- You wait till reaching the luggage belt, to turn on your phone from airplane mode.
- You have no interest in stalking your ex. (or y or zee).
- You let go of people whom you thought were friends, when they proved you wrong.
- You go out and do your own thing, not to put anyone down – because who you would be if you were not you?
- You care. I mean really care.
Tag: friends
- The ability to not press Alt + Tab while working.
- The ability to focus only on the Google Doc you’re working on, and not reach out to your phone.
- The ability to forgive your “friends” who never asked for an apology.
- The ability to grow your people yet be inspiring instead of dominating.
- The ability to sit for 90 minutes straight and only work.
I want to write about pain.
I want to write about pain I felt at a recent trip.
I want to write about the pain only my Mom saw in the photos, while everyone was saying I was having fun!
I want to write about the pain of self-betrayal when you don’t stay true to yourself.
I want to write about the loneliness of being abandoned by so-called friends.
I want to write about how is it even possible for people to wear different masks – of goodness on one side and of I don’t care on the other side.
I want to write about the pain I feel when I am sidelined, because I am not cool.
I want to write about the pain when people reach out to me only because I have access to certain data and information while others don’t.
I want to write about the pain I felt when you thought that just because I am strong, you can walk over me at any time.
I want to write about the pain that how I was so blinded to the truth that lay right in front of me, just because I craved validation.
I want to write about the pain I perhaps brought to other colleagues by running after useless validation.
I want to write about the pain of how I let my “friends” come to my home and take my book, do random stuff, talk loudly, etc., while I was not even allowed a place on their bed when I went to their home. How can I do such random stuff just for validation?
I want to write about the pain of how it is eating me up because from now on, I will show the strong non-vulnerable version of me.
I want to write about the pain of how I pick “familiar” unavailable people – either as ex-es or as friends. Btw, this one is liberating, because that is how I can change my patterns.
I want to write about the pain of writing about pain, just because I did not listen to my intuition.
It turns out, the intuition is always whispering to us to change our patterns. It is up to us to be silent enough to listen, so that we don’t carried away by the noise.
We all have variety of friends.
However, everyone has these common characteristics:
- They make you feel valued
- You don’t have to go beg for attention
- They care about loving you as much as they care about loving themselves, and vice versa
- You have clear communications, even fights
- You feel alive in their company, not left alone.
We both used to be friends once, to the extent that we used to ask each other “kya delete kiya”?
Things change, we change.
Even if we don’t want, we move on.
I wish I could give you a happy ending, but I myself don’t have any. Sorry 🙁
- The vibes with which your food is cooked (Always radiating purity and power to food for 30 secs works like a charm).
- The people you follow on social media (Unfollow without notifying people is the best thing that could have happened.)
- The WA groups you are in (I delete WA group chats without even seeing them!)
Just for one minute, just for one minute I popped out of my room and saw Maa watching Anupama, where someone is telling her, I wish everyone had this blessing of memory loss.
Maa be like: I agree!
Damn!
Okay, you want to forget?
Forget.
As simple as this. You remember because you remember, nothing else.
I remember my first relationship – I was so sooo deep into the memories of it years after it got over, that I remembered the chats of our conversations for years. Years! And this is after I deleting all of those, with NO back-up at all.
At a certain point, I remember it happened in early 2019, I forgot everything. EVERYTHING.
As a matter of fact, very recently I was reading my book which I wrote early in 2019 and was going through a snippet of chat, and I was like, “Dude, I didn’t know I remembered all of this!”
Forgetting is not a super power. It’s a choice.
Yes, it happened.
Not on my bedsheet.
Rather on the sheet of a meditation hall of a huge retreat center.
Yes, you read that right.
I had just had my dinner, and had gone to the meditation room to let go of what was in my head.
Little did I know I would let go of much more 🙂
Since I was menstruating, I thrust my kurta behind, before sitting on the floor – that had mattress covered with white sheet.
And when I got up, I left an imprint! A huge one!!
Surprisingly the kurta was stainless because it had been thrust back, it was through the leggings that the stain had escaped
Now I had two options:
I could tell myself: “Nishtha you have been menstruating more than half of your life, and you do not know even this basic thing of taking care?”
Or, I could get up and find for a solution.
I got up, and told the girl next to me (by disturbing her meditation) of what had happened, and she helped me out.
She suggested to keep my bag on one side of the stain, and she kept sitting on the other side. Meanwhile, she asked me to bring a wet handkerchief from my room to clean it.
I ran to my room. Changed. Got a handkerchief. Made it wet. Ran again.
Did the operation. Didn’t succeed.
Then she suggested, this time I keep sitting, and she will bring a bit of soap from her room.
