Life is full of irony. Sometimes, we set out with a burning ambition to avoid a particular fate. We struggle and strive to ensure that we never find ourselves in a particular position. And where do we end up? Exactly where we do not want to be! When such a thing happens, it feels as if we have been "got at" by an unkind cosmos. Yet we really should not take it personally. It is simply the way of the world. They say a universal law dictates that no human being will ever be allowed to flee from a fear or avoid an aversion forever. A further universal law insists that no person will ever manage to lead a life free of hypocrisy or inconsistency! I am begining to think there is only one cure for this; "Take life a little less seriously"!.....easy to say...much harder to achieve...

Khiali nist....Vali bezani...mizanam!! :p

The biggest risk in life is 'Not taking any risks'!

They say there are two sides to every story. That's rubbish. There are at least twenty-two. No, actually, I take that back. Make it twenty-three. Twenty-two is an even number whereas there is something decidedly odd about the way in which life's biggest issues never quite lend themselves to easy division. There is always something left over. There is always something that doesn't quite go.

You know...it doesn't matter if you keep moving from one disaster to another...I guess the trick is to keep moving!

"Who do you think you are? What gives you the right? How dare you be so presumptuous? There you go, marching around as if you own the place, expressing all kinds of opinions and preferences. How on earth can you really know what you claim to know? How on earth would you know how I really feel? What gives you the right to make assumptions and draw conclusions and claim that is what is best for me? If I want anyone to tell me what is best for me and make decisions for my life I can enquire about it myself! What kind a childish game are you playing at...I can't be completely sure but I have got a pretty good idea and I feel my hunch deserves to be trusted on what I want and what I think what is best for me...Don't talk to me about what is best for me! "


Well...there I said it...I said it all...mybe not to his face...maybe he would never know this...but atleast it is out of my system!

"Let the good times roll." That's what people say we should do, yet I have a question. Why do the good times ever stop rolling? What causes them to come to a grinding halt? Perhaps good times can't roll on forever. Perhaps they have to stop and start. Perhaps, if they don't, we lose all ability to recognise whether those times are good or bad because we have nothing else to compare them to. Then again, perhaps we shall never know why some times are good, and others bad. But then, perhaps it doesn't matter, Good times are only a myth after all!

Don't talk to me about Good times!

To love is simpler than To hate!

I have just been informed the lines are from the book of 'Jibran'....So that you know!

Not sure who said this...but when @li sent it to me, I thought it is worth putting it up here!

My spirit is to me a companion

Who comforts me when the days grow heavy upon me

Who consoles me when the afflictions of life multipy

Who is not a companion to his spirit is an enemy to people

and he

Who seems not in his self a friend dies despairing

For life springs from within a man and comes not from without him .

Many people have tried, over the years, to measure love but, of course, they never can. It may, just conceivably, be possible to assess the quality of a particular emotion. There is though, no way we can ever evaluate the quantity of it. You know why? Because if a love is true, it will never run out. The more it is expressed, the more of it there will be. Faith is also famously self-replenishing.

Do you believe in ghosts? They undoubtedly exist. What's more, they don't have to have anything to do with people who have departed from this realm. The folk who are still very much alive and kicking can haunt and spook us in a hundred different ways. And, of course, we have our memories. They lurk in the dark corners of our minds and leap out to scare us when we are at our most vulnerable. I now need to exorcise an uneasy spirit from the relatively recent past. It may yet prove easier to free myself from its power than I might think...but then again... We think we know so much, yet in reality we know so very little. This is not entirely due to a lack of information! Sometimes, the facts are staring us in the face but we refuse to see them. Our prejudices and our preconceptions are just too strong. Inwardly, we can tell that we are barking up the wrong tree. Intellectually though, we remain adamant. So somehow, we have to trick or trip ourselves up...So how about that exorcist?

"Just follow your heart." That's what people say. They make it sound simple. They imply that, if only we can get ourselves "in tune with our deepest feelings" everything will be simple. They forget that the impulse of the heart is not particularly logical. It doesn't just disagree with the head by taking the opposite point of view, it winds it up to a frenzy by taking a stance that makes no sense. Or even, by taking two stances at once! I followed my heart, and where did it get me? ... round in circles. Perhaps I can't try to force it to follow a straight line...but that will be a change!!

"Be willing to be surprised"...An old friend of mine once said! I guess, we all, even if we are open-minded, spend more time than we realise keeping the unexpected at bay. If we see something coming up that we can't be sure of, we do our best to get one step ahead. We don't necessarily run for cover or refuse to let change occur, but we set up a series of controls and checks. We try to ensure that we won't get swept off our feet or taken off at a tangent. Life though, always finds a way to rewrite our agenda sooner or later. It has a mission to remind us that we really don't know everything. Whenever we allow it to make this point, we profit. It is only when we refuse to be told that we suffer.

