too slow, I get angry, emotional, anxious, fearful, jealous. I go through a number of different emotions, until I realize calm, peace, and stillness are the only way to go.

An example of this would be travel. I see a lot of my friends on FB talking about being in South America, and Thailand. Reading about it, makes me excited for them, and also jealous that I’m not somewhere exotic, fearful that I will never get to travel, anxious that I am not saving up enough money to go travelling, anxious that Thenix will leave me if we go on a trip together or before we go on a trip together. One person holding all of those emotions inside isn’t a right way to live. Eventually you are going to burst into pieces and splatter some of that onto the loved ones around you.

Hard as it may be, you have to realize that everything is happening as it should. The only way you can truly live your life is plan for the future, but live in the present. As long as you are doing everything possible in order to plan for the future, all you can do is live in the present moment and pray for the best. Nothing you do right now will change the future. Even the best planning might turn into naught. Realize that, and just assume some zen.

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Playing The Victim Card

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Photo attributed to Thenix

Photo attributed to Thenix

I have found that I’m the kind of person who likes playing the victim card. Woe is me, the world is against me. Any little thing happens in my life, as it always does, and the world is against me. Everyone is out to get me, and I’m all alone in this world, oh, poor, little, sad me.

One of my ex actually pointed this out to me, one day, when I was going on and on about how I’m always trying to be good to him, and he’s always out to get me. He doesn’t understand me, he doesn’t understand how I suffer, and so on. He looked up at me, rolled his eyes, and said, Stop being such a victim, for once and stand up for yourself with some spine.

Yikes~ I stopped for a second and thought about it. He was right, I was being a victim. I was being whiny, and bitchy, I was complaining and I wasn’t bringing good thoughts or things into my life by being the victim. Since then, I have tried not to play the victim as much, but it is a role that is easy to play, that comes easily to me, through years of practice, so I bring it out once in a while. Thankfully, I recognize it soon enough and I stop playing it once I do realize I am being the poor victim again, instead of being in control of the situation.

The major problem, obviously, with playing the victim is that You are not in control of Your life. You are letting someone else assume control of your life, you are telling the world that someone else is in control of your circumstances, rather than yourself. Once you start doing that, it tells you that there is nothing you can do in order to change your fate. You just have to wait for the universe to stop attacking you and then you can start moving on with your life. That is not the way to live a proactive life.

You are in control when you realize no one else controls your life and destiny besides yourself. When you realize that, when the universe throws something at you, instead of bitching about it, crying about it, or victimizing about it, you take control. You take notes, you figure out alternatives, you take ACTION. Action repels the victim mentality. You are in control and not some imaginary item/person/thing/situation in the background.

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Slowing Things Down

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Photo attributed to flickr user ecstaticist

Photo attributed to flickr user ecstaticist

I was walking to my car a few days ago, balancing my handbag in one hand, my keys in the other, and my phone on my ear against my shoulder. I was trying to do too much and a second later, I heard my VOSS waterbottle fall to the ground in a sickening shatter. I looked down and saw the remains of my beloved much used bottle, and I stopped. I told the person on the phone to hold on, I put my purse on the ground and I stilled myself for a second. I stopped, and looked around at the quiet night.

I realized this was a sign from the universe, that I was doing too much too fast. I needed to slow down, be patient, and realize that everything will get done in its own time, slowly but surely. Nothing can be hurried along, without leading to its detriment. I had to slow down, but I didn’t want to. I already felt pressured by time that moves too fast, so I hurried. I felt panicked, and stressed. I felt my heart beat erratically, up one minute, down the next. That night when I went to sleep, I knew that I really needed the night’s rest. Those six hours were packed with the most erratic, vivid dreams, I have had in a while, and in all of them, I was looking for something, searching for something, not finding it, and stressing myself about it.

The next day, I took the time to do things slowly, I took the time to have a cup of tea, even when I felt that those ten minutes could be spent better working, I took the time to eat lunch away from my desk, I took the time to play a few games and watch some comedy on TV, and most importantly, I took the time for some much needed yoga. I felt relaxed and rejuvenated, but only because I worked at it.

