Searching for My Face in A Crowd

I looked at the red rose,

the first person created

an imaginary garden for the real rose,

he was a dreaming artist;

the second person compared the rose

with the beauty of my beloved;

he was a romantic poet,

the third person thought of 6800 Angstorm

and the pigments that make it red;

he was a scientist,

the fourth person concluded :

the colour was added to the rose

to attract insects to pollinate;

he was a naturalist,

the fifth person tried to find out

whether or not the existence of the rose

depends on the observation of the observer;

he was a philosopher.

I was startled

to know how much I had found out

about myself

just by looking at the rose

that I am a crowd,

I am as diverse as the nature itself,

I am a bunch of strings

each of which creates a divine music,

yet, I am a bunch of contradictions

put into well-defined Pandora's boxes.

When I was searching for my face in this crowd

wondering either I am all the faces or none

the realization dawn upon me:

there are no sharp lines in nature

to demarcate my existence

from that of the rose;

from that of the elements in the crowd

and I am no more searching for

a well-defined face

which I can identify as myself.

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42 Classic Quotes on Love

"Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired." ~Robert Frost

"Absence diminishes small loves and increases great ones, as the wind blows out the candle and fans the bonfire." ~Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld

"We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love." ~Tom Robbins

"The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved - loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves." ~Victor Hugo

"Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love." ~Albert Einstein

"Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says: 'I need you because I love you'." ~Erich Fromm

"Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get -- only with what you are expecting to give -- which is everything." ~Katherine Hepburn

"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength while loving someone deeply gives you courage." ~Lao-Tsu

"Love, the magician, knows this little trick whereby two people walk in different directions yet always remain side by side." ~Hugh Prather

"Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love." ~Leo Tolstoy

"To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides." ~David Viscott

"Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation." ~Kahlil Gibran

"Love is first friendship and then commitment." ~Jacques Pierre Ribault

"To fear love is to fear life." ~Bertrand Russell

"Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit." ~Peter Ustinov

"Couples who love each other tell each other a thousand things without talking." ~Chinese Proverb

"Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence." ~H.L. Mencken

"Since love grows within you, so beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul." ~St. Augustine

"What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us." ~Helen Keller

"Romantic love is a passionate spiritual-emotional-sexual attachment between a man and a woman that reflects a high regard for the value of each other's person." ~Nathaniel Branden

"True love is spelled G-I-V-E. It is not based on what you can get, but rooted in what you can give to the other person." ~Josh McDowell

"Love is energy of life." ~Robert Browning

"True love is eternal, infinite, and always like itself. It is equal and pure, without violent demonstrations: it is seen with white hairs and is always young in the heart." ~Honore De Balzac

"To love someone is to acknowledge the goodness of who they are. Through loving a person we awaken their awareness of their own innate goodness. It is as though they cannot know how worthy they are until they look into the mirror of our love and see themselves." ~John Gray

"All love that has not friendship for its base, is like a mansion built upon the sand." ~Ella Wheeler Wilcox

"To love is to be vulnerable." ~C.S. Lewis

"Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own." ~Robert A. Heinlein

"Friendship may, and often does, grow into love, but love never subsides into friendship." ~Lord Byron

"Love is the essence of God." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Love is union with somebody, or something, outside oneself, under the condition of retaining the separateness and integrity of one's own self." ~Erich Fromm

"Love is something eternal; the aspect may change, but not the essence." ~Vincent Van Gogh

"Love is a verb. Love is something you do: the sacrifices you make, the giving of self. If you want to study love, study those who sacrifice for others. Love -- the feeling -- is a fruit of love the verb." ~Stephen R. Covey

"Love is the greatest refreshment in life." ~Pablo Picasso

"Real love begins where nothing is expected in return." ~Antoine De Saint-Exupéry

"Love is when each person is more concerned for the other than for one's self." ~David Frost

"He who is devoid of the power to forgive, is devoid of the power to love." ~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person." ~W. Somerset Maugham

"We forgive to the extent that we love." ~Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld

“Love me when I least deserve it, because that's when I really need it.” ~Swedish Proverb

“True love always makes a man better, no matter what woman inspires it.” -~Alexandre Dumas

"Who, being loved, is poor?" ~Oscar Wilde

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How to live as if there were no tomorrow?

In the previous post, I discussed how to use fear of death as a motivation to live life to the fullest. In this post, I discuss what it means to live life to the fullest on daily basis.

Living life to the fullest means living today in such a way that you will not regret if you die tomorrow. In essence, it is living your dreams today than deferring it to a later date. It is possible to live such a life by sincerely following these five steps:

1. Live one day at a time: Learn and plan on a long term basis, but act on a short term basis. Although I have ideas of my annual goals, I usually plan life on a weekly basis. One week is long enough to live with purpose and creativity but not too long to lose focus. Once the planning for the week is done on a Sunday evening, I act on a daily basis. When we live our today fully, it automatically makes our yesterdays memorable and tomorrows hopeful. The challenge is to live today to the fullest according to the points 2-5.

