Tag: relationshipgoals

  • Ephemeral existence…

    Ephemeral existence…

    Life, more than anything else, is about perspective.

    In moments of struggle, we’re inclined to look back on the many times that we were weighed down in life.

    Sometimes we reminisce about the good times, but from a place of hopelessness believing that we may never experience it again.

    At such times, it feels like life is long and dreary.

    But when we connect with joys from the past, and hope to recreate even greater joys in future, the fleeting nature of life is impressed upon us.

    Our need to focus on the bad experiences is an attempt at protecting our fragile hearts from having to face such heartache or disappointment again.

    Focus on the joys, and suddenly we connect with our ability to smile in the face of trials, and to reconnect with joy even after the gravest disappointment.

    Breathe, beloved…our default state is joy, if only we’ll embrace it more than we hold onto the fear. A joyful life is always still possible as long as there is breath left in our lungs.












  • Fear or hope? Choose wisely

    Fear or hope? Choose wisely

    Fear drives us towards protecting ourselves from a difficult past, while convincing us that we’re investing in a better future.

    If we were truly investing in the future, fear of the past repeating itself would not feature in our efforts towards growth and new beginnings.

    It is fear that manifests as illness or disease in our bodies, before any external threat overcomes us.

    Fear robs us of what we have in the present moment.

    When the present moment is lost, the future becomes a mirror into the past.

    The cycle of fear is perpetuated as we find evidence of the past threatening to contaminate the future…and so the spiral continues until either it breaks, or we do.

    When fear drives us, we look for, and find evidence that confirms our fears.

    When we look for evidence that invalidates the fear, we’ll find reason to forge ahead with hope and courage, recognising that harbouring hope is already confirmation of our courage to rise above the fear.

    What will you choose today?













  • A brain dump

    A brain dump

    The irony of a brain dump lies in the fact that it is my search for my brain that leads me to want to dump what distracts me from its use. Distraction creeps up, sometimes slowly with warning, but sometimes with devilish bravado unseating my senses and leaving me gasping for reality.

    Reality has never been a friend of mine. Each time I thought we were getting along, it slapped me in my face with a boulder. Not even a rock. As if a need to prove to me that living life in full measures means that life can only ever respond in kind. Kind. Now there’s a quaint notion that I hope to experience at some point.

    I find myself caught at the curious juncture of being invisible while simultaneously lacking the benefit of anonymity. It means that I can do nothing worth noting without my efforts being dismissed, while having a keen focus on everything I do that may be judged to be lacking. It echoes in terse tones my relationship with society for almost half a century.

    Someone guessed my age recently. They assumed me to be 30, instead of 50. Perhaps I did experience a kindness after all. But, they weren’t significant to the outcome of my life, so their generous gesture was lost against the rumbling of the thunder that was beckoning the next storm that threatened to roll over me.

    Crescendos of joy quickly obliterate the years of struggle. And the years of struggle return in anguished chants, mocking my half-smiles when that joy is unceremoniously ripped away. The vagueness of expression, at least, appears to offer me the comforts of an old friend. Pathetically, my oldest friend is a writing tool and not a being.

    Self-deprecation is such a luxury. I marvel at the possibility of being able to abandon life while indulging my self-loathing, oblivious to the unfulfilled duties and privileges that others have claimed. My fixation on fulfilling the same has left little room for claiming what I need. Even when I do, my attempts are so feeble that it lacks any convincing.

    The lock down has tested my philosophies and my resolve. Both have passed, despite neither serving me. It only ever serves others whom I cherish, but never me. I suspect I need to rethink my belief that the purpose of life is to serve others, and in such servitude we shall find joy. I think I missed something important in that. Of course, it’s difficult to convince myself of this being an erroneous philosophy because the joy I’ve experienced in serving that elusive significant other has rewarded me with a joy so divinely sublime, its fleeting moments serve to torment me for the rest of my life. Each expired second since it flitted by has in itself been a lifetime of torture.