It might seem counterintuitive to slow down, when all your mind is telling you to do is hurry up, but that’s what your body and mind need the most at that time. First of all, if you are in that stressed state of mind, you are definitely going to make mistakes, and that will cause you to need twice the amount of time you would need normally. Secondly, nothing at work or in your family is worth your health. Isn’t it more important that you slow down, chill out, and take care of yourself, rather than get that bonus at work, or listen to what your parents want you to do? Nothing is more important or more precious than your own health. You cannot take care of anything or anyone else if you aren’t well yourself.

Learning to slow down should be one of the first lessons that we learn as adults, but it is unfortunately, usually the last. No matter what your age, learn to relax, and you will be automatically able to increase your lifespan and health.

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Signs From The Universe

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Photo attributed to flickr user Benimoto

Photo attributed to flickr user Benimoto

I have to admit that I’m one of those crazy people who’s looking for signs from the universe. It doesn’t have to be even related to me, in anyway. It could just be the fact that my friend had a dream that in my opinion seems somehow significant. I find that too many of us are spending too much with our eyes open, unseeing, not paying attention to the happenings around us.

This is blatantly proven when you look at people driving on the streets of any metropolitan city. You see them swerving into lanes, last minute, because they were too busy dreaming about their next vacations or what they would do when they get home, making their to-do lists in their head, not paying attention to their automatic home/work routes. You see them slamming their brakes, as they were about to hit the car in front of them, as they were trying to send a text message or an email on their cellphone to a loved one or a colleague, trying to juggle two or more tasks at the same time, to fit more into a 24 hour day. There are an abundant of other examples.

The point is that we don’t pay attention to what is happening around us. We use our eyes, but we do not see. We interpret, but we are unclear on what is in front of our eyes, as it is seen through years of conditioning by parents and culture. I extrapolated on that concept in the blog post, ‘Do Not Rely On Your Eyes Alone.’

Every time I drive on the streets of Toronto, I look for signs passing me by, in the forms of other drivers. If a driver is driving slowly in front of me, I take it as a sign to slow down, that perhaps there is a speed trap in front of me, that I need to be cognizant of, or maybe I’m not paying enough attention to the driving, and it is a sign to concentrate. Same thing, with someone swerving into the lane in front of me, it is a sign to me to be alert for the rest of the drive. A more blatant sign from the universe, of course, is an accident. It is a huge neon-red sign to you, to stop, pay attention, change something in the way you are doings, slow down, etc.

Do you pay attention to the signs of the universe? Or do you think thats hocus-pocus?

Expansion and contraction of your world

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Photo attributed to flickr user Dey

I was thinking about this the other day. When I was younger, much younger, I was always looking to expand my world. My world was very small. I thought only about myself and my family. No one else mattered in the world. We were the five musketeers. The only people who would matter in a disaster would be them. The only people who I wanted alive forever were them. They were my world.

Then I grew up a little and then a lot, and then my world expanded. I became more interested in other people, in world events, in growing myself as a human being. I began caring about other individuals, my friends, family, random people on the street who were hurt, etc. I began expanding my world, my sphere of influence, and my zone of ‘caring’.

I realize now that I have peaked or coming close to my peak of expansion. Despite efforts to grow further, I find the only way I can grow now, is if I travel. Movement to other places, meeting other people, learning how other people on this planet live, despite the Americanization of most cultures, I find I expand inwardly, which is the most important kind of expansion to me.

I also find that as you get older, your friends get married, they have children, and their lives get busy. They are interested in the well-being of their children and nothing else matters. Again, their worlds contract, and they are quite happy about it, but in parallel, if you are not interested in the same, you are unable to stay at the same level as them.

I have spoken to a few of them who are in that stage, married, with children and happy with their lives the way are, happy for their lives to stay the same, as long as their families remain safe and secure. I am happy for them, but it reminds me that I’m not ready for that yet.

We have a long journey ahead of us yet, before we enclose ourselves in the family capsule.

The way the Universe speaks to you

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Photo attributed to flickr user etkbreogan

I have long been a believer that the people surrounding you, the items that surround you, the places that you live in, anything and everything that is in your life is a signal from the universe towards something. You have created everything in your life, and so you can look to the items in your life, if you wish to change something in your life, or if you need to know why you are where you are.

Something that struck me particularly today, happened as I was sitting in a Monday morning meeting. I let my mind wander sometimes to see where it will go when the fancy strikes it, and interestingly enough, after a long meditation session in the morning, before the meeting, it went to bullies.

