“Turn off the lights. Let’s just sit here in the dark and gaze outside. The stars may appear brighter.”
He had already blackened the room as he spoke.
She took a sip of wine. Everything seemed more silent in the obscurity. It was an ideal background to share their deepest thoughts. Because when you feel you are not seen, you can reveal your most profound feelings. The ones you try to hide even from yourself.
“It’s during the night that we make our bravest decisions and boldest of plans that are erased by the rising sun each morning,” she later said.
Do you remember the thunder? The glow of lightning when our eyes first met. The sensation of forever engulfed us from the start. You felt that too, you later said.
Do you remember the laughter? The inside jokes only we could comprehend. The funny little intimacies, That were only ours and we alone shared.
Do you remember the adventures? The outdoors we so loved to explore. The long walks and talks, On which we discovered one another even more.
Do you remember the sunsets? Those tranquil moments of our own. The golden hours, When everything seemed so serene and aglow.
Do you remember the nights? When I would cocoon into your embrace. When I wanted more hugs and wouldn’t let you move away. When you would unconsciously pull me sleepily into your arms again.
Do you remember all this? Now that life took a different turn. Can you endure the silence? Of a ‘love you’ and ‘miss you’ that go unheard. Will you act to change it? When you know it’s what love like this deserves.
It’s usually birthdays that give us a chance to review and reflect on where you’ve been and where you’re going. But the eve of a New Year fills you with determination and a goal-oriented mindset to improve things, to change, to evolve, to get out of the ‘same old’ and into something new, better, and exciting.
We look forward to new adventures with the passion to create new memories, surrounded by people with love and moments filled with laughter. We want to let go of the baggage we carry – be it emotional, psychological, or literal. We want to walk forward lighter, happier, and with a more optimistic outlook on life. Because the truth is that nothing is as idyllic as we hoped or we imagined, and most things in this life are beyond our control. We can manage our own reactions and response to everything though. And sometimes, things do happen for us and not to us.
So let’s commit to making these resolutions true all year round and not just the first couple of weeks. Let’s allow our actions to talk for us. Let’s share our moments of happiness and love with the people around us and not on our social media. And let’s vow to make this year the best yet, with nothing (and no one) less but with more and profound – more experience, more smiles, more growth in every aspect.
Here’s to a New Year full of sparkles and bangs and excitement all 12 months through!
There are many reasons to list as to what keeps you up at night. Environmental factors, too much stress, over-exposure to screens, jet lag, heavy food, medicine, or uncomfortable conditions are among them.
Romanticists claim you lie awake because you appear in someone else’s dream.
But in essence, we can’t sleep because we subconsciously burden ourselves with too many thoughts. We won’t allow ourselves to let go of everything that troubles our brains during the day. Consequently, we can’t find that much required peace to relax, to breathe out and alleviate the pressure we exert on ourselves.
We need constructive outlets to enable our minds to wander. To stop thinking for a while. To simply get lost in the moment.
Some would suggest meditation, but that’s not as easy as it sounds, and it requires great effort.
A more feasible solution is a walk on the beach, or even a dive into the sea. Salty water helps in washing away the problems, which we often create ourselves. It will get us feeling refreshed, relaxed, and revived. An essential process in assisting us to gather the courage to face everything that is causing us the initial stress.
We need to find time to escape our worries, if we are to find the strength to effectively deal with them. We can’t sleep on the decisions we need to make, if we can’t fall asleep to begin with.
There is a game to play when you want to make a quick decision and you’re hesitating between two options. To resolve the dilemma, you’re told to ask yourself a series of questions with two answers; the key is to respond as rapidly as possible without thinking too much. So when you get to the query at hand, you’ll answer quickly enough to know how you truly feel about it. Speed here leads to authenticity.
One such question could be if you prefer to be too hot or too cold. But what really is the answer to that, without being season-sensitive concerning when you’re actually asking the question?
In summer, we’re likely to say we prefer being cold. And in winter, vice-versa.
But then a day comes, when snowfall begins unexpectedly – as suddenly as it may be given the week-long meteo warnings. And everything seems so much prettier. Snow makes everything appear happier, more magical, more walking-on-clouds-fluffy-paradise-bright. You don’t care if it’s cold when you’re dressing up like an eskimo, to walk outside like a penguin, to engage in snowball fights like a child. It doesn’t matter if you can’t feel your limbs, let alone your fingers when you’re gathering snow to build a perfect snowman. Amidst the laughter the snow day is causing, the cold is just a side-effect.
But when it all starts to melt, when the fluffy snowflakes turn into rock hard ice, when it’s too slippery to tread outside in the sludge, and when it’s so freaking freezing that it doesn’t even matter there is the sun in the sky, then, yes, you begin to consider that not everything is so lovely as it initially seems. Everything has its limits, and if you’re not prepared – without the infrastructure or mechanisms – to deal with extreme weather conditions, the problems caused can be life-threatening.
Perhaps the cold is something that can be solved with a warm house (via a fireplace or radiator at least), a cosy blanket, a hot beverage, good company, and some entertainment. Perhaps even the temperature is something we control in our minds. But the truth is, cold makes you shut down to preserve energy.
