Motif

Alright, now that the token labyrinthine spiels are out of the way, we can talk about other things.

Last weekend we went on a drive to Amby Valley, to watch the sunset. We missed the sunset by about ten minutes, but spent the most beautiful half hour in the fading light and the loveliest, cold, moisture-laden wind drifting in from misty hills and nuzzling my face. There was also an advertisement for a mall called 'Up Hill'. I hope it becomes an easier mall with time.

I read another of Paulo Coelho's books yesterday. He's my Mills & Boon, I think. That guilty pleasure which you know isn't what the pundits recommend for you, which you very righteously believe is not what your mind needs to grow at this stage in your life, which nevertheless is what you turn to when you want something that will touch you without your trying too hard. He really is so easy to read! He expresses thoughts that I have thought, says things that I might have said. There is little need for any translation. He becomes slow at times, because he dwells on possibly everything. Every thought has a little baby thought trailing it. Sometimes many baby thoughts, with which he stays with for so long that you can actually see them grow up before your eyes. Its probably a blessing that most times he leaves them alone around the time they reach middle age, even I wouldn't have the patience to sit through the cycles of the parent thought AND its entire progeny.

Besides, it is without debate that he offers in terms of new learning, as against books that are built around famines in Ireland (Not that I've managed to complete one of those, the second they begin to inform without bothering to imagine, I lose interest). Just a revival of the awareness of things that already are. An awareness that runs the risk of being dulled by the everyday routine of life. An awareness that , if nurtured, could be powerful enough to shatter that everyday routine of life.

Yet, there are a million and more things that can give one joy. Perhaps those who are fortunate enough to be able to feel intense joy should be more equipped than others to take doubt and disappointment as minor irritants in their larger-than-life vision of the universe. They cannot get swayed by other people's realities, nor attempt to include all those different realities into their own, because then they would wind up forgetting that they have a gift - they would expect other people to feel the same way as them, or themselves to feel the way way as other people. They would feel unhappy that they feel disappointment more strongly than those others, and they would convince themselves that everyone felt joy the same way. They would tell themselves that the moments of joy in their lives were incidental, and magnify the disappointments in their minds, thereby giving themselves a reason to resent others for feeling less intensely than them. They would declare that since they always felt sadness more than others, they must have more happiness than others. All that is good becomes deserved, and all that is not becomes a reason to be bitter. Very soon, they find themselves caught in a quagmire of disappointments which feed off each other because there is nothing to diffuse them, all the joyful moments have already been discounted.

They have it so wrong. They have the ability to feel more in one moment than many can feel in a lifetime, their reward for living this life is so much greater that they owe it to themselves to dispel bitterness from their hearts, those moments of joy and the people responsible for them must be celebrated, because despite whatever disappointments follow, those are the moments that reinforces their will to live life on their own terms, to continue to feel all the myriad emotions in all their highs and lows, to continue to feel.

I have had more than my share of such moments. I have experienced the love of many people in such moments, the joy of sharing the things that will always matter the most with the people who will always matter the most. Really, how can it not be enough?

Alright, now that the token labyrinthine spiels are out of the way, we can talk about other things.