    Love is for fools who have hope, live with hope, and believe in hope. Guilty on all counts. Only, when you live as precariously as I do, interpreting a love such as this becomes a mystery of its own. It’s the kind that cherishes deeply, loves intensely, holds endearingly, but releases gently. It’s the release that I need to work on. Perhaps if I didn’t make it so comfortable I may have more than a fleeting moment of divinely sublime joy.

    Divinely sublime. The divinity and the sublimation both beyond the view of the one who offers it. It’s a twisted tale of contorted cynicism that life has heaved at me in buckets, or more likely troughs. 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.

    It’s a dance with destiny, with two left feet. Me being ill-footed while destiny laughs mockingly at my attempts to courts its lustrous beauty. I recede, full of angst, full of despair, but filled with joy in a conflicting sway of emotional upheaval that celebrates my ability to connect with the beauty that is so well hidden, while succumbing to the demands of the one who hides it.

    A brain dump, or a heart dump. The two are so intricately woven into the being of me that attempting to discern between them is as foolhardy as my hope of fully embracing the beauty that I see. Just there. Within my grasp, but out of reach. Like a mirage, it demands that I revisit moments past, not retracting my hand, fear driving my reach, while hope connecting my sight. Until it is in hand, it remains elusive. A mirage. But so real that letting go is impossible, while holding on is prohibited.

    As I slide further down this slope that extends from the recesses of my being, my efforts to dump that which clutters my thoughts only reveals the beautiful prose of life that it harbours. My contempt for it yet again misplaced, as I realise that I grew loathsome towards it for distracting me from my purposeful endeavours, while denying the reality that such endeavours were the distractions I needed to cope with the absence of what I buried so deeply.

    Once allowed into that haloed space, it can never be released. Only peered at quietly and solemnly in secret. It will only ever again be revealed to the one who reached its alcove without even knowing. Such is the miracle of two, cut from one. So natural is their embrace that the ease with which it satiates the thirst of the souls leaves no scarring, or evidence of its visit. Only the quiet confidence it instils in empowering the hesitant decisions that have long since lost relevance. But relevance is defined by what is yet to be reconciled. It is in such reconciliation of the hurts of the past that the present in discarded, and the future laid to waste.

    But hope. If not for hope harboured by the jaded fool who courts its pleasures far beyond its graveyards of happiness, the discarded gifts would forever leave the future wasted, and the past honoured. It is the jaded fool that disregards such constructs of nature. It is the jaded fool that seeks the divinely sublime, despite the backdrop of horror that threatens to disembowel any attempts to be glorious beyond the measures of the past. It is the jaded fool that resurrects the romance that love courts, or the love that romance beckons. If not for this fool, much will be spent in futility.

    Some believe this to be the words of a writer. One who is perhaps endowed with the ability to express what others struggle to contemplate. However, it is more truthful to note that these words are of the one who pains to express clearly the lyrics of his soul, in the hope that its mate will pause for long enough to see the truth of what can be.

    [If you’ve read all the way to this point, I am duly impressed and saddened. For anyone to connect with these words, you must first connect with my pain. Blessed be the gentle ones who love too fiercely, accept too easily, and hope with futility.]

  • Cherished to death

    Cherished to death

    When love is a well kept secret, it becomes torturous

    When love is embraced, it emits a glow that keeps the darkness of the world at bay

    When we withhold our love from fear of it not being enough, we destroy the very object of our affection

    Thus, self deprecation cherishes beauty in silence, but leaves to whither and die, the object of its cherishing

    It is the doubts we harbour of our adequacy, that undermines our resolve to be beautiful

    In our efforts to hide from the world our fear, we lose sight of those who see in us what we don’t see in ourselves

    Those same souls who worship our beauty, but are discarded through our fear, are the souls whose hearts we cherish…silently

    Our belief that they do not need our embrace as much as we wish they would embrace us, is what leaves them cherished, but discarded

    Even the most cherished of hearts, if left without a home, will die of exposure.

