Hooking Up!! Worth or Not?

My friend and I were talking about hooking up one day. I was telling her that hooking up is just two people agreeing to use each other. She answered that it was ok, As long as the partners are in agreement of using each other, there was no issue. I was surprised with her answer considering she was a girl.

So what is hooking up anyway?

Hooking up typically means some kind of casual sexual contact, up to and including intercourse itself. It is very “in” and rampant in yuppiedom.

We live in a time where hooking up is not scandalous anymore. As long as you are both “consenting adults” you can hook up. Even if society has justified “using each other”, the fact still remains that a person has been used. And people were never created to be used, only to be loved.

To be used means that your dignity has been lowered to an object. Only objects are used. It means that your partner or yourself has disrespected the dignity of the other. The other is no longer a human being but an object of my desire.

Speaking of such relationships, I think, “Deep within yourself, listen to your conscience which calls you to be pure. . . . A home is not warmed by the fire of pleasure which burns quickly like a pile of withered grass. Passing encounters are only a caricature of  love, they injure hearts and mock our own innerself’s plan.”  In the long run, no one benefits from these kinds of relationships.

I heard of one young husband who said, “I would do anything, anything, to forget the sexual experiences I had before I met my wife. . . . The pictures of the past and the other women go through my head, and it’s killing any intimacy. The truth is, I have been married to this wonderful woman for eight years and I have never been ‘alone’ in the bedroom with her.”

When you “hook up” for fun, physical intimacy begins to lose its depth, greatness, sacredness, and power to bond two people. Sex creates a bond between partners. That is how it was created so husband and wife will stay with each other. If you are making having sex as casual as a hand shake, you are like a masking tape that has been stuck from one skin to the next. Sooner or later, the tape will lose its bonding ability. So will you if you go hooking up here and there.

“Often this is nothing more than two people agreeing to use each other for mutual gratification. They receive the physical pleasure of being held and the emotional pleasure of being desired, and they remain together so long as they are a source of pleasure for each other. This is not far from prostitution.” – Jason Evert

All of us desire to be loved. But as long as we are treating each other as objects, we will never be satisfied. 

Only real love can satisfy us. It is a love that is patient and pure.

We were never created to be used, only to be loved.

To “hook up” is to get hooked down. And you deserve better.

Be Youself.

Do you value style more than substance? Are you just loud and no melody?

Most people these days have devoted their time, energy and money in showing off. Their lives revolve on being someone who they are not. They become so absorbed trying to live the lifestyle to which they do not belong. They love to be seen even though there is nothing to see (in them).

They love to be shocking to get attention. They are like colorful balloons. They look pretty on the outside but all air in the inside.

These people seem to have everything except themselves. In their pretending they have forgotten who they really are. They have come to be ashamed of their past life, friends and mostly their past selves. They will desperately protect their status quo even if their actual status is a big O.

But these pretenders cannot escape themselves in the end. Their shallow ways of life will soon evaporate. And then, they will only be left with themselves, their real selves. They will have to look at the man in the mirror whom they hate and deny.

On the contrary, a person of substance is a person who does not pretend. He knows who he is, no more no less. He is joyful of his strengths and aware of his weakness. He tries to improve himself, but he does it based on reality. He does not change his “acting”, but he changes his being. The more he changes himself for the better, the more people respect him. He does not need to pretend to be someone who is not because he knows it is useless.

A person of substance does not try to win the approval of others. But others try to win his approval. He does not have the desire to shock and awe others. He knows that silent waters run deep.

Real Independence means making yourself free from all virtues which take you far from yourself.


Stop pretending.

Be yourself.

Be your better self.

Train Journey

I am in a train and its morning now. I just take the newspaper of my co-passenger to throw a look on it (generally in a train whole compartment reads 1 newspaper in installments). The headline is “Train meets accident in XYZ”. Despite sitting in AC coach I start sweating like anything.

I had read somewhere,

डर लगे तो गाना गा..

And I start whispering a song..