When I was doing my graduate program in Waterloo, I had a few months where I was dealing with a particular bully and it was making my life hard. Weirdly enough, in my life I have always assumed that the universe is good, it wants the best for you, people are inherently good, and if you are nice to people, they will be nice to you. I know that is naïve thinking, but that is what I have been taught to believe, and it really did work really well for me, while I travelled for nine months through South-East Asia.

But in the snowy hills of North America, with corporations, money and jealousy, there is no room for that kind of thinking. The bully had seen that I was nice, and she honed in on me as a target. I didn’t deal with it really well, letting her get to me, showing weakness, when the only recourse with bullies is to show strength. They feed on weakness, like North Americans feed on a Big Mac, and I didn’t realize until too late, it was her own insecurities shining through, and it would have been pretty easy to put her in her place.

I am dealing with another bully, and that made me think, made me wonder, if there is a certain time in your life, that bullies are sent into your life, so you can learn from them, maybe there is a specific lesson that I am refusing to learn, about personal power, and responsibility, that only a bully with their persistent attitude could teach me.

That is something that I am still thinking about. It might just be, that I was being too nice, letting others take advantage of me, and it was a sign that I need to stand up for myself? Whatever it is, I have realized I am going to start paying more attention to the issue, and thus, receive the enlightened message that was intended for me.

Missed beauty while driving

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Photo attributed to flickr user mara

I was sitting in my car, cruising along the highway, thanking the universe, that there was no traffic stifling my progress, staring at the back of an unsightly pick-up truck, white and rusted, when I looked up for no apparent reason.

And then I saw it. The most beautiful sunrise ever. The sun golden and vivid. The clouds pink, orange, foamy, beautiful. I sat there in my car, making sure, I didn’t hit the unsightly pick-up truck, and looked at the sunrise, while I drove.

If I hadn’t looked up when I was driving, I would have missed the beautiful sunrise. This made me think of two important points. First of all, we think, that we need to remove ourselves from our present situation in order to experience beauty. We need to leave the country. We need to travel. We need to move away from our current hometown. And so on. The truth that I am slowly realizing, is that you can experience beauty in yourself wherever you are, and around you, whenever you want.

The second thing is that we miss a lot around us. We miss all the beauty around us. We miss an opportunity to help someone in need. We miss the opportunity to laugh or cry, because we are just too busy or distracted to either look around or to just be present in the moment. I’m sure you have seen this video of a world-famous violinist playing a beautiful melody, that was missed by everyone in the subway station as they were too ‘busy’ walking to wherever they were walking to.

The title of the video is ‘Stop and Hear the Music’. What else are we missing out on because we are not stopping to hear the music, or smell the roses, or laugh at a joke, or look at a sunset.

Now my resolution is to try and make drive-time, a time to notice the beauty around me. I drive through some of the most beautiful wooded highways in Toronto. Of course, it doesn’t work if it is forced. Eventually, I want to reach a point, where I am not forcing myself to observe the beauty, but beauty is just there all around me, unforced, watched, experienced.

What do you think of your drive-time?

Expansiveness of the mind (Technical difficulties resolved)

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Photo attributed to flickr user Andy E. Nystrom

Sorry Everyone. I had some technical difficulties and a blank post was sent out. Here is the real post.

I was speaking to a friend of mine recently and he expounded on the virtues of yoga for him. As there aren’t many male yogis that I know of, I always like speaking to him, because I like to know whether the yogic experience is very much similar for men as it is for women. Being so different in the ways we see things, I’m sure we are really different in the way we view our yoga classes.

He said two things that really made me think. One is that whenever he comes out of a yoga class, he always feels very expansive. His little ego filled with little thoughts, worries, resentments, falls away, and he becomes bigger. He starts looking away from the ground when he walks, and starts looking around, and up towards the sky, buildings, trees. He noticed this about himself, when he realized, he noticed something about a building he has passed by a million times before. He had never seen that building before in that way.

Another thing, he said, is that because he is a smoker, he imagined that he would have cravings right after an hour class, but his cravings subside, for a few hours after a yoga class. He doesn’t have the nicotine need, as intense as it would be normally after a normal hour-long hiatus from smoking.

The expansive of the mind is something that appeals to me as a yogi, because that is what the whole purpose of yoga is to me. It is to get away from the smallness, the meanness , littleness of the ego, and move towards the wide abundance of the universe. The universe has more than enough for everyone and everything. We do not need to haggle or fight over the little items, because there is enough for everyone. We need to remember that, and get away from the small emotions, like jealousy, resentment or envy.

