Our Life, Our Ship, Our Sails

Photo by IsaaK Alexandre KaRslian:

How many times, sitting at your office desk, have you wondered, “What am I even doing here?”
How many times have your friends or colleagues quietly confessed the same?
How many evenings have you returned home after a long day — not just tired, but drained in a way that effort alone cannot explain?

When we look closely, the reason often traces back to drifting away from a simple, unavoidable truth we must internalize if we ever want real peace:

Everyone has to live their life on their own terms.

It sounds simple — almost obvious — but living this philosophy is one of the hardest things we’ll ever attempt. It requires a kind of ongoing awareness, a gentle but firm refusal to be pulled into the noise of the world. It means letting go of the weight of external expectations, even when they come wrapped in love.

I’ve seen this struggle most clearly when people stand at the crossroads of big decisions — like someone wanting to leave a stable, well-paying engineering job to become a stand-up comedian. The reactions they receive, though well-intentioned, rarely come from a neutral place. Advice arrives filtered through someone else’s fears, experiences, and worldview.

And that’s when we must remind ourselves of something essential.

Our lives are not identical.
Our paths are not interchangeable.
Our inner callings are not meant to follow someone else’s.

We are like ships on the same vast sea — and while the wind blows in the same direction for everyone, each ship sets a different course, sometimes in opposite directions.
It is not the wind, the water, or the weather that shapes our direction.
It is the sails — our purpose, our choices, our inner compass — that truly decide where we go.

Once we understand this, life becomes lighter. Decisions feel clearer. And our peace becomes less negotiable.

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🔗 Read Reflect Rejoice

Faith, Fear, and the Idea of God We Created

Photo by egil sjøholt

What I’m about to say may sound a bit controversial — so reader’s discretion is advised.

Recently I came across a sarcastic statement that shook something loose in me. It said:
There are more than 3,000 gods in the world, and every single one is a figment of imagination… except, of course, the one we believe in. We’re the smart ones. Everyone else is misguided.

It’s a sharp line, maybe even offensive, but it exposes something deeply human.

For thousands of years, the idea of God has been used to guide, govern, soothe, and, more often than not, to control the way we live. And it makes me wonder how all of this happened — what still makes human beings surrender so completely? 

Fear of death, undoubtedly. Once we accepted that our end is inevitable, curiosity naturally followed: 

What happens after? What lies beyond this certainty we cannot escape? Yet no one had an answer that satisfied the human heart.

It was easy to feel the gravitational force that kept the universe in motion. Perhaps that force was the first God — a cosmic architect far more occupied with the orchestration of galaxies containing trillions of stars than with my grocery list or whether I find a convenient parking spot at the supermarket. 

A God who manages stars is admirable, but of little use. A God who manages our survival is irresistible, relatable, believable.

In the beginning, the divine mirrored the wider animal kingdom; then slowly we narrowed our imagination until God resembled us more than anything else— human-like, but prettier, braver, stronger.

And now that we have created God, shaped God, and nurtured this idea for thousands of years, it raises another question: How does someone who doesn’t believe in this human-like version make use of the idea of God at all?

If you have no shoulder to cry on, you can cry to God.
If the world feels unfair, you can hand your hurt to God.
If choices overwhelm you, you can ask God for signs.
If guilt becomes heavy, you can seek forgiveness from God.
If life feels directionless, you can outsource purpose to God.

Maybe that’s what God has always been — not a being, not a judge, not a cosmic king, but an idea we got carried away with. A container where we can safely place everything we don’t know how to carry.

PS: Physicists say our Sun is dragging us through the galaxy at 828,000 km per hour while an even more mysterious attractor pulls not just us, but our entire Milky Way and every nearby galaxy at 2.1 million km per hour. If that doesn’t humble us about what we don’t understand, nothing will.

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Before Love and Hate

Photo by Max Ravier

Staring at this prompt inviting bloggers to list a few things I love or hate, I found myself at a loss. I wasn’t ready to dig through the past to pick up moments I once loved or hated, nor am I willing to hedge my future peace for this exercise. What remains then is the present continuous — but I just posted my list of eleven things that make me happy, so that door is closed for now. [Linked here]

Love or hate — I’ve stopped entertaining rumination about extreme emotions these days. If my disasters upset me or my triumphs lift me too high, then, like Kipling warned, they are both imposters I no longer want to trust. That realization keeps me steady more often than not.