ज़िंदगी का सफर, है ये कैसा सफर,

कोई समझा नही, कोई जाना नही……

But mind is not ready to surrender at any cost. The train is speeding and so are my heartbeats.

Newspaper in hand and Lord Yamraj before eyes.

I start remembering few lines from a “baba” which I had seen as a result of my father’s “Astha Prem” and of course, the single television set at my home. “Body is a cloth. Soul is immortal. In this world full of illusion, everything is mortal.” These days whenever I am in a train, I get philosophical like this only.

Few moments back, coach attendant had came and delivered my white bed-sheet and pillow. These white clothes are haunting me more.

A line from famous urdu poet “Bashir” creeps in my mind.

उजाले अपनी यादों के हमारे साथ रहने दो,

न जाने किस गली मे ज़िंदगी की शाम हो जाये |

This passage of coach seems like “lane of life”.

Not so long ago, a gentleman was going to Delhi from Motihari by train. At every station, he used to get down from the train, buy ticket and then revert back to his seat. A co-passenger asked him why he was doing like that. Why dint he buy a single ticket directly to Delhi? Gentleman replied with ease, My doctor has advised me not to travel long distances at one go. So, I am cutting my journey short by buying tickets for small distances. And I was like, What an intelligent you are??? My girlfriend will give you a tough competition.

Same process is being repeated by a co-passenger in my compartment. He is taking a ticket for next station at each station. I casually ask him are you also prescribed by your doctor not to travel long at once?????... He starts laughing and replies, No “bhai sahab”, every third day a train is meeting an  accident. There is no guarantee to reach next station also. So why to waste money by buying a single ticket for whole journey.

I start thinking that I am the only duffer sitting here. In spite of sitting idle, I am getting scared and

thinking…

 जब प्यार (रेल यात्रा) किया तो डरना क्या …

प्यार (रेल यात्रा) करने वाले कभी डरते नही...जो डरते हैं वो प्यार (रेल यात्रा) करते नही..

Dream.. Follow.. Achieve..

Life without purpose or purpose without life!!!

What’s your story?

Each of us is blessed with this ultimate gift life. And that’s the place where the job of eternity ends. Now it is our turn to make our move. Make our presence felt in world. And to make this work, there are no shortcuts. All which is required is a plan, a process and a successful implementation.

Have you ever thought why only few among us dare to do something new? Why all of us can’t do this? Do we lack something or do those guys have something called x-factor in them?  Everybody out there says “Youth is the Future of Era”. But where our youth is utilizing his/her all energy?

Higher secondary!!! The time when every mind has a dream, a vision. Dream to do something big. Vision of achieving the ultimate. Everybody has this dream and vision, I also had. But why with time passing by we begun to forget our dream. Have you ever thought?

Some of us just start to do what others are already doing. May be that “other” had this as his/her dream. But aren’t we doing injustice with ours by copying theirs? Where ours has gone? Is it tough to go with it or we just don’t want to go on path of our dream? Then why the hell you dreamt of getting something big? Putting off your arms even before the battle starts is never a wise thing to do.  Intelligence is not just trying. Any dream is never big unless you have no confidence in yourself. All we have to do is to think, “If he/she can do it, why can’t I?” And once you are ready to go past the reluctance of following the path of you dream, no obstacle can be herculean enough to divert you from your path, Perhaps here also the working law is same as the Newton’s Law of friction which “only at the beginning you need to surpass limiting friction in order to get in motion.”  So same happens in our mortal life also, Courage, Confidence and Attitude level at the time of starting matter. Afterwards we get used to it. The path may seem full of thorny bushes but once you start, way itself will be coming out for you.

    

“Nothing is sure”.

If the above saying is correct then I say “Everything is possible”.

And when everything is possible why we are scared of losing? Failure can also be a motivation all you have to think the other way. Its not that you failed, but it is that, you got to know one way which is not going to work for you. All you have to start again and chose an alternate path.

A life without purpose can never be a better option. And day may come when you have a purpose in your life but you may not have time for pursuing it.