How does Yoga help your mind?

Why do I feel shame when I make a purchase for myself?

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Shame, guilt, fear. These are all the demons of the mind. They keep us from being our best. They keep us from being the amazing, glorious, universal beings that we are meant to be. They keep us from unity with the source. Whatever the source might be for you – God, Allah, Lord Rama, or the Universe.

I feel all of these emotions every day in some shape or form. I feel them, I deal with them, sometimes I suppress them, sometimes I release them. But I do feel them every day. Mostly I feel less of them the more I meditate and yoga. The more I connect to myself at the deepest level, where there is nothing like shame, or guilt or fear, the less these emotions bother me.

One thing that causes major shame for me, that causes me to justify my actions, a sign that you are moving away from your deepest self, is buying things for myself.

I do not like it. I don’t like feeling like this. I am allowed to purchase items for myself. I am allowed to pamper myself, treat myself nice, buy myself pretty things. Why do I feel shame at it? It ruins the whole experience for me, as I am no longer fully enjoying the purchase. The purchase is tainted by guilt. Or fear. Or shame.

Do I feel like I don’t deserve to be pampered or loved? What is that all about?

This is a question that will not be answered in one sitting. The important thing is to ask the question.

How do you feel when you make a purchase for yourself?

What is my plan to free myself from the rat race?

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I think that question must be on a lot of your minds. How am I going to free myself from the 9-5 chains that have bound us all? How am I going to move on, move up and move forward? How will I break free and travel for the rest of my life?

The real answer is that I do not have an answer. 

Hilarious, right? I know that sounds iffy and a little bit crazy. My plan really is just to do it. Like Nike says all the time, I am not going to think about it, I am not going to analyze it, I am not going to dissect it. I am just going to pick a date, and I am just going to do it.

I am going to leave. I am going to save up enough money to travel for a year and I am going to ensure I have enough money to pay off my student loan interest while I am gone. I am going to sell the car. I am going find a good renter for my condo, and I am going. I am off to the winds, to the heavens and to the light.

I am going to walk around like a bum for a year, wearing clothes that are dirty, that are dusty, that have tears in them. I am going to carry all my belongings on my shoulders, in a little backpack, that will sustain me for a year. I will eat at little street-side stalls. I am going to spend at least 20 of the 24 hours in a day outdoors, under the clouds and the sun. I am going to spend maybe 1-3 hours a week on a computer and that is all, nothing compared to the 50 hours a week that I spend right now. I am going to meet random people and become instant friends with them, sharing all my dreams, and aspirations with them. I am going to see different cultures and see how people from other countries live, work, and interact with each other, learning from them and giving back to them. I am going to support the local economies of all of these places little by little, by giving a dollar here and a dollar there.

Finally, I am going to be living life the way human beings are meant to live, moving from place to place, not stuck at a desk, and just dancing my life away with good food in my belly and good company in my stead.

The plan. Ah, yes, the plan. The plan shall come. Once you make the decision, a strong decision. A decision that is so deep inside of you, that it is you, the plan shall come to you. It shall come to you in the form of friends and strangers helping you out, money that just appears to drop into your lap, and opportunities that just appear out of nowhere.

The universe will help you along. Whatever God you believe in, will help you out. Once you decide, every force in the universe will conspire to help you out.

You do not need to worry. I do not need to worry. The plan is coming, in fact, I already see it peeking through the curtains at me.

Let me know what you think of my ramblings below. :)

 

Dream Sunday night

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When I fell asleep Sun night, I dreamt that there was a black shadow on me, suffocating me, I felt smothered. And I kept on hearing call me, call this number, and it was T who was saying it. I woke up and realized that maybe T being so tired driving back home, maybe he wasn’t well or something. I called him instantly. He told me the following.

I think I know why you had that dream, besides the fact that you saw me tiered. Right about the time you had the dream I was on the Gardner in the middle lane, and the guy to my left started drifting towards me… I got a bit of a scare and then I thought I was imaging it… I let him pass me… and sure enough, I was not imaging it, he was drifting in between lanes quite badly… at some point he was literally driving in 2 lanes. In any case I got home safe and sound :) Thank you for the phone call.
I believe that I am connecting more and more to the source, the more I listen to my intuition, the more meditation and yoga I do, the better connected I am, the clearer are the signs, the subtleties disappear slowly.