Instead of revisiting old emotions for the sake of this prompt, I find myself wondering how and why we categorise experiences as love or hate in the first place. Some we announce loudly, some we bury quietly, and yet in both cases their roots run deeper than we notice.

When I look inward, the forces that still tug at my emotions are memory, fear, and desire.

Memory shapes reactions long before I am aware of it happening. A familiar fragrance softens me because it carries home, and a place can still unsettle me because it holds an old echo. Much of what I feel today is simply the past walking alongside me.

Fear arrives unannounced and shifts how I read the world. It freezes thought, magnifies loss, and convinces me that vulnerability is somehow dangerous. Some feelings grow sharper simply because fear is speaking a little louder underneath.

Desire quietly pulls the strings too, guiding me toward meaning, belonging, and validation. The haves and the have-nots inside me directly map to those same needs.

And then there are the forces outside us that keep stirring things up — society’s noise through social media, society’s expectations in daily life, and society’s unpredictable encounters that catch us off guard. Each one nudges the emotional compass decisively.

I no longer wish to drag the past into today, nor do I want tomorrow’s shadows troubling me before they appear. The aspiration is to live in the present within emotional guardrails that protect me from both inner and outer triggers. Maybe the real strength lies in mindful living — and keeping a healthy distance from the forces that rush to categorise or box our life events into love, hate, or anything else.

It isn’t easy — it’s a challenging trail — and I’m just an ordinary person learning as I go. Let’s take this path one step at a time toward mindful living.

☕ Enjoy the Coffee, Not the Cup

Yesterday, in Look Beyond the Looks [Click Here], we reflected on how beauty often clouds our empathy — how we tend to value what’s pleasant to the eye more than what truly matters. Today, let’s explore a similar truth about how appearances influence our sense of happiness.

We humans are wired to understand best through stories, and this old one captures the essence perfectly.

Once upon a time, a group of alumni — all well-settled in their careers — visited their old university professor. The conversation soon drifted toward life and work, filled with complaints about stress, pressure, and the endless chase for balance.

Listening patiently, the professor excused himself to the kitchen. He wanted to serve them coffee — just as he had done years ago when these same students stayed up late, dreaming big, debating endlessly, and sketching plans for the future.

But there was one problem: he didn’t have enough shiny mugs. So he returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups — porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain-looking, some expensive, some exquisite — and invited everyone to help themselves.

When each of them had picked a cup, the professor smiled and said,
“If you noticed, all the nice-looking, expensive cups were taken up first, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. It’s only natural to want the best for yourselves — but that very instinct is the source of your stress.”

He paused, letting the thought sink in.

“What you truly wanted was coffee, not the cup. Yet you consciously went for the best cups and even glanced at what others had chosen. Life is the same. Life itself is the coffee — the jobs, money, and social positions are just cups. They’re only tools to hold Life, and they don’t change its quality. But by focusing too much on the cup, we forget to enjoy the coffee inside.”

He ended softly,
“So, don’t let the cups drive you — enjoy the coffee instead.”

It’s a story that never gets old because its truth doesn’t either. In our pursuit of the best-looking “cup,” we often overlook the simple joy of living — the aroma, warmth, and taste of life itself.

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🔗 Read Reflect Rejoice

All That Glitters Is Not Gold — But Gold Connects Us to the Stars

 

photo courtesy

We often say “All that glitters is not gold” to remind ourselves that beauty and value aren’t always what they seem.
But have you ever paused to consider what real gold actually is? Beyond its soft gleam lies a story that stretches far beyond Earth — a story written in the heart of the cosmos.

Gold is more than a precious metal prized for its beauty or worth. Beneath its glow lies a legacy — a message from the universe itself.
We learn from physics that gold wasn’t born on Earth — not in volcanoes, nor in our planet’s molten core, but in the cataclysmic deaths and collisions of stars. In those brief, violent moments, immense energy forged gold and flung it across space.
Over time, as Earth took shape, those drifting atoms became part of it — tiny remnants of distant stars that burned long before our sun was born.

