Tag: Art

Brownness, Family, Myself

Festival of Silence

Sanjay Sabarwal
The diwali diyas at Diwali Celebrations at Ban...
The diwali diyas at Diwali Celebrations at Bangalore 2010 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Still a bit high off the Kirtan at our house on Last Saturday, I was looking forward to Sunday evening’s Diwali celebration at the Buena Park Gurudwara. I was truly grateful for all that I had in my life, and for the friends and family that came to celebrate with us just because we invited them.  Still, I couldn’t help being disappointed at some who didn’t come, others who didn’t bother to reply, and several others who I counted on being there but were not. And then of course, there were those who I will no longer invite, and it pricked a bit.  It was that feeling I dreaded at the Gurudwara. I didn’t want to face them physically, and be reminded of their continuing betrayal, but most of all I was saddened that in my quest to become a peaceful and mindful being, there are some who will fall by the wayside…

730 am today. I ran 5 miles in 56 minutes, and it hit me that 8 months ago, I was waking up groggy from brain surgery, and I was just utterly grateful for the life I have been blessed with. I smiled as I remember the writers meetup I went to last night where the a person mentioned several times that he was an award-winning author (who does that), but again we are all on our own journeys. We make our own decisions, and what we think about them doesn’t really matter. It is a lesson that I have to remind myself as I am disappointed in others and in myself. I cannot do anything about the people in my life, but I can change how I feel about things. It is the one lesson of BK Shivani that has stuck with me. Ultimately, I am only hurting myself if I continue to focus on the negative rather than look at what the world has to offer. So I celebrate this new festival of silence rather than of mindlessness.

Food For Thought, Myself, Random, Ziba

Thoughts For Food

Sanjay Sabarwal
A penny for your thoughts...Dollars for your t...
A penny for your thoughts…Dollars for your thoughts – NARA – 513735 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

I have been doing the Daily Food For Thought for Ziba Beauty for almost 5 years, and I happened to read some of the old ones.  I realized that at first they started out as long one page inspirational stories that I scoured for on other sites. But now they are one liners mostly for quick digestion.  My world is slowly turning from one based on thought and reflection to easy consumption. We no longer seem to have the patience for learning through patience.  We seem to want our inspiration in 140 characters or less. As the messages get shorter and shorter, I wonder how much meaning is being retained?  Perhaps we are distilling it down to the essence of thought, yet truthfully for me, I miss the days of reading the whole story.

 

We are in the middle of a generation the prefers texting to talking. Leaving voice-mails seems old fashioned or just work related.  We no longer seem to feel the need to buy a CD or buy digital based entertainment.  The value of creativity based on words seems to be sinking.  I now have officially entered into the realm of the good old days.”  None of this change is bad. In fact, I love the ease and convenience of getting to music and ideas that I never could before. And there lies the lesson. It’s not really about the message or the shape or form of it. Its how you interact with it, what it does for you.  Someone who does not want to change will simply ignore a long or a short message.

 

That’s hard for me to swallow. I am a fixer. I want to fix everyone and everything. i know that is foolish and ultimately a waste of time. People will not change unless they are ready to. No matter how often I forward inspirational quotes, messages or texts, nothing will get through until they are ready to make a change in their lives. It’s hard to see people jumping over a cliff or harming themselves needlessly but as the quote goes, “until you get lost, you won’t find new ways.” Anonymous.

Touche.

 

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Myself, Random, Writing

Prison

Sanjay Sabarwal
English: Writing «Shit_happens»
English: Writing «Shit_happens» (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Words escape me.  I am like the prison where I can’t hold them captive.  Instead, I am constantly on a state-wide hunt to be able to say something.  Yet, I know that’s not true exactly either. I hold one big prisoner: Fear.  And in the interrogation room, I question FAITH and BELIEF.  I don’t know if I have the actual ability to write more than a few pithy blog posts, and maybe by some luck, a short story.  So I sit here on this hard chair in my library surrounded by words of others, waiting for inspiration. But if I am being honest, maybe I am just praying for talent, or maybe I am asking someone out there to get me started.