So, assemble all your weapons, gather all your energy, keep your confidence level at its peak and get set go on the path of following and achieving your dream. I bet, you gonna make it for sure.

Meeting Myself

I sat with my diary to pen down an article for my blog. Just like any other day. But I was not feeling like the same as the other days. I was feeling like what I am going to write. If I myself am broken, how can I think that I will make others happy. How??

Its like I am meeting an unknown. An unknown who is more like me. An unknown who knows me very well, he is making me worried of things and next moment he is providing me with all courage needed to overcome those worries. An unknown who is narrating me my piece of situation. I want to fly. Up above all, far in the sky. I have that courage. I have that fire burning within me but why today I am feeling as someone has stoned my wings. Why today I am unable to ignite the flame which burns that drastic fire within me which leads me to where I want to go. Why today I am feeling so helpless as I have nothing left for me.

If I start to analyze myself over last 1 year. There have been only ups and ups. A happy life going all way with a beautiful girl in my life for almost two years now. Supporting family as ever. Happening friends. And then a sudden “u” turn, that figure of love out of my sight rest being the same. I was supposed to be broken then, complaining with my life that why I am at the receiving end today but I never did so. I accepted it as any other truth and kept moving. And then there was the “era of change” I should tell. My involvement in all sort of activities around me led to a better place than ever. A sense of responsibility over my shoulders for tasks assigned to me. Interaction with new people each and every day. A new beginning every morning and zeal of doing something new again the next morning. Yes, I was feeling the myself really close to me. I had not felt the same ever.

Life teaches us at every turn and wise are those who acquire this piece of teaching well. I follow this saying much more than anything else. I try to make myself well geared to face any trough of life. I don't hesitate to share out my feelings publicly. The option of escaping is never in my dictionary but  waiting and then making my move always seems a better option for me a. Unlike many like to move on  in life to know themselves better, I believe in making this happen by doing. By digging out self. I solely believe in "Don’t let anybody else criticize you, but better do it yourself for you to see how much you can take in for what you have been." At this stage of my life, I am sometimes career conscious. But the fear or say desire for it never overcomes my thinking. I need no inspiration from anybody else for it, but I want myself to inspire me. Because I know, I myself can do this better than any possible face on earth. Does everybody feels like same at an instant of time or I am just an exception. An odd man left alone in crowd of many.

I feel like that unknown is saying to me..

“Welcome to the existence..

Welcome to the Earth”

But why now, Why I did not feel anything like this before, or did I feel but I was too busy pursuing other things that I let this feeling go past my thinking. Am I broken today or its just that I am feeling stronger than ever that I need to thank the one who happen to become my past as virtue of a walk with me in this lane of life. It was you whose departure from my life or I say being left upon by you at cross road of my life was something which made me what I am today. Stronger than ever, yet vulnerable. Bank of happiness, yet shed off tears when alone. Occupied by all sort of things, yet very lonely.

I don’t know what I want to or what I am going to write today. I am not getting any single topic in my mind to begin with. I don’t know what words I am penning down today even when I don’t have a fixed conclusion for anything. Is the unknown sitting beside me is another Pritish who is making me worried as well as fuelling me up to move on past all these worries. Is it a cliché or its just like any other day minus my ignorance to this on those days? I am not feeling insecure but at the same time I fear rejection. I feel like being a writer I need to write what my readers want to go read, but today I have been writing my own thoughts.. my own helplessness. Is meeting with this “unknown” going to get over soon or I will have to move past it (again) like rest of days..

Love.. Are you in it????

There are more than 6.7 billion people living on this planet right now. The planet has never been this populated. Yet in this world we have never experienced so much loneliness like we do today.

The more the people there are the less we are supposed to be alone. But many of us are alone. And worse is many of us are lonely.

So what happened with the saying “The more the merrier?”

I believe that the cause of this plague of loneliness is our very own selfishness. We have solely focused everything towards ourselves and forgotten others.