It's strange how sometimes, familiar things can suddenly seem very strange to us. We think that we really know a place, a person, a subject or a situation. Then, something happens to alter our perception. After this, we can never see things in quite the same way again. I have been through quite a journey of discovery - and rediscovery - lately. Infact I am still going down that road. Though some events have placed me under pressure, have created lots of stress and caused a feeling of an increased need for real, strong security, I want to believe the process to be essentially a positive one. I am learning a lesson now that will be of practical, profitable benefit to me for the rest of my life...Never trust anything or anyone!...call that pessimism...but hey...I never claimed to be an optimist...that is a myth!

Sometimes, you just can't get comfortable on the sofa no matter what you do. You can rearrange the cushions, change your position and shuffle around for as long as you like, yet somehow, you won't feel fully able to relax. Well picture me with that syndrome right now....It is like there is a situation that just doesn't feel quite right...not just like!...infact there is!....but I keep thinking I can waste an awful lot of time and energy in an attempt to fix things. Yet it may make a lot more sense to accept that there will be a problem, regardless of what I do, so I might as well do whatever is easiest...which you have repeatedly heard me say...turn and walk away...and you have also heard me say that I would never do that again...I have even confused myself with this double standard that somehow only I have managed to create....

You see the thing is, If I walk I have only disregarded a decision I made...but if I carry on worrying and looking for solutions, for something that obviously is not fixable I will just be hurting myself...and helping out the process of deterioration...with painful agenda!!!

So...to turn or not to turn....??

How are we supposed to get what we want? They say, One technique involves learning to want whatever you happen to have...Ok...fair enough... Apparently this ensures success every time, and If it does not much appeal to you, here's an alternative they say... Try making sure that whatever you want is really worth wanting, so if you get it, you will never feel let down, and if you don't, at least you will be able to console yourself with the knowledge that you were attempting to achieve something truly worthwhile.

I guess what they are trying to say is to hold out for the best , you may yet get it...it is that 'may' part that I don't buy!

Imagine being blindfolded and then taken for a walk. You are led to a ledge and then instructed to jump. You stand there psychologically preparing yourself for a brave leap into a chasm. You are flexing and tensing your muscles in the hope that these will absorb the impact when you finally land. Yet in fact, you have only a couple of feet to fall! In a way, this is exactly what is happening to me now!Exactly how I feel... I can't quite see what is coming next so I am preparing for the worst. I guess you can't win'em all. But then, nor can we lose 'em all! The law of averages dictates that sooner or later, no matter how badly things seem to be falling apart, something is going to have to come together.

It's a little funny really. We are trained from the earliest possible age, to be competitive. As schoolchildren we are pitted against our classmates. Throughout our adult life we are encouraged to make comparisons. Who are we better than? Whose standard have we yet to surpass? Yet life is not a sport nor a game. Winning and losing are shallow notions - of interest only to the intellectually bankrupt and the imaginatively barren. It's not a victory we need , it's a sense of satisfaction that we strive for! Something to make sense of...Something logical.....but then again...If we are all so fond of logic, reason, sense and strategy - why are there so many pubs? Why do so many of us spend so much time ingesting large amounts of poisonous liquid in an attempt to blur our brains and dull our wits? The truth of the matter is that we love to feel a little stupid and bemused! Indeed, there's only one thing that most of us enjoy more than confusion... and that's delusion! We all at one point or another seem to be entertaining a particularly ridiculous fantasy , and we tend to indulge a bit in its amusement and ignore it i If it upsetting us...as if casually walking away from it...easier said than done!

We take the familiar for granted and give undue respect to the unknown. That's why so many stupid things happen in the name of progress. That's why people are forever reinventing the wheel. If we've got something good, we don't appreciate it. Yet if something is lurking on the horizon, just out of sight, then no matter how shallow or dull it may truly be, we tend to imagine it contains the answers to all our prayers.

Faith, as far as I am concerned, is not something you can subject to analysis. Rather like love, it is something you either feel or you don't. You can't talk yourself into it or out of it, nor can you explain, justify or rationalise it. When you have got a good feeling that you want to support, there is no need to engage your intellect. At the moment though, I keep asking; Is it a lack of faith that I need to conquer? Is it that I need something my heart and mind alike can believe in? That certainly sounds like a bit of a far-fetched aspiration but I have had more surprises lately than I can count...so one never knows!