In all this, the coordinator who was taking care of the premises started turning off the lights, and requested me to leave. I said I’m waiting for someone, and requested for ten more minutes.
He waited. Then said he has to come back early morning. So he insisted.
Then another girl next to me told him what the real problem was.
After which he became quiet, and waited.
Then came the face wash. And my handkerchief. With few drops of water from the girl who told the coordinator to wait.
And I rubbed and I rubbed. For ten full minutes. Post which it finally became clean.
Though the mattress was wet, but it wasn’t red anymore.
Lesson learnt: Take extra care going on, however, if you screw up, figure out solutions instead of screwing yourself up further.
This morning I posted a one-liner on LinkedIn:
You don’t know how much you can learn, until you sign up to learn.
Had two really weird comments.
Comment 1:
Comment 2 (Reply to Comment 1 by a stranger):
Thank you, to the wonderful community that stands for strangers and corrects the not-so-good others are standing for.
Thank you! 😊
This morning I had slept again after meditating.
In that sleep, I witnessed two dreams in one. The weird part is, for the first time I remember such a weird dream.
One was from the first guy I (perhaps) loved. I received WhatsApp messages from him dropping me three locations where I would have to “meet” him later during the day. Of course I ignored those messages.
Later when I reflected, it dawned to me that this was the essence of our so-called love: “Meeting” as per his convenience and then becoming absolute strangers.
Another one was from a school friend. In fact, we were never friends in school. Very late, almost 2-3 years ago we connected on Facebook and became sort-of friends. But then he vanished all of a sudden. I was never told why or how, nor was any conversation brought in. He tried bringing his “forwarded messages” into my inbox quite recently but now I was unsure.
It was just friendship from my end. And his as well. But somewhere I always felt he needed something from me. Can’t point out exactly. But there was something. In the dream as well, he took my iPhone from me for making a call and as I moved around a bit, he had already lent my phone to a careless friend of his, who was just playing around with it. It was in a moment of luck that I saw his friend and got my phone back.
That’s it! These were the two dreams. I don’t know what they mean. Except that I do. Here’s what they mean:
- I still haven’t forgiven them. As a matter of fact, I didn’t think about either of them for a long long time, yet the subconscious knows everything. Sometimes, to move on, you have the grant the apology even when no one asks for it.
- If I still believe in these “shoddy definitions of love”, how will I ever be able to witness the true love that IS me?
That was it! Weird dreams that I weirdly remembered. Perhaps so that I could finally forget them!
Love. Such a beautiful word.
We are born with it. We are not taught how to love. It is our real nature. We come along with it.
We smile at our family and strangers alike.
We talk to anyone and everyone irrespective of their colour or race.
We trust people for who they are.
We forgive quickly.
We are just real, with no judgements, no gossip, and definitely no need to control anyone.
This is who we are when we were born – real and untainted.
Then a terrible thing happened.
We realised the world does not function this way. The world is sadly living in a manufactured definition of love.
Where we will be loved when we recite a poetry in front of our relatives.
Where we will be loved when we get certain percentage in schools and colleges.
Where we will be loved when we pursue a life choice that isn’t ours but of people who “love” us.
Where we will be loved when we agree to making “love” with a partner otherwise they will question our character.
Where we will be loved by our “friends” if and only if we gossip with them about other friends.
And if we do none of these and walk our own talk, we will not be loved.
Be like him.
Talk like her.
Look at what he has accomplished.
Words and people that were meant to make us rise, end up diminishing our self confidence infinitely.
And then we wonder why don’t we feel the love we used to feel as a kid.
At this point, each one of us has two choices:
- Fall for this manufactured definition of love, follow the norms others have laid down for you, and be someone who again gives manufactured love. But wait, you will have everyone there with you, to “love” you. Other than you.
- Be who you are, being respectful of others yet doing what you feel is right. Own your life, and take the steps that you want to take. It will be easier. But guess what? You will almost always be alone on this journey.
Most of us fall for the first one. Not because we cannot hear our inner voice. But because the external voices of manufactured love will stop coming to us if we love ourselves. And that’s scary.
Very few of us, very very few of us, who take the plunge to love ourselves, live a life of real luxury. There are roadblocks and hurdles at the start, but when you overcome them (and you always do), what comes out is You. Real You. Who is love. Not manufactured. Rather real love. And then solving all problems becomes a skill that gets compounded and works in your favour 🙂
Every single day, we have two choices – be the Real Love or fall for Manufactured Love. It is not a one-time choice. It is a daily choice.
The choices that we make daily, will determine how much real love we become.
And give to the people looking at us to show them how the world works.
I had watched Big Boss Season 1.
After that, my intellect saved me forever.
However recently, I came across a Big Boss clip on Instagram, that made me think deeply.