I yoga?

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I do not understand why yoga isn’t a verb. I mean, Run is a verb. You run. That is the sentence. But I yoga, doesn’t seem to make sense?

Anyway, that is just a minor digression. I wanted to talk about random stuff today. I went to a friend’s house yesterday for Shrove Tuesday. Now, some of you must be wondering what Shrove Tuesday is. Do not fear, my friend. I had no idea why I was going to a friend’s house in the middle of the week to make pancakes, either. I was wondering if my friends’ are going through a mild period of insanity at a young age. I got there around six thirty after my shift at my part-time work, after a long fun day of feeding people. I really had a good time at work, and I was buoyant. I was vibrant. I was happy and raring to go for another few hours. I got to her house, and we sat down for a bit, to wait for the others to arrive.

She told me she has finally decided to go to Australia. Wow! I was so happy for her. She had been getting a lot of hints from the universe. For example, she met a guy on plentyoffish.com who was planning to move to Australia who lives two blocks away from her and they are planning to meet up before their move to Australia and support each other through the process. I mean, that is just crazy coincidence. That is the amazing thing about life. You never know what is going to happen next. What kicker you are going to be dealt with next.

We had a chat about how we both have this feeling inside of us. This feeling like we are waiting for something. We don’t know what it is. What are we waiting for? But we have this interminable feeling inside of us, every second of every day, that we are missing something. We are waiting for something. What are we waiting for? Is it our real life to begin? I mean, this can’t be it. This can’t be what we came down to earth for. To push paper and emails for some random company, to make a little bit of money, to have some children, to retire somewhere obscure, and to die in some little corner somewhere, painfully. This cannot be it. I mean, can it?

When will our real life begin? Or will we realize that this is it? This is our real life. This is all we can hope for. This is all we can ever bargain for. This is all we can ever aspire to. It is scary, but maybe this is all.

What is a real life composed of? I am sure I will be writing on this further. I hope you will let me know what you think of these musings.

Life is fleeting

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Yesterday, my friend invited me over to her house on false pretenses. It was supposed to be an Oscar party, which I wasn’t too enamored with, but I was glad for the time I would spend with her. There were the usual five of us there, and then she dropped the bombshell, right after, they announced the Best Adapted Screenplay. Her father has been diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer, prognosis 4-12 months. Only 10% of people actually make it to the twelve month stage.

I was in shock. I guess this is the age, late twenties, where your friends’ parents start dying off, one by one. I haven’t feared my death in a long while, but I know there are many others who are extremely afraid of the mess they are going to leave behind for their children or families. That was the only one concern her father had, that he wasn’t leaving enough inheritance behind for them, so that they could be comfortable.

You really do not realize how fleeting life is. I mean, yes, you know it in concept, in theory, in your head. The words are there. The meaning is clear. But you do not really KNOW it, until you experience it. I guess, it is a bit like having sex. You can watch all the porn you want, all the deaths on television you want. You can write your eulogy as you would like it done. But until you actually do it, until you have sex, you have no idea what the hell you are talking about. Until, you have a near-death experience, or you have someone close to you die, you have no idea what you are talking about.

You know, for the longest time, I had a irrational fear of even saying the word, Die, or Death. It was taboo to me. I couldn’t even think it. It was like saying, Voldemort, for me. It just wasn’t done. I felt like saying the word Die or Death, was to invite the same to my house. Now, of course, I have gotten over such silliness, but still, I wonder. There are many in my circle who are afraid of death. Extremely afraid. And I am sure, I can say I am not afraid, but when the time comes, I’m sure I will bawl like a baby, at the unfairness of it all.

I have been exposed to two almost deaths in the past week. My uncle, my mother’s brother, got into an accident in India, where he was on a bicycle and a car hit him head on. He got a head injury and his foot had to be amputated. He is fine now, but for those few hours, my mother was on the edge of her seat. Especially, being so far away, it really affected her.

Is it a message from the universe, not to focus on useless matters like my experience in marketing, and the job I have, or the debt that I have to pay off, or the impact that I am leaving behind on my death? Am I supposed to stop worrying about everything, because it doesn’t really matter in the end? Or should I realize that I have a few years to make an impact on the world, I should start now, because tomorrow might be too late?