2. Maintain peak energy in body and mind: When thought is the seed of any action, energy makes this seed grow into a mighty tree. All great achievers have one thing in common: they can sustain peak energy and concentration on daily basis. When you have peak energy in body and mind, you feel more confident about yourself. Then, working towards your goal becomes less stressful and more enjoyable. Maintaining peak energy means you are fit, not merely healthy. Cultivate the right lifestyle that enables you to sustain peak energy on a daily basis. Then you will never be sick or exhausted to enjoy the wonders of life.

3. Make life pleasurable every day: Now that you have worked in a disciplined and focused manner to sustain peak energy in body and mind, reward yourself with some pleasures every day. When pleasures are enjoyed in a hurry, you will have to indulge more to get satiated. So, enjoy pleasures in a slow and mindful way. Enjoy pleasures as meditation. There are many ways to enjoy healthy pleasures daily including sipping mindfully green tea in the afternoon and red wine in the evening.

4. Do something every day that you love: Pleasures can come from either objects or actions. When it comes from objects, it is usually short-lived.  The pleasures that come from actions are long lasting and life changing. So, make your daily work pleasurable so that it becomes fun. This is easy only when you do what you love. Work can never become fun if you are trying to love what you do instead of doing what you love. It makes ample sense, to choose your daily work first by using heart and then by mind.

5. Contribute towards a cause that is larger than yourself: If you can complete the above-mentioned steps 2-4 effectively, you will be successful in life. People who can’t complete these steps effectively often spend life in struggling for survival and stability. Now that you have achieved success, it is time to add significance to your life. Success is discovering your true gift and using it to live your dream life. Significance is using your gift to enable others to live their dream life. So, do something – however small- daily to make this world a little better due to your existence. It could be a kind word to another human being, a kind gesture towards an animal or a compassionate act for a dying planet.

When you live as if there were no tomorrow, your life becomes enjoyable as well as meaningful. That is the best use of your passion and purpose to attain peace and prosperity. 

How to benefit from fear of death?

At a certain point in life, almost all people are afraid of death. That point in life is an experience or a realisation which makes death appear less abstract and more personal. It is more common to have this fear in midlife when one realises that the number of birthdays left is less than the number of birthdays passed.

Fear of death can be crippling unless one knows how to benefit from it by using that fear constructively. The following quote by Mark Twain captures the essence of how to do so.

The idea is to use fear of death as a motivation to live life to the fullest. Since one does not know when death can strike, one can start every day by feeling thankful to be alive than taking life for granted. It helps to do so when one realises that millions of people around the world do not make it to a new day! Fear of death can make one truly grateful to life and everything in it.

Once one realises how every new day is a gift from life, one can do one's best to live every single day to the fullest without unreasonable guilt of past or worry of future. This will lead to living in the present moment, and that has the power to make miracles happen in one's life.

The fear of death can make one love others better. Since one does not know about the arrival time of death, one will take every opportunity to express their love and caring to people who matter. At the same time, one will not be bothered unreasonably by people who do not really matter.

One is afraid of death due to two main reasons. First, death wipes out one's physical body, and for most people that also means losing their "self" or "identity". This could be one of the reasons why many people want their own progeny. That type of physical continuity makes one believe that one has cheated death because one can still go on living after death through the progeny. Therefore, such folks can use fear of death to leave a legacy in the form of a child, a book or any other creation.

Many people find it disgustingly fearful to imagine their own decomposing body after death. It takes a little thinking to realise that it does not matter what happens once one is dead. Death in itself need not be painful. It is the process leading to death that can be painful. What truly matters is not life after death, but life before death!

The second reason people are afraid of death is that they defer living their dream life to tomorrow or to a future date, and if they die today their dreams will remain unfulfilled. 

So, if you are truly afraid of death, use that fear to live your dream life without deferring it to a future date. That means, from this very moment of reading this blog, visualise and act how to live your dreams today so that you are ready even if death visits you tomorrow. Do something you love, and love someone as much as you love yourself. All the best!

Are you seeking love?

Everyone wants to love and be loved. Sincere love brings maximum happiness to one's life. How does one get sincere love?

What is sincere love? It is the love that allows you to be your best without compromising your uniqueness. It can come from a person, from an activity, from the depth of your heart or from the stillness of your mind.

Should you seek love? Or, should you wait for love to seek you?

Rumi said: "what you seek is seeking you". So, you can only prepare yourself to receive what you are seeking when it arrives. How do you prepare yourself for love?

The following quote by Rumi gives an answer.