Here’s how it goes:
The contestants are being allowed to meet their family. When Jasmin’s parents come, they force her to play her own game alone, and not with Aly. Aly was her friend and they both fell in love during the show. They show a slightly negative vibe towards her friend.
Maybe her parents are against her marriage with him, we don’t know.
But the way they told this to her made me think of two things:
- They could have refused for marriage when she came out, at least she would have her parents (which she does not have in Big Boss house) if not Aly with her. Har cheez ka sahi samay hota hai.
- For playing her game alone, this is how most parents tell their kids to do all their lives: Not to make friends. They will play on you. But you know what, trust others to the extent you cannot afford to lose. If you don’t invest, you won’t grow. If you invest too much to lose yourself, you will of course lose yourself. But advising a locked daughter to play alone and not “trust strangers” where anyway there are a lot of mental health issues going on, shows how much as a society we lack trust.
I feel for you sista.
This too, shall pass.
Honestly, I do not give any damn about her relationship with Aly because we don’t know what would happen when they both go out. But not making friends and playing alone is not how the game of life is played.
If you don’t get out of yourself, you’ve lost already.
Sometimes I wish I was rich and famous.
Haha, isn’t that an ironical statement looking at my other posts?
Of course, it is.
However, here’s why I wish so:
Today I had a rift with a very good friend. She’s been super-supportive through some good valleys of life. However, each week we work on a project where I am supposed to proofread a document and she is supposed to ship it. There are other and bigger projects as well that we both work on. (This was a humble rant to show this is not only what we do :D)
So occasionally when we are not able to deliver on our project, either of us texts the other person to follow up. Last week, she did not text me, and as I realised I had to do the work, she had already shipped by then. This week, I followed up with her, however, she did not want to give me the access of the original doc (I know this because I specifically asked for credentials which the boss wanted her to share with me) so she sent me an email.
After doing the edits, I sent her the email. She responded with requiring me to highlight the changes. I said editing the core doc takes lesser time, and I do respect that you do not want to share your credentials, however, it will take more time for me to highlight that. She came back with doing it herself, along with two more solutions that were invalid according to me, however, after this I said I would have loved to do it for you had you told me straight away instead of doing things to make me do more efforts, and also apologised if anything hurt her.
No response from her.
Honestly, it felt bad.
Not because she did not “respect” me by responding. Rather because I thought we were friends and I deserved a communication and clarity from a friend.
It also felt sad because she works at one of THE top companies of the world and I have left my job to pursue writing full time (PS: I do make money that is more than my job as CA however that’s for another day) however I do not have that title with me. Maybe this was not her intention. The world, though, by default respects the ones with titles and the ones who flaunt of having more money.
I felt sad. Cried over this small thing that perhaps even doesn’t matter. Felt sad because I couldn’t create a good relationship with someone whom I thought was a friend. Sad because aren’t we supposed to be honest with our friends? Sad because I did not wake up in the morning to “grab hold” of her credentials, rather was genuinely performing my duty. Sad because maybe because of this we may never be vulnerable with each other again, however I do love her as a friend and do not want to let her go.
But, out of pure love for a human being, I wish we both brought more love onto the table.
Yet, it is the role of good friends to respect and accept each other as they are. So here we go, I’ll work on not questioning this part of her (she definitely must have had a reason) and rather be kinder towards her.
But it felt bad.
Perhaps this won’t matter a month or even a week later. Perhaps none of us is wrong. Perhaps both of us are. Perhaps she doesn’t even remember this. Perhaps she will do something good to me tomorrow out of pure intentions and we will forget about this.
However, after a leap of today’s sadness, will come multiple new lessons and thousand new ways to love those who already offer themselves to you.
True love, is loving your friends without waiting for them to love you back. Don’t hold grudges however keep a mental note to not to offer them your vulnerability again.
We all go through different layers of friendships.
Starting with school. Then college friends. Then friends in our jobs. Succeeded by our latest friends.
In all these stages, we have some “hello” kind of friends, some are good friends, and some become our lifelong friends.
And as much as we believe that our latest friends are our best friends (of course, they are the ones who pop up on our Instagram stories), the older the friend, the greater the understanding.
No matter you cry and talk about your boss with your latest friends, your college friends actually know where that is coming from.
No matter how much nostalgic we are with our college friends and our wonderful memories, our school friends do not need that – they are our by default psychiatrists and psychologists.
Every relationship gets stronger with the passage of time, of course, when it is nurtured consistently.
Time is power in friendships, and not investing that is losing on exponential rewards of love and belonging to a community.
Last weekend, I was having a casual chat with a writer friend.
After exchanging pleasantries, I thanked him for helping me bag a wonderful client, to which he responded, “Thanks to YOU, it’s your hard work.” And thus, we continued being humble.