We have chosen to disconnect ourselves to the rest of humanity when we place ourselves in the center of the universe.

Each one of us was made for love. We long to love and be loved. To be denied of love, is to be denied of one of our most basic need. The state or feeling of being unloved is what we often call loneliness. Loneliness is one of the worst poverty one can experience.

Because of our selfishness we have forgotten what real love is.

We have focused our actions on taking than on sharing. We have a world full of Go-Getters and hoarders. Because of our mentality of getting we forgot to give. Now everyone feels deprived and empty because no one is giving.

Unconditional love is scarce these days.

It is funny because our own greed has made us poor. We fill ourselves with worldly stuffs but feel empty in the inside. We jump from one party to the next only to go home feeling so more lonely the before. We pursued to get everything we want, only to realize that it does not cure our emptiness.

I believe the solution to loneliness is love. We must learn give ourselves to be filled. It is in giving that we receive.

The world needs the Go-Givers to make this lonely planet less lonely.

 “Where there is no love, put love and you will draw out love.”

Wake Up Call.. Its Now or Never..

     When was the last time we had seen a young 20 year old wave a poster with some harsh words against system and shout, I want justice, wearing a determined look and anger showing rage in his eyes. Not in a period film but in real life? Are we with any answer? Yes it was, to support Anna Hazare in India Against Corruption movement. But seeing the scenario again, even worst of all conditions, the situation through which the women across our country are going, whatever they are feeling, how they are being treated, aren’t we supposed to stand with a cause again?

       This time in my opinion the cause is more serious, more personal and more humaninitic. Why some people are so unhuman, why they are unable to control their libido and end up harassing a girl forcibly. The recent incident with a 23 year old girl in delhi has again raised a number of eyebrows. When the anti-human activities like this are seeing no end then why we are not coming with a perfect solution to it? Why there has been only one practical death sentence for a rapist (Dhananjay Chatarjee)? When the number of rape cases are increasing every year, especially in our capital city Delhi, where statistics say every third day a girl suffers physical molestation. Leave the eve-teasing and the verbal harassment she undergoes. Why our society takes women just as an object? Why some people just objectify women? Is there any fault in upbringings or the system is making the approach of people towards women like this.

       Amid widespread outrages over the barbaric incidents of molestations of girls over the period, our law system is yet to come with any immediate and proper sentence for culprits. Every time a incident like this occurs, we are made silent by these words of Govt., “This is a shocking incident and we will take all necessary action to ensure that such incidents do not recur in future. At the same time we need to have deterrent punishment to the perpetrators of such crime against women”. Even if the guilty or such beasts are caught, the case goes on forever like others, and names are lost as time passes. If we really want to put an end to the numbers of these unhuman acts, we need to come up with provision of immediate action against the guilty. The low rate of conviction of IPC crimes like rape and molestation, slow trials in such cases, lack of immediate relief and rehabilitation and complete lack of seriousness by the government to deal with policy and legislation confronting women has led to a heightened sense of vulnerability among all sections of women. In my opinion death sentence in public can be better of all options, rather than cooling down the sentiments of people, it will prove to be worthy as many can take lessons from it as the deviants are not afraid of consequence as it comes too little too late.

     Time has come to make people feel a lump in their throat by seeing a massive crowd of youth, the facebook and twitter generation ones moving on roads with slogans in their hands and shouting loudly for the justice to the women, who suffer every another day in every another way. We should be one standing vigil in sun and rains with madness unleashed for this cause & coming forward at all fronts all together even if we don’t know many faces in crowd personally. There might be pros and cons to this movement but believe me, it will work like anything. Participation of youth has always been a biggest of all factors for success of every movement and this time also if campaign is initiated by our generation, the consequence will be swift and progressive. Just think, how many of us can put a hand on heart and say we don’t care about this?? If I am correct, no hand will raise.

     It’s a wake up call. Late but still timely to react. Either react on this to bring and feel the change or just wait and watch to see another headline in newspaper, “girl got raped”.

