A Pledge and a Prayer

 

Have you ever woken up wondering how you’ll face the day, or whether you’re falling behind your own dreams? If so, you share something in common with a younger version of me — a time when I believed this feeling was natural.

One day, I realised it wasn’t. And since then, I’ve had to remind myself, again and again, that this heaviness is not a default state. It is the effect of life’s stresses, unfulfilled dreams, and surrounding expectations quietly clouding clarity.

The promise I now make to myself is simple:
I will not let that noise take over my life.

Life waits for nobody. It does not pause because I feel low, slow, or unsure. No matter how I feel, the day will still unfold — and I choose to make something meaningful out of it.

Here is my pledge — and perhaps, in its own quiet way, a prayer.

Each morning arrives as a vast canvas, inviting me to rise, to move, and to paint my own day. I must embrace this opportunity and do my best — not for applause, not for approval, but to tend to my own life.

I regret nothing.
The past is a path already walked. Every mistake was experience gained, every misstep a lesson earned. I extract the wisdom and continue onward.

My foremost aim is to safeguard my mind, my emotions, and my peace. Once this inner ground is steady, the mind is calm — able to navigate storms while others flail.

I strive to master my emotions, knowing that envy and fear shrink the heart. When I encounter someone greater, I observe, learn, and grow alongside them.

True peace begins when I mind my own path, stop seeking applause, and stop comparing my brushstrokes to others. Life is not a contest; it is a canvas.

Life will move regardless. But when I walk with intention — step by step — life quietly rewards me.

I keep moving.
I keep painting.
I keep walking.

My path is mine alone — and it is beautiful.
My path is mine alone — and I choose to walk it with care.

The 54th Post — Closing the Daily Chapter

 

I have been on a writing marathon for the past seven weeks — and today, on 30 November 2025, I’m closing this chapter with the 54th post of my series. It has been a ritual: sometimes demanding, often unexpected, but always real fun.

Over the previous 53 posts, I wrote about many things — curiosity, doubts, discoveries, ideas. I experimented with different styles: sometimes essay-like, sometimes personal, sometimes informative, sometimes conversational, and once I even tried a poem. I wandered between memories and questions, theories and observations, hopes and uncertainties, including a few thoughts on AI.

What I wrote:

Moments of wondering — small questions I had about life, culture, and the things I see and feel around me.

Thoughts on learning, on change, on growing.

Pieces of honesty — moments where I tried to share what I truly thought rather than what I “should” think.

A mix of genres — essays, musings, and snapshots of ideas. I pushed myself not to follow a fixed formula but to trust where my pen (or keyboard) led.

Once I shared an old Tagore song my daughter used to sing as a child, and once I tried my hands at a poem.

Some days the words came easily, like they had been waiting for me. On other days, I had to sit quietly and coax them out one by one.

What I learned — and how I changed:

The first lesson for me is that writing consistently taught me how to think more clearly. Even when I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say, the act of writing teased out hidden thoughts — ideas that were living inside me without my awareness.

I learned that motivation does not need external stimuli — I wrote whether or not anyone was reading, reacting, or appreciating the effort.

A big lesson was that you don’t need to write anything negative, hateful, or hurtful to keep going — even though social media often allows exactly that to thrive.

I also learned that discipline beats inspiration. Not every day was inspiring; some days I wrote simply because I promised myself I would. And often those pieces surprised me — with clarity, with emotion, with something I didn’t expect at the start.

And along the way, I connected with many like-minded bloggers — people I would never have met otherwise — you being one of them.

What this marathon means — and what are the take aways:

This series was a commitment: a way to prove to myself that I could keep going. A way to give shape to my inner questions, to trust my own voice, and to build a habit of creation and exploration.

If you read even one post and felt a spark — a thought, a question, a moment of recognition — then this marathon was worth it. And if you’re reading this now and thinking, “Maybe I could try that too,” then take this as a quiet invitation: start. Write something. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It may feel confusing. It may matter only to you. But keep going.

To you, dear reader — known or unknown — thank you for being here. I'm not going away; I’m simply closing this daily ritual. Keep thinking, keep questioning, keep writing your own story.

— End of the daily series, not the writing.

The Umbrella Relationship

 

It is said that the first thing a blind man does after regaining vision is to throw away the stick — he no longer needs what once guided and protected him. This may not be a common occurrence, but it reflects something we ourselves often experience: what I call the “umbrella relationship.”

Life is a bit strange — shall I say, even selfish at times. People often forget those who stood beside them during difficult moments. As soon as the rain stops, the umbrella starts to feel like a burden. Just a while ago, we were willing to give anything to have one.

Now, the stick and the umbrella are both non-living things — objects without awareness or emotion.

But when real beings like you or me experience similar treatment, it hurts. Deeply.

If we look at this metaphorically, we see this pattern in the way some children treat their parents. For years, parents have been the umbrella, shielding their children from the world’s challenges. But once the children become capable, some begin to see these very parents as a burden — an inconvenience.