As the conversation proceeded, he told me he had also applied for a writing engagement, which was finally bagged by me.
Those words of him just moved me. Here I was, getting envious of the number of clients and interesting assignments he has, and here he was, perhaps having the same emotion as me.
Too often, we take the most important things in life for granted.
The work that brings food on our plate.
The parents (no matter how weird they are) that make us fight for our existence 🙂
The friends who make us realise we aren’t alone.
The colleagues and clients who understand us when we had expected to be fired.
And most importantly, counting the endless blessings in our life when the Life we have today was the life we had dreamt of years ago.
How will we get more and be more if we aren’t grateful for what we have already been blessed with?
Thank you, my dear friend, your humility was always an inspiration for me. Now you are an inspiration to be grateful for my blessings. You rock! Like always 🙂
The ones who are unlike you.
The ones who challenge your beliefs.
Those who don’t let you down, no matter what.
The ones who are there for you.
And the ones who are there with you.
(PS: This post is inspired by the good good time I’m having with my friends these days 😎)
People are going to be dissatisfied with you.
At home.
At work.
Friends maybe.
There’re two things to reflect:
a. Is it a reflection of their own dissatisfaction?
Or
b. Is there something you really need to change.
In either cases, you have the power. You just need to let go of your first-emotion crisis. You just need to decide.
Today I saw a dance video of a friend of mine. She apparently was dancing with her college gang. Their energy, sync in moves, facial expressions and body language – revealed more than words ever could.
Here’s what my little knowledge of psychology tells me:
- The people we surround ourselves with determine who we become.
- Even they didn’t know that their friends play so important role in their happiness.
- It is the best thing if we choose our people wisely, and if we don’t that’s a doom on us.
But why are we talking about this?
Because I was a star player in my first job because I was nurtured that way.
In my second job, things changed drastically because:
- I asked a lot of questions, which made my manager believe I am getting too excited and I don’t know anything.
- I was always happy and booming with joy, which was also perceived as a sign of dumbness.
- Most importantly, there was once a trainer who was invited to our office. Those days my manager wasn’t talking to me (yes, that also happened!) because I had taken two days off owing to ill health. My work was in sync, so I attended the one-hour zumba session that the trainer conducted.
And damn, after that session it was a guilty feeling that encircled me. The feeling that I should have sat stuck at my desk because my boss would like it – I just didn’t want to be limited by that feeling so I attended the Zumba session. And more than anything else, it was organized by the HR of the company, and I, inter alia, received a formal email from her for attending the session.
This was just one instance, I could lay at least ten such instances that made me feel small in the organisation. Btw, instead of teaching me how to solve difficult problems, my manager used to ask me: “Will you be able to do it?” This wasn’t because I had proved my inability to him, it was because in our informal conversations he always highlighted how he felt men were more apt to doing this job.)
Was I wrong? Yes, in the desire of joining that organisation, I was wrong. Was I wrong in my stint at that workplace? Well, only if curiosity and cheerfulness are wrong.
In a fortunate tale of events, my leader did not like me and asked me to “look for further opportunities” because I didn’t fit the bill of fitting in.
I did get out of the organisation, and it was the best thing that happened to me.
Now, before we conclude, there were some good things in the organisation:
- They did provide me bread and butter
- The operations and sales team were driven to meet the customer needs, always
- We had a break of one month after working for two months (good as well as not so good as all drive was lost).
- My manager (yes the one who stopped talking to me) was cool and calm (sadly not driving me to performance.)
- He said he felt bad about the leader asking me to leave, and it was all in good intent. He treated me like his daughter and perhaps because of which never bothered enough to make me bold enough to face the muddy waters of the job which is of the most importance to perform.
But this post isn’t necessarily about what was good in the organisation that I worked with, and what wasn’t. It was more about the culture. All organisations are the best – if they hire the right people
My friend was dancing along with her friends and they all enjoyed it. I danced with my colleagues and my non-communicative manager felt worse because of this. Of course that guilt slid into me. Of course that did affect me.
That is why it is important to review the company and the culture you are working with.
It is going to be hard, but so is it hard for the company to find the right fit for them. If they could do the emotional labour of being patient and going through the difficult stuff, so is it your responsibility to move the needle and go to the place you would be proud to say in your first page interview.
Forming relationships is beyond connecting with people from LinkedIn to WhatsApp.
Forming relationships is just being the genuine human being that you are, without ulterior motive of collaborations.
When you do so, just because you want to give, what you’ll receive will come to you manifold.
New friends.
When you find new friends of course you feel great, you feel like you have arrived home.
Yet at the same time it’s it would be great to remember that those friends help you make you a bigger version of you, a better version of you.
Would be wise to not be like them rather being just the best version of you. Balance of love. Best of both worlds.