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!
Number 1 Passion by Eric Handler
What is your #1 passion in life? Now, imagine what would happen if you incorporated that passion into your life daily. Write down your passion and keep it close to you. Remind yourself of it daily, just like brushing your teeth.
(Author: Eric Handler)
Reading has been my passion all my life and lately I have begun to incorporate it into my daily life by either going to bed reading or taking a day or two to make significant progress into a book. I am still split on whether I prefer the Kindle or the Ipad by my ideal still is a real book. Something quite satisfying about turning a page, feeling the heft of the book lighten as you make deep in-roads into its story and get stamped with new ideas and thoughts (can’t help remembering some of the passages from Freedom by Jonathan Frazen) and touched by the emotions and characteristics of novel protagonists.
Besides my literary passion, my other passion is trying new things and that has transformed very well at my work as I have managed to make mundane tasks more interesting or come at them differently. However, I am constantly stalled by my own insecurity and need to please others and I swallow my ideas, ballooning up with regret, festering inside with an urgent need to vomit out all the negativity. However, I am getting better and I see now that I do not have to react to every situation with emotion especially hurt and anger. I have learned to quiet down my emotional turmoil and hear what the other person is saying and see it from their perspective. Even if I do not agree, I see that people relax once they feel heard. It is a great feeling to make things happen when there is calm in important parts of my life.
Come Alive by Jonathan Mead
Life wastes itself while we are preparing to live. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
If you had one week left to live, would you still be doing what you’re doing now? In what areas of your life are you preparing to live? Take them off your To Do list and add them to a To Stop list. Resolve to only do what makes you come alive.
Bonus: How can your goals improve the present and not keep you in a perpetual “always something better” spiral?
(Author: Jonathan Mead)
I am in the rare position in life where I can say that I would still be doing what I am doing now if I had a week to live with the exception of a few things I wish I was doing more (traveling more, reading more, trying out new activities such as camping), and I realize that I love where I work, I have the partner I love but, (isn’t there always one but?) I am missing some part of my old self, and that’s who I was when I ran Ziba Music with my father and the fact that I was always open to new experiences. I see now that I want to reconnect with old friends more, old activities even more and limit some of the new people I hang around with only to do things I truly love with my partner. I would say that I am at 75% in terms of not changing my week but would like at least 2 days to be spent with old friends, doing an event and perhaps traveling. My current goals are getting me to that ideal 100% as just this weekend, I reconnected with some dear friends of mine, spent quality time with her and my family and finally got to do a BBQ at a place (for me, it was the ideal weekend). Now just gotta make sure I have more weekends like this!
Not everyone wants to travel the world, but most people can identify at least one place in the world they’d like to visit before they die. Where is that place for you, and what will you do to make sure you get there?
(Author: Chris Guillebeau)
I hadn’t thought of this aspect for my life and I realized that I had very vague notions of traveling, preferring, instead ,to surprise myself by visiting places I have heard of but no know about it. Now that could be the simplistic travel the world but that seems like a cop-out and did not really answer the question, but then it hit me that I did try once to travel all over India so perhaps the short answer to visit India, I mean really visit, travel the country, but various methods of transportation, get to know the country in a more intimate way rather than half-remembered places and figure out what makes me tick coming from a country of billion.
Liz Danzico – Today
Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. The force of character is cumulative. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
If ‘the voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tracks,’ then it is more genuine to be present today than to recount yesterdays. How would you describe today using only one sentence? Tell today’s sentence to one other person. Repeat each day.
(Author: Liz Danzico)
My Sentence For Today:
I will not let emotions dictate who or how I am, letting them be a guide as to my state of being but not using them to replace reason and compassion.
We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other. Our age yields no great and perfect persons. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
You just discovered you have fifteen minutes to live.
1. Set a timer for fifteen minutes.
2. Write the story that has to be written.
I love you. Thank you. Those are the words I am going to repeat again and again to the ones that have always been close to me. Mom, Dad, there isn’t much you have not done for me, yet I feel like I have always let you down. I could have done so much more yet you never judged, always accepted who I was, and were there when I needed you.
Suman, my oldest and amazing sister. As much as I always responded to you with irritation I realize now that everything you said to me always came from the same place of love and worry for your little brother. For you, it did not matter that I fell repeatedly or made the same mistakes, for you all that mattered was that I was ok, and if I needed any help getting back.
Sumita, you are my second mom and as much as I fought that notion all my life, I now realize that there was a reason I needed two moms. I needed one that loved me unconditionally and another who loved me passionately but would not allow me to be the lower person that I managed to be some days. You never gave up and your passion and creativity are the reason we are, I mean I am the success I am. I have all the material things I could want thanks to you. And although we always differed on how to use our wealth, you have taught me that money isn’t just a means to an end, it can used as a sword to cut away a lot of the injustices in the world.
Preeti, to the one I have managed to hurt the most even though I have loved you from the moment I got to know you, I realize now how much you have been part of my life when I needed someone the most. To you, saying I love you and thank you arent enough without adding I am so, so sorry for all the pain that I have caused you in your life. I wish I could take all the pain away with me now just so finally you could have peace and the knowledge that no matter, I loved you with my entire soul.
Jemal, Vuong, Nik, Vuong, Raj
We meet at different times in our lives, and yet you all have been unwavering in your love and support for me even though I never managed to return the favor at times. All I can say now is that you were always present in my thoughts even if by my action its appeared I did not. Time is so short to explain how much I love you guys for making me a better human than I am.
Family
There are so many of you that have been there without complaint and comment in my life and have done so many things that if I had 15,000 minutes, I wouldn’t be able to describe all that you have added to my life. I only pray I can come back in some form to repay you for all the love you gave me. I truly am unworthy of such great family.
Rockwell, Noel, Vishal, Mike Fitz
To you, I owe a great thank you for always being around when I needed you even though the time gaps were large, nothing every changed between us except the deepening of our love for each other’s friendships.
The time draws close now, and I know there are dozens I have left out and will never get to them in time because all my life, I have received so much generosity and gifts that I could never pay back. In these waning moments, I leave you this small words of thanks and love and hope that you can forgive me for my sins and remember that I meant no ill will. I am who I was. The rest, as they say is history. Perhaps I made a mark in your life, but know one thing you definitely made one on me. Thank you.
Sanjay Sabarwal's Blog 