And yet, the irony of life is that these same children later become the umbrella for their children — hoping, perhaps, that the next generation will treat them differently.

The same happens with the “ladder relationship”: some people will use you as a ladder to climb out of their struggles… and once they stand on solid ground, they no longer remember who lifted them up.

So what lesson does all this hold for us?

We must accept this one more fact of life: people will lean on you for support, protection, and survival, and some will forget your presence once the storm has passed.
Maybe you did the same once — I hope not.

But knowing this, we can choose better.
We must refuse to accept this as a norm and continue with this pattern. We can manage our expectations from others and, more importantly, act consciously. We can defeat the urge to ignore or abandon someone who stood beside us during our own time of need.

Anger and You

“Anger is the punishment we give ourselves for someone else’s actions.”

I came across this line in an article, and the author went on to describe how drained they felt once the anger finally cooled down. I wondered how universal this experience is — and how few of us understand what’s actually happening inside us. It made me rethink my own relationship with anger.

Anger is a natural signal that something important feels threatened or disrespected. It rises fast, hits hard, and often leaves us exhausted. That’s because, for a moment, the older “reptile” part of the brain — our survival system — takes over. Clear thinking, empathy, and perspective momentarily step aside.

I once couldn’t handle my anger during my high school, and that kept us apart for a decade.

When anger is left to simmer, it turns inward — draining our energy, tightening the body, and often hurting us more than the original trigger.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.
If we can stay just a little aware in the heat of the moment, the emotion passes without doing further damage. Even a small shift in awareness can soften the entire moment. A few simple concepts like the following can be helpful:

• Pause and breathe. A slow breath interrupts the rush and gives the mind a few seconds to return online.

• Notice your patterns. Certain tones, expectations, or situations trigger us again and again. Awareness softens the impact.

• Reframe the story. A small shift in interpretation can lower the emotional temperature almost instantly.

Managing anger isn’t about suppressing feelings — it’s about protecting our energy, our clarity, and our relationships. It’s choosing where our attention goes instead of letting emotions steer the entire day.

Start small.
A single pause.
A single breath.

A single belief: I can choose my response.

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The Second Chance We Want

 

Sitting alone, contemplating how life has and is treating me, I remembered an old story. A person facing what we often call a “midlife crisis” went to a monk. He complained about all the decisions he felt he had failed to take, about how miserable his life had become. He wished he could wake up at 22 and start all over.

The perspective the monk offered made a huge impact on me.

He said:

"If you’re 41 and feeling sad that you can’t wake up as a 22-year-old again, try this instead."

Close your eyes. Take a few deep breaths. Feel your lungs expand, feel the air entering your nose. Now, imagine — just for a few moments — that you are 85.

Feel the weight of those years — the slower body, the absence of people you once loved, the conversations you never had, the apologies you never made, the love you didn’t express enough. Let the regrets rise: the chances you didn’t take, the relationships you let fade, the moments you were too distracted to notice.

Sit with that version of yourself for a while — you will soon feel the 85-year-old you wishing for one more ordinary day at 41.

And then, in this little thought experiment, you go to sleep with all those feelings.

Then you wake up… you are 41 again.
Not older.
Not drained.
Not running out of time.

You suddenly, miraculously, have the next 44 years back in your hands- maybe little less, or little more.

So you ask yourself:

• What would I do differently?

• What would matter more?

• Whom would I call?

• What would I finally stop postponing?

The monk’s point was simple:

You may never be 22 again, but you can absolutely be someone your 85-year-old self would be grateful for.

We keep longing for a second chance — without realizing we already have one.

It just begins at 41, not at 22.

The Strength Lies in Accepting

 

Time is unforgiving. Life doesn’t let us rewind a moment, step back into an old version of ourselves, or undo the accident we never saw coming. It doesn’t offer a second attempt at the same crossroads — no matter how much remorse we carry or how deeply we wish we could fix what we once did wrong.

What it does offer — quietly, consistently — is the chance to learn. To reshape. To live each day a little better than the last.

I once heard an older musician speak about losing hearing in one ear early in his career. He said something I’ve never forgotten:
“I spent five years trying to get back to who I was before the accident. I wasted that time trying to heal the unhealable.”

For half a decade, he wasn’t fighting the condition — he was fighting the past, fighting the idea of the life he believed he was supposed to have. Only when he finally accepted that this particular loss was permanent did something shift. Acceptance didn’t restore his hearing, but it restored his direction.

He reworked his technique, retrained his sense of balance, and found a new creative rhythm that didn’t betray what he had lost but built upon what he still had. And from that place, a different kind of joy emerged.

There is a quiet strength in acknowledging a changed reality. Acceptance isn’t defeat. It isn’t surrender. It is simply recognising life’s randomness and moving with it instead of against it.

The ability to integrate the wound and still move through life — not perfectly, not painlessly, but purposefully — is its own form of victory.

