Nishtha Gehija

There are two connotations to this question.

One, helplessness. “What can I do?” Deciding outright that you have no power to change anything, and thus, succumbing to victim mode.

Two, responsibility. “What can I do?” You understand things have not been working as expected, and you are curious to help. You know that sometimes one step of help and understanding towards positive change is more than enough.

You can do a lot. Or you cannot. The best thing is you are the one who decides, regardless of what is happening.

Remembering routes

Hosting parties

Being too chatty in a meeting

Organising a picnic

Digging out time to watch movies

This is a small list of things I am bad at. Without guilt. Because I purposefully spend my time writing, doing nature walks, reading, and cooking just for myself and sometimes for my parents too.

Without being pompous, I like chasing excellence in these pillars of life.

Being bad at a few things is perhaps an excellent place to be at.

It is a medical term, where the person suffering from it is not able to pay attention or concentrate on your tasks.

I have an alternate theory for attention deficit disorder. When you do not get attention from your friends, family, life, etc., you end up doing things that make you grab attention.

It is often unintentional, because you are not aware. All your awareness is directed towards making people aware of you.

Wanting to be seen is undeniably a human emotion. But we must see ourselves and make ourselves feel seen, lest we might end up doing things that might give make us gather attention, but rarely be seen.

…that people will communicate the most important truths to you in the harshest, rudest manner. Your job is still to look for the truth and accept it, instead of clinging on to them to change the way they said this.

…that no matter how hard you try, some people will still hold you wrong for absolutely nothing. Sometimes those are going to be family too. You have to be strong enough to get out of that rut of “making them understand you” and change yourself.

…that some people are never meant for conversations. They will live their lives in hell in order to avoid a conversation and live like nothing happened and create diseases within them.

Accepting the facts is a good point to starting to quieten the fire within yourself.

That you press a button of happiness and the other person is happier than ever.

Relationships are a measure of how much you care. They require effort. Which is why you need to have conversations. You need to make people feel secure. You need to build an environment where we disagree without disarming the other.

It takes work. So we go for the vending machine approach.

But never in the history of food has the vending machine food ever made anyone fit and healthy. It is only the food cooked at home in kitchen.

Unless you have been asked, it is better to not give your opinion.

Because if you are sitting around giving away your unsolicited opinions, you eventually become unsolicited.

Put a price to your opinions. Sometimes that price is being asked.

Too much advice, opinions and points of view are means to show you know better and people don’t. The latter is something no one really really likes.

Respect and love is what we are always looking for. Respect and love is something we must give first.

Earlier this month I got myself a Penguin Box set from the World Book Fair, held in Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi.

First things first, I had read some nice reviews about the box set. Also, it was at 40% off with an MRP of ₹6,999. A great deal.

Now, going to the crux. How were the books? Were they worth it? Would I recommend it?

Here is my analysis of it:

1. There are 80 books in the box set. Obviously you are not going to adore every single one of them. But I found myself to be enjoying a lot of them.
2. There is something for every genre. Since I do not read romance, I put those books away. But there are other genres that I would have perhaps never explored had I been buying books in isolation. So that is a huge win.
3. Most of these books are classics. Ideas on life in a manner that the modern world has forgotten how to express. A beautiful, beautiful way to express the most factful yet forgotten things.
4. A book gets finished in less than an hour. It gives you a dopamine burst too. Not bad, if a book it is.
5. A lot of books in the world we live in today are written with the sole intent of capturing more audience, building a brand, or words like that. While that is fine, a true writer writes for the joy of writing, even if they are not a full-time writer. Which is exactly what I discovered in every single one of those books. No exception.

So if you are thinking of it, don’t think. Please get it. It’s for the keeps.

Few months back I wrote a piece on “Why I never got married“.

It was my straight-from-the heart quip on why I never followed the society.

Despite being an old post, even as on today at least 90% of emails and DMs to me on this topic have followed a similar pattern:

Women: All of them agree. Congratulate me. “You go girl!”

Men: “I think you should consider becoming a glorified educated high earning bai that makes babies too, you would become such a great mother and partner.” My foot toenail. Less than 10% of men reading it like it too, but the rest comments are exactly a replica of this:

My reason to not get married was not my sister’s marriages. Or because I am keeping myself “busy”. But men leave their ability to use ears and brain together back in their mom’s wombs.