We want days off because we’re too cold to move. But if we were moving in the first place, we might not feel the cold too much…
A storm was brewing. Literally. The weather was turning piercingly icier and the sun was in hiding. You could feel the wind changing.
But also metaphorically. People were evidently affected – they were colder in attitude too. Agitated, nervous, and too easily irritated.
It was all wrong. For no sensible reason.
So she decided to leave.
These are the best decisions; the get-up-and-go-on-the-inspiration moments. Because if you don’t think about certain things too much, they end up being the best decisions you ever make.
She acted upon the impulse to flee. And travelled all across the world to where the climate was exactly the opposite.
She didn’t exactly encounter a heatwave, but a much warmer weather, and a much kinder folk. People who had much less – of material belongings and wealth – yet much more heart and goodness. They knew how to enjoy the utmost of what they had, and to appreciate the instances, the smallest of heart-warming gestures, the gratitude of having even the slightest of everything.
If you step back from your own world and delve into someone else’s, perhaps you’ll just realise how lucky we are but never acknowledge it enough. Be grateful for everyday; for the goodness around you; and focus your energy on all you want to create, not on what you want to get rid of. Know who you are and what you want to achieve, but be careful who you choose to walk with in life, because in the wrong company you’ll never reach your destination.
When you first meet a person, you receive a vibe from them; it’s that initial instinct – that hunch – that gives you a sense of what kind of person they are. It’s the aura each person emits that introduces them before they utter a single word.
Auras are in essence the energy field that surrounds us. Because everything is made up of energy, we both emit and receive energy. But that can be either negative or positive, good or bad, depending on our mood, sentimental state, stress, as well as exogenous factors. It’s really a vicious circle: the more vulnerable we feel, the weaker the aura we emit, and the more perceptible it is to negative factors (more stress, anger, bitterness, resentment, sadness etc), that leads to a deterioration of our emotions and consequently further psychosomatic problems.
What we need to realise is that we ourselves are responsible for the energy we put out to the world, and thus our own happiness; but we first need to acknowledge that the meaning of our happiness is something defined by us.
We decide on what we ‘waste’ our energy on, what we devote our time and emotions to, what we allow ourselves to feel and express. The best thing would be to surround ourselves with loving feelings, ones that make us feel worthy, important, and alive. It is said that when you are loved you gain strength, but when you love, you gain courage. And that fills your aura with colour and optimism. And it shows. Because you glow joy. Without even speaking.
What if you could turn back time; what would you do? Would you remedy the wrong choices made? The times when you did (not) go with your intuition? Would you make smarter decisions? Would you think more before leaping? Or would you instead be more daring, more impulsive, taking risks, wherever they may lead?
What would you do if you could turn back the clock? Where would you go and who would you be?
But the real question is, would you want to? Time changes us, it shapes us into who we are, and it informs our future decisions.
At some point or other, we all have found ourselves wishing we could go back and act wiser.
Given that this is impossible, however, perhaps what we should truly ponder is, what do we do now, with all that has happened, with all that we’ve faced, with all that we’ve become?
But above all, we need to situate ourselves with people with whom we lose track of time, not those who make us feel it is a waste of it. Wouldn’t it be better to feel that time has stopped, instead of wishing you could get it back?
What if you weren’t simply watching it all live from the comfort and safety of your own home? What if you weren’t the audience of the tragedy but one of its victims?
What if you were the one forced to evacuate your home amidst deafening sirens and emergency alerts?
What if the flames of a devouring fire were pressing against your own property?
What would you do? How quickly would you gather your things, your family, your animals, and flee?
And what would you take?
How do you select in an instant among the myriad of things that compose a life? How do you choose what to take and what to leave behind to burn and be lost forever? How to you keep a clear head to act rationally when all you hear is “run to save your life”?
What life?
What constitutes a life that is so easily destroyed by what begins from a tiny spark?
What is essential and not?
How do you run when you know there will be nothing to come back to?
How do you pick yourself up when you know you probably lost everything the instant you close the door?
And what can anyone ever say to support, comfort, or encourage you?
Where do you find strength to carry on when you’ve literally seen your past, present and future ignite in flames?
And how can anyone ever do or say anything to make it better, when all they’ve done is watch your home burn live on TV?
You know that time when the sun rises; when hardly anyone ever gets up to see it, but often some stay up past dawn to witness it before falling into bed? That majestic hour when life begins again as a new day commences. It signifies a new start and symbolises that there is always another chance for things to get better.
A new day is like embarking on an adventure. You don’t really know where it’ll lead you, but you need to get up and go in order to find out.
The hardest decision to make is always the first step you’ll take. It’s like diving into the sea. If you take it step by step the water always seems colder. But if you simply dive in, it’s actually refreshing.
We ponder too much.
All we need is to find the right people to support us, to hear us out when we simply need to babble on for a while, to say something that will soothe and reassure us, to help us get back on the right track when we lose our faith on the path we’ve taken. But mostly, we need people to walk that road with us. Because it’s in the hardships and the little things that we realise who are worthy of being part of our lives.
MC's Whispers 