Category: Love

  • Don’t test the ones you love. Love them.

    Don’t test the ones you love. Love them.

    Ever find that despite your best efforts, someone close to you just never appreciates what you do for them?

    Ever feel like you’re having to fulfil their expectations in detail about how to do something the way that they want you to do it before they are satisfied with you?

    Even then, when you do that thing exactly the way they wanted you to, they then question your sincerity.

    “You only did it because I asked you to!”

    Does that sound familiar?

    Damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

    The reason that they treat us that way, or even why we may treat others in that way is not because we’re questioning their sincerity, it’s because we doubt our significance to them.

    When we feel insignificant, we test others, often in passive aggressive ways, to see if we’re really important to them.

    The only reason we test them is because we don’t appreciate them. And then we hold them responsible for how we don’t appreciate ourselves either. That’s why we test them.

    When we look for kindness to be packaged in a specific way, we lose sight of the kindness or affection that they offer of their own accord, in their own way.

    When we expect others to express their appreciation, or affection towards us in a specific way, we not only diminish who they are, we also show ingratitude for their sincere efforts towards us.

    Then, when they pull away because they feel unappreciated, or taken for granted, or worse, because they feel invisible, we convince ourselves that we were right about their insincerity to begin with.

    Self-loathing is the root of most relationship problems.

    Don’t hold your partner or significant others responsible for how you feel about yourself.

    If you don’t appreciate who you are, you give others permission to take you for granted.

    It always starts with you.


  • What’s your legacy?

    What’s your legacy?

    Live to love, to laugh, and to leave a legacy.

    It is only through truly appreciating who we are, that we will be able to leave an imprint of love in the hearts of those we cherish.

    Until we connect with that gratitude of self, our efforts will put smiles in the hearts of others, while our own faces carry smiles that barely reach our eyes.

    Without such gratitude, our laughter will be nothing more than an attempt to release, in that moment, the heaviness that we harbour within.

    And our legacy will be one of sacrifice and martyrdom, teaching our loved ones to sacrifice themselves in the service of others, while not teaching them how to connect with the sweetness of such service.

    Material success is only a blessing if it uplifts, rather than enslaves.

    Wealth that enslaves is the wealth that strokes our ego but deprives us of the joy of human connection, or denies us the bonds of beauty that feed our souls.

    Laughter should not be sourced from a business deal that outwitted our opponents.

    Such laughter will mock us in our later years when we realise that our fascination with wealth was merely a drop in the ocean of joy compared to the joy that we could have achieved in investing our incredible talents to brighten up the faces of loved ones, or even strangers.

    Wealth is a means to an end. Don’t get so caught up in the means that you completely lose sight of your end.

  • Turning pain into beauty

    Turning pain into beauty

    Shortly after I published my novel, An Incomplete Love Story, I remember asking if I finally had permission to post romantic, or mushy stuff. The responses were entertaining and generally positive.

    The most common question I get is whether it is based on true life, or is it fiction. Suffice to say it’s a dumbed down version of true life, because as they say, life is often stranger than fiction.

    Besides, where would be the fun if you knew for certain what in the novel is true and what is from my imagination?

    There are people reading this who still cannot believe that I am capable of romance. The bewildered look on their faces will always be a source of entertainment for me.

    Don’t allow the opinions of others to limit what you allow yourself to explore as self-expression, or as life goals.

    Here’s a piece I wrote a year ago.

    “It is my grasp on the subtlety of beauty, or the hints of romance that breathe between her pauses and between her aches that horror has imposed. My subject of beauty focused on the horror, while I, in my romantic notions, caress with care the breaths and the pauses, seeing in her the divine where she only sees the pain.”

    Perhaps this will find its way into the sequel of my novel.

    Perhaps the sequel may never be written.

    Time will tell…since time holds the secrets to many joys that I hope to encounter in life.

    When reading the above snippet, don’t only think of someone else. Consider that this may be how someone sees you, while you’re focused on the heartache and pain from your past.

    And that’s what is important. Sometimes we’re so fixated on the pain, that we don’t realise what beauty it has unearthed within us.

    Until we do, we’ll always honour the pain, and neglect our beauty.

  • Release the bitterness

    Release the bitterness

    I often wonder how much good is denied to the world when love stories remain incomplete?

    We often see quotes reminding us that the next great discovery could be in the mind of a child labourer stuck working in a field.

    Similarly, how much beauty is wasted when treasured bonds are abandoned for reasons other than what exists between them? Beauty of which the world is in desperate need.

    Just as beauty is born of love, so too is bitterness born of loss.

    I wonder what of the troubles of this world is caused by broken hearts, rather than wilful greed?

    It is the sense of loss, or inadequacy in the eyes of those most cherished, that our worst behaviour comes to the fore.