Only someone who has not read this piece to understand it, and to understand how a marriage takes the toll only on a girl’s life by making her a glorified bai would write this. Because men don’t read and listen what is right in front of them, they just thopofy.

We all need it each time we have lost our self control.

We lose our self control when we have not paused even for a moment to give it to ourselves.

We don’t give self control to ourselves because we think if we keep doing things for others, they will reciprocate and then we won’t need to fill ourselves up.

People might reciprocate but the only thing that is going to make you self-reliant is filling yourself up. The only way is books, nature walks, meditation, talking to yourself, morning pages.

Give to yourself. So you control yourself. You have the need to control. Fulfill it with yourself. So you don’t need to control others.

• Self pity
• Self sabotage
• Internet first thing in the morning
• Internet last thing before bed
• Making fitness your last priority

I have seen super positive people turn into narcissists because of the impact of their partner.

Their empathy

I have hardly seen someone with less vibe turn more positive after being with a positive person.

Negativity pulls you down, after the initial period of mistaking breadcrumbs for sumptuous meal is over.

Our surroundings change us more visibly than the invisible forces they operate with every single breath of our lives.

At the start, it is important to begin more than it is important to research. Especially true if you cannot stop thinking about it, no matter what. At this point asking too many questions is a procrastination camouflaged in research.

The right time to then ask questions is:

• when you are stuck and someone else’s experience could help us

But in general I have found that treading carefully on your path one step at a time, one meditation and nature walk at a time, one good book at a time, often solves all your questions.

An answer to a question every single one of us must figure out for ourselves.

Because if we do not know how to get bored, we will end up scrolling.

So every single one of us must have a list of grandma hobbies that we do when we get bored. If not grandma hobbies, at least hobbies that do not require a screen.

So knitting, cooking, baking, painting, stitching, crotchet, cleaning, organising, reading (paperback), making notes (on a notebook), recording random insights for your projects (on a notebook), looking out of the window for no reason, etc., are all forms of getting bored.

It is also important that you figure how to get bored at your own home. Otherwise consumerism would teach you to go bowling or shopping and again make you reliant on again avoiding boredom while being at home. The only time your boredom should allow you to go out of home is to play a sport or catch up with a friend or for a walk. Basically, anything that fulfills you internally and does not cost money to get done.

Get bored. Otherwise the thing in your hand is working day and night to make your mind get burnt.

When people are upset with someone close in their lives, their mind wanders to default replacements of them. If not actually replacing them, but their mind does create pictures of a fantasy where someone else would make them happy.

And what I have learnt is no human being could ever make you fully happy.

Because everyone is striving for their own happiness in their own weird ways.

Even if someone makes you momentarily happy, the more you grow dependent on them, the more that happiness for you becomes a merged misery for both of you.

Thus, spirituality has taught me to learn to be happy with God. He is the ocean of happiness, ocean of love. So always be taking love from Him. Always make Him your source of happiness.

So when you go out there into the world and interact with other human beings, you remember that your role here is to give them happiness which you are consistently, day in and day out, taking from God, the ocean of Happiness.

Take from God. Give to humans. You expect taking from humans is where all happiness turns into a hurdle.

“If the time it takes is more than the money you would make in that time, outsource it.”

Except, some things cannot be outsourced. Maybe shouldn’t is a better word.

Like getting bored.

Or making time for your family.

Or making your bed.

Exercise.

Reading.

Spending your day meaningfully so that your mind stops meandering.

Outsource. Please outsource often. But know what is something that needs to be done by you for your sanity and serenity.

Should only be for positive actions. With a clear intention.

A positive action with an intention of FOMO and not of self growth often translates into a negative action.

…for anything in particular.

But most of all sending them a message.

“Can I send you a message?” is a message that shows less about your politeness and more about your polite disrespect of their (and your) time.

Get to the point in the first message itself

At worst, you don’t get a response. At best, you do.

Everyone does charity. In bits and pieces. As per their shraddha. As per what seems right to them and their goals.

But expecting people to do charity in the name of business is not the classiest act.

Do not support it. Do not think “at least I must be grateful for work”.

If you won’t respect yourself, no one else would.
If you don’t respect any other artist, you won’t ever be able to create good work on your own.

It works both ways. As effectively.

Be gentle with yourself.

Remind yourself why the past is the past.

Give good wishes for everyone who comes to your mind.

And move on. The past is prevented from being vast by not making it last.