    Perhaps this is why the good fades from our lives, as we hold on to the bad that we believe is not fair to place as a burden on others…

  • More than a wish

    More than a wish

    Wishing it’s a sunny day when it’s raining is not going to make the sun come out.

    Leaving your umbrella behind is therefore an act of foolishness, not optimism.

    Optimism without evidence or action, or both, is a delusion we use to cope with an unpleasant reality.

    Wishing away reality only allows that unpleasantness to fester and gain momentum, because natural cycles that are not disrupted by deliberate action will continue to grow in strength.

    Let your optimism be based on your belief in the effectiveness of your efforts, not in wishes that have no support in becoming real.

    And faith, of course. But faith is the basis of optimism, and faith, without effort, is simply wishful thinking.

    Start by taking action, and then have faith that your action will create opportunities to achieve your goals.

    Do this, and optimism will take care of itself.

  • A bitter trade

    A bitter trade

    We lose ourselves to the bitterness of this world when we allow the self-loathing of others to define our self-worth.

    In our desire to be understood, we willingly adopt labels that limit our expression of who we truly are.

    It is a betrayal of the contract of kindness that we have with our soul.

    The contract that compels us to treat with gentleness that which we cherish, and to handle with care those who cherish us.

    When we allow the self-loathing that drives the bad behaviour of others to define how we feel about ourselves, we replace our gentleness with their harshness, and our care with their contempt.

    The labels we use to convince ourselves that this bitter trade is warranted include convincing ourselves that we’re alone, that were powerless victims, or that we’re worthless unless our betrayer tastes the cruelty with which they treated us.

    We hope to find significance in karma, believing that if we’re not avenged, then our experience was of no consequence.

    To be of consequence, even to the most despicable, fills that void of self-worth that we created when we betrayed the contract of kindness with our soul.

    Exhale. Release the toxins of a toxic past, so that you may fill your chest with the blessings that await.

  • To be loved…

    To be loved…

    Love, without understanding, is mere infatuation.

    To love, is to see the strength that created such beauty, not just to admire the beauty.

    To love, is to caress the scar with a gentleness that honours the pain that caused it.

    To love, is to see the pain that sometimes distorts the beauty, without devaluing the beauty.

    To love, is to see, before needing to be seen.

    The profession of love, without truly knowing who is being loved, is a profession of need, more than it is an embrace.

    It is when our need to be understood by our beloved exceeds our desire to understand them first that love makes a silent exit, and entitlement replaces it.

    To truly love, you must first seek to understand, because understanding demands that you pay attention to your beloved, before you feel a need to demand their attention for what you need instead.

    Be loved. Be blessed.

  • Exhale. Peace is within reach.

    Exhale. Peace is within reach.

    Wisdom is the re-finding of innocence.

    We’re born innocent, but then life happens.

    Almost imperceptibly, our innocence wanes, and our disappointment in life replaces it.

    Focused on remedying our justified gripes with this world, we lose sight of our innocence that once brought us peace.

    Our life then becomes a struggle to regain that peace, sometimes further contaminating our innocence in that effort.

    Until, one day, quite by chance, we realise that peace lies in reconnecting with our innocence.

    And innocence lies in relinquishing our justified claim for justice or retribution.

    Our path then shifts from striving for peace, and instead, discovering why life happened the way that it did.

    In discovering the why, the disappointment and bitterness recedes, and the space once occupied by innocence becomes available once more.

    Thus, innocence is allowed back in, not because we pursued it, but because we allowed it to return.

    Exhale, beloved. The breath you’ve been holding in, waiting for justice, is better spent exhaling the toxins that cloud your heart.

    Let your heart rise. It knows how. We just need to stop weighing it down with expectations of those whose growth is not aligned with our own.

    Exhale, beloved. A breath of peace awaits you.