Maybe there is no message, I’m just trying to create meaning out of nothing.

Stress and High Expectations

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I was at my part-time job yesterday, lamenting in my head about not having a full-time job yet. I have been giving interviews like a crazy person, applying to a million jobs, and nothing. Nothing. A smart, socially-adept, experienced person like me is unable to find a job. What is going on here? But yesterday I was taught a lesson, a subtle lesson by the universe. It wasn’t a hit-on-the-head eureka moment, but it was a moment nevertheless. It also made me realize that everyday there is a learning moment, small or big.

My fellow worker, a beautiful Asian girl, was talking about stress. This young girl was literally killing herself with stress. She is only 20, in school full-time, works 35 hours a week, which is full-time as well. She has literally no time to do anything besides school work and work. She guzzles Monster Energy Drinks by the can-full and Tim Horton’s coffee. She has OCD, which results in her not being able to relax for a second. She is restless, always moving about, cleaning something, doing everything twice, even if the other person’s done it, as she doesn’t believe they could have done it as well as she does it. She is trying to prove something to the world or to herself, but she doesn’t know what. She doesn’t want to have regrets later in life, that she didn’t do everything possible in her younger years. Of course, being Asian, her parents put unduly amounts of stress on her, with high expectations of academic standing and paying for school and all her expenses herself.

She also has health problems due to the stress. She faints without reason regularly. Her heart rate is erratic and she feels like she’s going to have a heartattack on a regular basis. She is not one prone to melodrama, so I believe her when she says she feels her heart racing without reason. It is the assault on her body and mind, the constant stress that she cannot handle. It is all due to the society that we live in.

Looking at her, and telling her to chill out and do some yoga, before she does die of a heartattack in her twenties, I was reminded of myself in my late teens and early twenties. I was exactly the same. Working like a dog at school and work, no time for anything family or friend related. The only reason I was sane was because I ran everyday, regularly, for 30 minutes. Every morning, at six am, I would get up, dress up and run. That was the time where I could relax, and where my body got the stress-relief it needed. Missing a day of run would chalk up my stress level by a 100%. I just couldn’t afford to miss it. I almost never missed it. I thank God, now that I discovered running and ran for my health.

I also realized how relaxed I am now. Of course, I worry about finding a job and paying off my loans, but I do it in a stress-free, chilled out manner. Yes, I am making plans for it, but I am not going to stress out about it, and ruin my health for it. I only have my health, it is something that is precious and irreplaceable. I am not going to ruin my health for a few dollar bills and a fake standing in society. Yoga of course helps like crazy. I am sure I couldn’t be as chilled out as I am without the benefit of regular yoga for the past year. It is only when you see what you were like before, when you realize how much you have improved.

In the spirit of thanking yoga, I say Namaste!

Mysterious ways

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The universe does work in mysterious ways. Mostly because we have no idea what message or idea we are supposed to be getting from all the signals coming our way. We are absolutely mystified by all the different crazy messages in the bottle. We are stumped when yet another random coincidence pushes something our way. We cannot label anything as good or bad, because the minute we do, something happens to change our mind the other way. Being bombarded by all of this misleading information on top of all the misleading information other human beings and media sends our way, it is a miracle that we are able to stay sane.

Are we being weird and looking for meaning where there is none? I am always mocked by others when I tell them I believe the world is trying to help me live a good life. By giving me good things in many different ways. It gives me a good night out when I am feeling down about my job search. It gives me a good yoga class when I am feeling hopeless about moving forward in my practice. It gives me a laughter-filled conversation with my parents when I am feeling lonely. It gives me a glimpse of a procession of birds in the V-formation going south when I am feeling gloomy about the environmental ravages. Hope is given to me in little ways, that keeps me going forward. It is true that I do not have to look for signs everywhere, or look for meaning in everything.

Maybe it is all random. But then where is the fun in living? It makes life mysterious, and it makes you feel special somehow. I have to give you an example of something that happened to me a few days ago. In the summer, six months ago, I went to a house party and gave my phone number to this DJ. It was nerve-wracking for me, but I did it. He didn’t call but I felt braver because I went ahead and fought my demons to give him my number. I was working at a club in December, four months later and he walks in with his friend. I don’t recognize him at first, but he recognizes me and tries to get me to give him my new number. I didn’t, but then I thought about it. There is a reason he walked into that bar a day before I stopped working there. Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t. But I chose to see meaning in it. I found him online, and friended him on facebook. Two months later, yesterday I see him finally. And it was nice. Dont know what will happen with that yet, but weird how life works out.