Either way. I sit here yet again posting about not writing, but hey that’s considered writing, right?  What is it they say, if you want to write, write!  So here I am pushing out words like dry turds, hoping that at some point I can make real shit. OKDOGA, maybe not shit shit, but more like something that is more than just empty words.  Yet, I also know that’s not what the real battle is about.  Part of writing is being truthful to yourself, and others, but I am not ready to share what is inside me.  I am afraid. I am not ready.  So I sit here alone, wondering what is it that I want to do with myself. Now that’s a question, I have struggled with all my life. Even at 41, I still don’t know what to do. I don’t mean to suggest I am unemployed, but more that I am uninspired.  A lot of things intrigue me, but nothing has come forth that has taken me prisoner.  I am free in the worst way possible.  I want to be imprisoned, but nothing is holding me back.  Not yet anyway.  Here’s to hoping, that someday I will be free…

Myself, Preeti

Happiness and Thank You: A Blog Post

Sanjay Sabarwal
Lorsque paraît la beauté..
Image by ImAges ImprObables via Flickr

It’s easy to write when your sad, angry and full of hope, but harder for me to write when I am happy.  My high school teacher Marie Tollstrup used to say that if you look at most poetry and literature, it has traces of negative emotion with a happy ending merely to showcase the writer’s whimsy, yet today I feel obligated to note the love surrounding her and I, amongst our dear friends, family from abroad and in general.  Each day in the past week has been full of positive emotion, brimming with future possibility, and the reality that our time has finally come. This December will make it 5 years when I fell in love so deeply and truly with someone who I had known all my life that it still feels unreal that I am with someone so beautiful inside and out.  But I digress.  These past few days have made me realize how truly blessed and lucky I am to have the people I do in my life.  Looking at my past posts, I have spent an inordinate amount of time whining about the ones that truly do not matter, ignoring the ones that come around me at a drop of a hat, and I cannot help be thankful for being just good enough to have them in my life.  I do not know what I did to deserve them but dammit, I am going to make damn sure I keep them!

 

Thank you, thank you, and thank you.  I wish I was more eloquent but I cannot stop smiling, while soaking in these beautiful days and events with amazing friends and family.  THANK YOU!

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Myself, Writing

Energy: A Blog Post

Sanjay Sabarwal
Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...
Image via CrunchBase

I remember writing few months back where all my energy, ideas and focus melded into one need to get the story done.  I was smiling and truly enjoying the process, just living the dream of being a writer, knowing that what was being laid down was pretty good and I could do this.  I want that moment back, those blissful hours when it seemed becoming a writer full time was not a fantasy, that I was good enough dammit!  Yet lately, I seem to have found people who either don’t think much of my writing or dismiss it.  Worse, still I have others who manage to always feel bad about blogging or posting on Facebook even when I am supremely careful of not blogging names and keeping my status updates to a minimum.  I feel stifled and trapped into being a certain type of personality on social media as if I have to apologize for being open about my thoughts and feelings.  Sure, I have said too much sometimes and called out others when it was not my business to, and to that I can only apologize and call it a learning process, yet I feel trapped with the label of someone who talks too much.  It’s soul and creativity killing to know that my words are scrutinized to be either dismissed or confirm my status as a big mouth.

I want my words to have the energy they did when I wrote freely and got them out of being in my body, bottled up for so long.  That’s where I want to get to.  Let’s hope that the ones who are judging me know that they are killing me softly.

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Brownness

Half Way: A Blog Post

Sanjay Sabarwal
New Year Sunrise
Image by joka2000 via Flickr

Yesterday, marked the halfway point for 2011.  I was surprised to see that reminder from the Change Anything blog (changeanything.com) a book that I am currently reading, not because I had not followed through on my New Years resolution.com but mainly because I had stayed the course.  I lost weight, I started reading again, planned and took a few trips and wrote some.  I did not just have one resolution but many and I am sticking to them not because I wanted to because I needed to.  In the past few years, I have begun to feel less like myself and more a social being trying to please others and you know what, it fucking sucks!  I much rather be in the days when I was true to my vision and focus and did what I pleased but then I realized that was not ideal either as I often did events that made much less money than I expected.  I never did find the balance of running a successful promotion company and label, and a personal life.  But few years back, I felt like I had sold myself out just to be successful but even writing that does not feel true.  The reality is that I always managed to get to the halfway but somewhere, somehow, I get derailed before getting to the end, and that is what worries me.  Losing focus.  My dream is to be the person I have always imagined myself to be, and at 39, I don’t have much time before I am defined by the years behind me.

So here’s to being halfway there, sticking to my guns and being the person I have always imagined myself to be.  Wish me luck.

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