    But there is value even in that.

    If not for still holding on to hope, such an expression of rage or harm would not have any purpose.

    It is only when we still have hope of our pain being consequential that we choose to share our discontent with the world.

    Therefore, it is not the raging lunatic that is most hurt, but the silent one who has no hope of being seen.

    Sometimes their silence is the build up to the storm of destruction that they need to unleash in their final attempt to be heard.

    But often, it’s the abandonment of dreams that perhaps the world really needed.

  • Father : A silent duty

    Father : A silent duty

    Fathers are often overlooked or forgotten, because they’re seldom in the limelight.

    Silently serving in the background, they often do what is seen as just their job, or their duty.

    Not wired with an overt nurturing instinct, but rather that of a silent sentinel, ensuring their family’s safety and comfort, they often grow accustomed to being in the background, creating the spaces needed for their family to thrive.

    When we expect fathers to behave in a similar way to mothers, we diminish their contribution and their sacrifices.

    When we expect fathers to show up like mothers, we under estimate their emotional needs, and ignore their silent pleas for gratitude.

    When we expect fathers to experience emotion and sentiment in the same way that mothers do, we assume that they were gifted with the beauty of connecting with a soul growing within them, not realising that they were always on the outside looking in.

    There is a bond between mother and child that a father will never experience because of the sanctity of childbirth. Perhaps that is why fathers will always find a different way to express their love for their family compared to mothers.

    Honour your father by recognising his struggle and efforts without finding reason to judge him compared to your mother.

    And if you find he is falling short anyway, approach him with understanding, believing that the gentleness you wish to experience with him lies beneath that seemingly impenetrable exterior that developed only because he quietly accepted his place as a provider and forgot to nurture his own emotional needs.

    And to the fathers who show up despite not knowing how it is done because they didn’t have the loving guide of a mentor in their lives, I especially salute you. Breaking cycles of toxic dysfunction is never easy, and is often excruciatingly lonely.

    So if no one else notices you today, I do. With love, appreciation, and respect.

    Happy father’s day.

    #fatherson

  • Celebrate your humanness

    Celebrate your humanness

    Tears are not weakness because it takes strength to embrace your humanness.

    The worst brutes lack the courage to be human because appearing unaffected by others is their idea of strength.

    Sadly, such a show of strength seals their hearts to emotion and blinds their eyes to the harshness that they exhale, creating distance between them and those they wish to have closer.

    They convince themselves that their cold exterior is needed to protect themselves from hurt while not realising that they created the self fulfilling prophecy that hurts them.

    When comparing yourself against such emotional detachment, it’s easy to believe that you’re weak for feeling something that leaves them untouched.

    No. The weakness is in them.

    Strength is found in knowing that your humanness doesn’t define your resilience.

    Being human makes makes resilience a beautiful trait.

    Without it, life loses its sweetness, and resilience becomes a cold comfort without fulfilment.

    Photo credit : Adobe Stock

  • That empty bench…

    That empty bench…

    The saddest scene for me has always been the abandoned park bench.

    It echoes with profound intensity the pervasive isolation that too many experience, but too few reveal.

    There is a shame that is carried upon the broken wings of abandonment that anchors us in that space between wanting to create beauty in this world, while believing that it will always be unreachable for ourselves.

    So we birth the martyr within, presenting it as the selfless lover without.

    Being sure to distract others with affection, so that no one notices how achingly we stare at those empty benches.

    Those benches that once bore the hopes and dreams of togetherness.

    Those benches that once were claimed as sacred spaces.

    Those benches that remain available to the next loving embrace between its arms, knowing that once the lovers move on, it will remain, rooted to that spot, waiting to be embraced and abandoned, again.

    Photo credit : Adobe Stock


  • What is forgiveness about anyway?

    What is forgiveness about anyway?

    If there is one piece of advice that will help you through the worst of times, this is it.

    Internalise this, connect with it, make it your mantra if you must, but understand that forgiveness on its own, without acceptance, will leave you yearning for retribution or justice.

    Acceptance is more important than forgiveness, because once we’ve accepted the reality of what is, forgiveness loses relevance.

    Accepting things becomes easier when we seek to understand rather than to judge why someone may have treated us badly, or betrayed our trust.

    Immediately, the focus is about their weakness and not our significance.

    When we learn to accept that people’s actions are a reflection of who they are more than it is about what we mean to them, we’ll have less of a need for forgiveness.

    Peace is not possible without acceptance, and acceptance completes the act of forgiving.

    Don’t only focus on forgiveness, because our need to forgive is driven by a belief that we were the deliberate target of the demons of others.

    Understanding their reasons for behaving the way that they did will confirm if forgiveness is warranted, or if understanding is what holds the secret to the peace that we seek.