Mysterious.

Signs from the Universe

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Whenever I start speaking of signs from the Universe, people get very uncomfortable around me. They do not want to believe that someone out there might be sending them subtle signs to guide their life. They want to believe that they are the captains of their own ship, which they are. Just because someone’s sending them signs or little guideposts doesn’t mean that they lose absolute control of their ship. Of their life. They are still in absolute control of their actions. They are in control of whether they follow the signs or just ignore the signs and do as they please.

A friend of mine is getting constant signs about Australia. She has been thinking about moving to Australia for a while. A long while. It is something that has been in the back of her mind, for ages. She wants to move there, travel for a bit, and then work for the same company she’s working for right now, in their Australian branch. It all seems quite doable actually to an outsider. She receives signs on TTC buses, from friends, from cereal boxes, from TV boxes, from everywhere. Everyday of every month for the past year, that she has ignored the signs, she has received the signs. A friend will talk about moving to Australia. A billboard will talk about travel to Australia. A TV box will talk about the pleasures of Australia.

Of course, you might say, that she is just projecting her own inner subconscious feelings onto everything in her life. If she hadn’t been thinking about Australia, subconsciously day and night, she wouldn’t have placed any meaning on the billboards and the TV advertisements. She would just ignore them, like we ignore the 9,999 signals that come at us every second of every day. She would go about her life as if nothing astronomical had just happened. That there is something out there, or inside of her, guiding her, wanting her to do good.

Maybe this is another one of my quirks, to help me believe that we are special as human beings, that we are able to receive signals from some higher power, that we must have a higher purpose. Why us, and not walruses? Or Wombats? Or anything else for that matter?

I do subscribe to the TUT – notes from the universe. Check it out! It is a good morale booster when things are looking down.

Australia is expensive

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Now I was thinking about it, and the reason I do not travel through my home country is because it is really expensive. It costs almost as much to travel in my country, as it would to travel to Europe or Asia, which is a bloody lot. But I figured out that Australia costs as much if not more to travel through. Isn’t that a bit hypocritical of me to travel to another expensive country and not travel in my own expensive country? I think so.

I have a working holiday visa for Australia, which means that I can work anytime I want, but the more I think about it, the more I want to stay there for 3 months at the max (visiting New Zealand as well) and then move on as soon as I can, to South East Asia. But what about the reminder by everyone to travel SLOWLY. Every book I have read on travelling, every travel blog, emphasizes the point of travelling SLOWLY. They sometimes say it twice just to make sure we readers understand the importance of the point. I understand, I want to scream. But I am an impatient North American now ( I used to be a slow, calm Indian, but that was when I was in my last life – maybe). I want things done fast and I want them done now, if not yesterday. I do not like the idea of travelling slowly. What if I get bored? What if I die of boredom?

Well, a lot of people wonder about that question, and you know what their answer to that question is? They smoke a boggie (did I spell that right?). Yes, thats right. You are first of all, given the gift of life, and then you are given the gift of travel (which is even rarer than the gift of life), and you waste those precious moments being lost in a deep haze of smoke, using Dude and Dudette for every person that comes along.

I haven’t smoked up ever. I mean never. It is odd, but then I have never smoked a cigarette. I tried a cigar once and I have done shisha a couple of times, but I think about how unfit I am, without smoking. I can’t imagine how unfit I would be, if I did smoke.

But I digress. So I was thinking about the expenses with Australia. I will let you in on a secret. I am the stingiest person on the planet. Well, close to it. I hate spending my savings. I do not even know what I was thinking planning this year sojourn into the world. I would rather die of starvation than spend a single penny of my hard-earned sweat and blood and freezing ass money. So what am I going to do? I could get a job, I do have a working holiday visa. But what is the point of lamenting about being inside all day in the freezing office, and then going on to do the same across the world? I could get a job outdoors, but then what about the holiday, that is supposed to be?

Maybe I am overthinking things, just like usual. People say that North Americans over analyze. They also say that Women overanalyze. They say that introverts overanalyze. And finally They say that writers and readers overanalyze. Me being all of the above, must be an Overanalyzer of the extreme genre. I can’t even look at a bottle of water, without overanalyzing it – thinking of the environment and plastic as a cause of cancer mostly.