In the end, the true virtue is this:
stop trying to return to the person you once were,
and start becoming the person you are meant to be next.

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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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Life Is Bigger Than Your Report Card

 

Photo by Ivan Bertolazzi 

Why do we consider someone “good”, “intelligent,” or even “successful” simply because they performed well in school? It’s strange when you think about it.

School and college occupy the first 15 to 20 years of our lives — barely 20–25% of an average lifespan — yet for many, that brief window becomes a label that follows them into adulthood, work, relationships, and even self-worth.

But the truth is simple: life doesn’t unfold in one straight line; it comes in seasons.
We still have the next ten years to bloom, or the ten after that, or the ten that follow, and then — perhaps most profoundly — the last ten. Each stage demands a different kind of wisdom, something that never appears on a school transcript.

Maybe I made the mistake of clubbing too many superlatives together — good, intelligent, successful. They’re not the same thing. So let’s untangle them.

Intelligence cannot be restricted to a report card — it will surface every time it finds a suitable situation. Exams test memory, discipline, and pattern recognition, whereas life asks for emotional intelligence, intuition, social skill, resilience, imagination, and the ability to recover after falling flat.

Success is equally subjective.
For some, it is the number of people they inspire — whether as a teacher, founder, or artist.
For others, it is power — the ability to influence, lead, or shape outcomes.
For many, it is wealth — the freedom to live life on their own terms.
And sometimes, success is simply the ability to exist within an extended family in harmony.

It’s true: those who perform well early in life often build momentum. Good grades open doors, and once momentum gathers, it can carry you far. But there’s a hidden trap — the comfort zone becomes a cage.

So the long and short of it is this: don’t get worked up.
Life has no universal yardstick — because there isn’t one.
Define your own success. Shape it, refine it, evolve it as you go.
And remember: a report card was never meant to measure your entire life — only a small, temporary chapter of it.

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Getting Comfortable with the New You

 

Photo by Pixabay

The hardest part of change isn’t always the change itself — it’s accepting the new version of ourselves after we have changed.

We resist change not because we dislike what’s coming, but because we’re uncertain how to feel about the person we’re becoming.

Let’s understand this with something simple — something many of us have lived through during our teenage years.

In those days, when appearance was everything, a mustache slowly became part of our identity — a quiet symbol of growing up.

At the same time, we were fascinated by movie stars — Amitabh Bachchan, Clint Eastwood, Richard Gere — and their unmistakable clean shaven style. But we weren’t allowed to shave until we reached the threshold set by our parents.

And when that day finally came, it wasn’t easy. Shaving felt like a betrayal — not of innocence, but of self. We were unsure of the new look and unsure of how others would see us.

For me, I shaved just before boarding a long-distance train to New Delhi. Those twenty-four hours on the train helped me get used to my reflection again — to know me, to like me, to be myself.

Self-acceptance sometimes needs distance — from places, from people, from the mirror that remembers too much. It takes a little space where the old identity cannot interfere with the new one taking shape. Perhaps that’s why the sages preferred isolation.

Transformation rarely happens in an instant.
It unfolds in the quiet hours between what was and what will be — like those twenty-four hours on the train.

Change asks for courage.
But acceptance asks for gentleness.

So, when life demands a new version of you — a new role, a new rhythm, a new mindset — take a pause. Give yourself time to meet the stranger you’re becoming.

Because the first person who must accept the change is you.

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Live Well, Spend Well

 

There comes a time in life when young people of every generation stand at a crossroads, trying to decide how to course their lives. It’s natural to want to live well, to spend freely, to enjoy the rewards of hard work. After all, their world is full of possibilities — better incomes, greater mobility, and more experiences than ever before.

But amid this abundance, one truth remains timeless: the wisdom of restraint never goes out of style. The ability to pause, reflect, and choose wisely can make all the difference.

The real question isn’t whether the young generation should spend, but when and how much. Experiences, travel, good food, and friendships are all part of living fully — there’s nothing wrong with wanting these things.
The key is to align spending with what you’ve already earned, not what you hope to earn tomorrow. Spend after knowing the value of money — not before you’ve earned it.

It’s tempting to think: why shouldn’t I take advantage of credit and live a fuller life today, when I’m confident I can repay it tomorrow?
At least then, I’d have enjoyed life both now and later.

But for those who’ve built real wealth within one lifetime, financial maturity didn’t arrive overnight. It came through experience — through both success and failure. It came from mentors who guided, books that shaped their thinking, and a few hard knocks that left their mark.

Nobody gets it right all the time. But with time, we learn that spending less often brings more peace — and that true luxury lies in freedom, not possessions.

So, to the young and ambitious: spend, but spend with awareness. Enjoy, but save with purpose. The future is uncertain — but discipline today is the quiet confidence that tomorrow will take care of itself.

This reflection was born out of watching how easily the line between living well and overspending blurs in modern life.
Thank you for taking a moment from your busy day to read my thoughts. Your time here means a lot.

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