Paradoxes

"This life, this month, this day, I am never going to forget. Not because so many things happened but because so many things became a memory. You know, it is good for a moment to pass and turn into a memory. It makes sure that you don't face the same thing again until you consciously travel in your conscious." she wrote her mind and pressed the enter button after considering what she had written. For a while, pondering over the fact that he don't care. That he would never care. In this life, at-least no.

He received the text, immediately. Swiping down the notification panel, he further swiped the notification, not pressing it but elongating it in order to read it then and there so that he can ignore the words that might pierce him. He read, focusing, manipulating and interpreting each word.
It was difficult for him to resist a reply, after all it was 'her' message that he had received. He thought, pressurizing his neurons to think and stir a reply.

"I am glad that it turned into a memory for you. But don't forget that I am still alive, if not with you then at-least in your memory that you would avoid reaching out to. But how paradoxical it all seems. 'Never going to forget' and then 'travel in your conscious' to unravel it. How forgetting is linked with remembering a memory, which is already forgotten the moment it has passed. All I want is you to be happy and do whatever makes you happy." he typed and sent without thinking even once about what he had written. "People leaving often makes you happy, and today I am the happiest. And I always did the 'whatever' that will make me happy. Like letting you go and more than that, finding a reason that makes you leave." she replied in a tone too careless for him to handle. That was not what he has expected; for her to not care.

They were just two paradoxes who tried to live together but eventually repelled each other.

A Reader In Solace

Sometimes I wish if someone could just walk and ask me about the books I wish to read, the wisdom I long to gulp. I hope that there will be a day when I would wake up to my favorite books and smell the words and hug the colors they would offer. Nothing tempts me more than the paperbacks and hardcovers with yellow pages printed in black. I reside where the books are! And simultaneously reside inside the books I read. And therefore, it is not just one life that I live, it is the life of the books that I read and live. Sometimes I wonder about how crazily one can fall in love with so many lives and cherish them altogether.

Books are so much better than humans, making you cry but making you better with each silently moving tear. Hurting you but eventually loving you too, unlike humans.
I am the words I read, the books I love and the silence I breathe.
People call books, a fantastical world, aloof from the reality it is the best bitter picture of the reality.
I didn't experience much and yet I experienced so much at the same time, joining them from star to star and making a constellation.
I lost myself when people had left, feel dejected umpteen times but words etched in the books always paved the way towards harmony after each page I read. I was not born reading but I definitely intend to die while reading. A reader in solace.
And if ever you fail to find me, search at the places where the books are, search in the places where meaningful words lie, in between the curves of the words and the spaces that connect them and you would find me in a position, better for everyone.

Stoic Calm

"Life itself is unhappy", this is what I heard in the middle of a lecture while my mind wandered in the outside world, searching for stillness. 

For a moment, I felt someone consoling me, telling me that it is okay to be lost, to be sad about something that happened days ago, but life is really an unhappy one and we are constantly consoling ourselves with the lie of how beautiful it is. 

I then woke up from the arms of the Morpheus, this time concentrating on what my lecturer had to say [she knew that I was depressed, she knew that something was bothering me, and I know this because she questioned me about what was disturbing me so much]. 

Sometimes all we need is someone to randomly ask us about our state of mind and she did that. Her question soothed me; she cared. 

And it was then that I got to know about what she was teaching. 

                                                                                   Riya Jain ©

'Acceptance of the fact that life is unhappy resulting in ones indifference towards joy and dejection.'

It was called the Stoic philosophy. Where "the Stoics taught that destructive emotions resulted from errors in judgement, and that a sage, or a person of "moral and intellectual perfection", would not suffer such emotions... that the best indication of an individual's philosophy was not what a person said but how that person behaved." 

And then I realized that how important it was for me to be a Stoic. Life would be so much better when you stare at the moon and it makes you feel nothing. When you walk on the road and don't feel the need of having someone to walk with. When you could just be detached, disinterested and neutral. 

And when it seems hard to forget something, it is these little philosophies that reincarnate you into a better self, a stronger self. 

“Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day.” 

-  Markus Zusak 

Shrunken Human

"Come up to meet you, tell you I'm sorry
You don't know how lovely you are

I had to find you
Tell you I need you
Tell you I set you apart"

- Coldplay

You are the world, shrunk into a human. 
Why do you have to search for smiles outside yourself then?
Don't get consumed by what other people do to you, be your own consumption. 
You are enough for me, so let your little heart dream, of not the man who kissed you yesterday but the self who has been with you since years and will be there tomorrow. Don't let that self, bend down. 

You are a survivor; you can survive anything and everything. Rise above the love that hurts you, the hatred that stops you and makes your mind wander hopelessly amongst the flocculent clouds. Walk out of the mind corralled with the thoughts of someone who does not care, of something that splinters your spirit. 
You are a map, find the empty spaces and fill it with the happiness not given by the 'other'. Perfuse the ocean with the echos of your soul. Occlude the States not with the bright light that blinds you like the darkness, but the sunlight that fuses life into the body each morning. 
Yesterday he held your hand and he felt good, he kissed your neck, your ear and his heartbeats escalated. Today, hold your hand and make yourself feel better, turn your head away and don't let the scars of his kiss remain. 
Walking away is difficult, but it is not impossible either. Leaving memories behind is harrowing but they will fade with time. 
Work on yourself and let the love, love you; let the care, care for you; let the brokenness surface you in a way that it heals you. 
Be your purest self and I will love you the way I loved him yesterday, the way I carried his heart in mine, the way I took care of the new book I bought; the way, I take care of the words I write. 

You are the world shrunk into a human and a single person cannot break this world down.