Time to go to bed, but the question is still unanswered. I just need to leave and be in Australia and I believe the answer will just come to me, through the global consciousness, the universe. Namaste! Hari Om.

Hard to come to work

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Damn, it is so hard to come to work after you have given notice. It is only six more days, and thats what I keep on telling myself, but what kind of a person am I, that I am having a hard time with six days?

It is completely pathetic. I was laying in bed in the morning, and I almost contemplated calling in sick. Just thinking about all the work that I am going to be leaving behind, I get a nauseous feeling in the pit of my stomach. I feel bad for whoever has to take care of it. It is my control issues coming up to surface I guess. I have this delusional feeling that if I am not here taking care of things everyday of every week, the whole world is going to fall apart. How dare I think? Who am I?

The more I read, the more I think, the more I know that I am inconsequential in the whole scheme of things. One person in the milleniums that the universe has been alive, should have no illusions that they are something greater than they already are. They are a speck of dust or even smaller in the whole scheme of things. Worrying about one shipment not going out, or one email not being sent, is so mundane, and small, that it shames me even to worry about it. How can I worry about an email, when there are bigger things that await a person out there? When I care about a shipment, when I have enlightenment to reach?

I am having a really hard time, staying in the present moment. No matter what you do, you have to stay in the moment. But just the anticipation of the trip and I am getting excited and moving away from the moment. I begin thinking about travelling and I forget about working. I start daydreaming and dreaming and just amusing myself with stories of what will happen on this trip and what I will do and the people I will meet. How its going to be glorious fun and how I can’t wait to be let down in some ways and surprised and delighted in others. :)

My ex messaged me yesterday and he asked me to meet up with him, but in secret, without telling his current girlfriend. I know that if I was the one who was being lied to, I would be very upset indeed. So I declined the idea. I dont want to cause pain to some stranger, when its really unneeded. What do you think?

This is the Universe speaking…

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I have received confirmation that I am not supposed to be doing corporate work. If I can’t be a good corporate bee in such a great environment, than is government work all I’m suited for? Am I wasting all of my intelligence, my smarts, my looks, everything that God has given me as gifts? Am I going to be one of those intelligent people with a high IQ, who sits and flips burgers all year long? Am I reading too much into something that doesn’t really matter. I need to talk to someone about it, but I don’t know who.

At least, this gives me confirmation that I should be leaving and going on this trip, it really does confirm it, but then why do I feel so crappy? Is it because I have always been a Grade A student, and I have always gotten good feedback, that receiving bad feedback, somehow leaves a bad taste in my mouth, as much because I’m not used to it. Is the lackluster performance because I am not interested in being here at all. Would I have been better if I hadn’t made any plans to leave? Because now that I know I am leaving, I know I can just do whatever I want, and it doesn’t matter.

I feel like going into the meeting and telling them I will not be here after Sep 3rd. Is that bad? I’m so confused right now. What should I do?

Why do I have such high standards for myself, but not for others? I didn’t feel the same way if my friend had that – I would still think she’s the best and the most intelligent, and it’s the company’s fault for not recognizing talent.

But my boss is so amazing – they are so nice. How can they be so nice? How can I be so ungrateful to leave when I have such great peers and bosses? I don’t even have an excuse that I work in a bad environment.

Reading through the post myself, I would think that the person who wrote this post is schizophrenic or has some really serious issues, thats how it makes me sound. But I am using this blog as a sounding board – and it really sometimes helps to put all my thoughts out there, and let the universe come back with a solution for me.

I know I have been doubting my decision to go, with all the things happening with  my family, and just doubts in general. But this tells me that I definitely need to do this – I mean, I knew that all along, I have to do this, I have to, but I keep on doubting myself – thinking maybe that will be a good thing, if I do that. Obviously, thats a dumb thing to do. Once you make a big decision, you shouldn’t let the little worries move you. You should be like a mountain, but I am behaving more like a molehill that’s easily trampled than a strong, immoveable mountain.

I have emailed two of my great friends and confidantes, about my dilemma – and I’m sure when they get around to answering back, they will have some great advice for me. I always feel better chatting with them. They are my rocks, I have never needed a rock before this, so I feel weak, but I know, its better to show some weakness and get advice, than be strong and not know what to do.

What do you think?