Every piece of gold we uncover today carries a celestial trace — a link to origins far beyond our knowledge and imagination.
Gold does not rust. It does not tarnish. It cannot be made by human hands or destroyed by human means — and so the total quantity of gold on Earth remains constant.

Once you know this, even the phrase “gold standard” feels different — as does the old saying that not everything that glitters can have the quality of gold.
Amid ambition and pursuit, it helps to remember that worth is not about sparkle, but about substance — and the grace to endure and last.

So the next time a glint of gold catches your eye, pause for a moment to realise —
you are, quite literally, holding in your hand a fragment of a star that shone long before our sun and Earth were born.

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Read Reflect Rejoice

Territories

 

Today, while driving to work, I saw a small bird chasing another along the road verge.
It was a brief, almost comic scene — wings fluttering, sharp calls echoing, one bird fiercely defending a patch of grass no larger than a few square meters.

It’s a familiar sight. We’ve all seen such encounters in gardens, on terraces, balconies, and those little spaces we like to call ours — or at least believe to be under our care. Birds staking claim to air and branches, drawing invisible borders only they recognize.

If one pauses to watch closely, these tiny territorial battles raise a curious question.
While I technically own the garden — having paid for the land, tended the plants, and built the fence that marks its edge — the birds are merely visitors.
And yet, within that same space, they draw their own lines, chase away rivals, and claim rights to crumbs and insects — by virtue of arriving first, or simply by strength and persistence.

It makes me wonder — isn’t it all an illusion for the birds?

And somewhere out there, across that tattered line, if there truly is a Creator watching this grand spectacle we call the universe, I can’t help but wonder what passes through that mind.
When they see us mark territories with deeds, boundaries, and borders; fight, grab, and even destroy in the name of land, faith, or power — claiming what we believe is ours more fiercely than any other species.

Because much like the birds, our ownership exists only within the stories we tell ourselves — stories that shift with time, circumstance, and power.

Perhaps, in the end, we too are merely unaware guests in a garden that was never really ours to begin with.

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Read Reflect Rejoice

Our Crime Master Gogo

"Aaya hoon, kuch toh loot kar jaoonga" is a dialogue from the movie "Andaz Apna Apna" and no one can do better justice to this than my 15 months old. To put things in perspective, this is one movie I do not mind watching every time it shows up on TV because of the sense of humour and comic timing and to sum it up, I find it entertaining. The music too is entertaining with a comic as well as retro flavour. I do wonder if Amir Khan and Salman Khan are together in another movie. The villains here are portrayed as a bunch of comedians rather than the usual ruthless killers. One such character is "Crime master gogo" which is played by Shakti Kapoor. Every time he showed up, his opening dialogue was "Aaya hoon, kuch toh loot kar jaoonga. Khandaani chor hoon. Mogambo ka bhatija, Crime Master Gogo" (Since I have come here I am not going to return empty handed.)

My daughter follows the same principle and so at times we affectionately call her "crime master Gogo". While awake, she is the busiest person in the house, doing something very important on her own, which we wished so much that she didn't. If she is not doing anything in particular, she will be stalking the house, looking for something to put her hands on. Till a few months back we had our home neatly arranged with many a object carefully placed at different levels to deck up the image but not any more! with every inch she gained in height, we had to come up with new ideas to relocate stuff and had to keep doing the disappearing act till we ran out of ideas and started to pack them off to be unwrapped sometime in the future. But the great thing about her is that she is not deterred by disappointments and setbacks. She approaches targeting one particular object but if we manage to move it before she reaches, she will settle for whatever else is available and never return empty handed. If we lift her up instead of moving the object she will try and grab something that is available at the higher level. Now that she has mastered the art of climbing a chair, we have moved them away from the dining table and placed them against the wall. We had her dining chair against the wall as well and I had to put her up there one day as she cannot get out of that by herself, so that she remains convict for some time while we ran some errands. But to my astonishment she was standing on the chair and fiddling with the door security phone very happy and very excited too. We let her play with the phone to her heart's content! Aaya hoon, kuch toh loot kar jaoonga..............

She has reinforced in me to thrive to make the best use of all available situation and not to give up.

Isn't this a wonderful philosophy!