What "Rio" Teaches us..

The movie Rio is about a macaw parrot Blu, the last male of his species, who was needed to be taken to Rio, so that he can mate with a female, Jewel, to preserve the species. Blu has been domesticated for 15 years and its effect is that he does not know how to fly. Most of his life he lived inside the store of his owner Linda. His inability to fly becomes his biggest problem when he was set loose in Rio.

A parrot that cannot fly is a funny sight indeed. Or is it?

    

Blu was made to fly, that is his very "birdiness". But domestication has stripped him of this ability. He has become less of a bird that he was meant to be. This handicapped have limited not only him but his world. While the birds were flying outside, he was stuck inside the bookstore. 

       On a side note, the bookstore was a good symbol of much of our lives. We have a lot of head knowledge and little experience on realities of life.

       Many of us are like Blu, domesticated. We have attached our lives, ourselves to pleasure and convenience that we abhor the practice of virtues. We have become spiritually slothful. We have stopped exercising the wings of our soul. We have become lazy in building our character.  Our main objective in life is to have a fun and easy life, and the hell with the rest.

      Like Blu, we have chosen to become less than who we truly are. In our laziness, we have compromised the greatness God destined us for mediocrity. “Too much effort” is too much effort for the many of us. Why be virtuous? Why strive for greatness when you can have fun? Why risk it when I can be safe in my own little world? 

 Why indeed?

      If you like to stay grounded instead of soaring, then choose mediocrity. Stay trapped in your own little world, your little cage. But if one wants to soar in life and live life to the full, one must remember who one is. We must remember that we are children of God. As birds are created to fly, we are created to be saints.

So how did Blu learned to fly?

He did when he forgot his fears, his self, his very life. 

      When Jewel fell from the plane with a broken wing, Blu jumped after her even though he did not knew how to fly. You can say that love pushed him off the plane and into Jewel. It is in this act of love that Blu learned to fly. It is true with us bipeds as well. Only love can make us fully human. When we forget ourselves and give it to others, we shall find our true humanity. Our life can only soar with the wings of love. To stay selfish is too stay stuck and grounded.

       Love as we can see demands risk and sacrifice. Blu took a risk of sacrificing his life to save Jewel. Love is not something that happens in our heads. It is very real, so real that you can touch it, like the cross of Christ. Love without action is not love, it is a silly imagination.

So let the parrot lead you in soaring in life. The high life God has called and made us for.

So start spreading those wings and go love and help those who need you.

Live Life Your Own Way...

Do you constantly try to prove to others that you are “good enough?”

We must admit that most of our actions are motivated to win the acceptance and admiration of our peers. There is something about pleasing people that pleases us.

Most of the time, it is our personal insecurities that cause this “I need to be good enough for you” mentality. One psychologist said that to even entertain this “I need to be good enough” debate in your head is already a choice to go to the path of unhappiness. For you will never be good enough in your mind. You will always find something that you need to be “good enough” to please others.

To live in the mercy of other’s approval and acceptance is like building your life on shifting sands. People’s opinions are fickle. They love you today and then hate you tomorrow. We can see this with movie stars and music artist. Here today and gone tomorrow. Putting the direction of your life at other’s hands is to miss out your own life.

We need to learn to accept ourselves. Even those things we do not like in ourselves. Accepting does not mean liking what you see, but accepting that they are real. If you have a bad temper, you do not need to like your bad temper. But you must accept that you have one!

Only when we accept ourselves for who we really are can we start to grow. We must accept our strengths and also our weakness, the good and the bad in us. Only when we can look at ourselves objectively can we start changing those aspects of our lives that need improvements.

We must first win the approval of ourselves. I approve of me! Yes I approve of me because God approves of me. If God did not approve of me, I would not even be here.

If you want to win the approval of others, win the approval of the God first. God approves of your creation, but do you think He approves on how you are living your life right now?

But why do we want God’s approval on our lives?

Because we want joy!

Happiness can only be found when we are in line with God’s plan for our lives.