My mother stayed home to care for us, and we had the greatest childhood imaginable. What irks me though is when people say she didn't "work." And that's not just because she worked hard every day caring for us, it's that the words themselves suggest she was in some way broken or defective. Perhaps an old radio doesn't work, or some electronic gadget that got all wet... but my mom, she worked better than most folks. By making all those loving choices every day, by showing self control when your average office worker would lose their cool, she built a truly better brain. My mom is smart, funny, loving, self controlled and responsible. Frankly, for those who can't do all that, irrespective of your employment status, can you say that you really work?
There is more to every story,
Or so I have heard them saying.
I always gaze into the infinity of the sky,
Observing the sky change its hues at different times of the day,
Seeking answers to a particular paradoxical question -
What about them?
I think in a state of haze.
Are they really happy?
Maybe we are misunderstanding everything;
Maybe they are in the wrong places;
Maybe, they want their fates to change.
Maybe, all that we perceive is them deceiving us.
Maybe, out there is an enigma
Full of anomalies and conundrums -
An obscure love story,
of Apollo and Selene.
Maybe they are in love
But can’t make it past their differences;
Maybe they are lost,
And have strayed from the path
That leads them to each other.
Maybe the dusk and dawn
are their surreal infinities;
Maybe they set and rise,
not for the world,
but for each other.
Maybe the stars glittering,
in the oblivion of the dark night,
are the tears that Selene sheds.
Maybe, Apollo makes the sun burn,
in his jealous rage,
since everyone but him can admire her grandeur.
Maybe the eclipse is the time when
One’s love overpowers the other’s
To create an amalgam of untold stories,
None of us will ever hear.
Maybe those spots on the moon are the impressions
Apollo’s lonely heart has suffered.
Maybe when the thunder sound fulminates
In the foggy, clouded sky,
It is Selene crying to the heavens, mourning in agony.
When the sun gleams through the canopies,
We rejoice, Placing it adjacent to many heavenly pleasures.
But maybe, above there, past the clouds
the two just hurt inside.
Maybe they are grieving,
Mourning wordlessly,
Alone in the wilderness of their kingdoms,
Unnerved at the thought
of how long it would take for everything to fall into place.
‘Romeo and Juliet’ was a classic literature love,
But this is so much more -
Love that is pure and heavenly;
Love that is silent,
Yet speaks out so loud and clear.
Love, not the whole world could witness.
To break me, you must show empathy. Yelling and shouting your frustrations about my lack of work, or need to shape up, won't help your cause. I'll only stand firm in my resolution to not give in to your tempestuous voice. To break me, you must show kindness. If I have a low performance on tests, "Are you okay?" instead of, "STUDY HARDER, YOU IDIOT!" will make me try harder. I want to please those who care. I want those who love me to see me do well. If you love me, and outwardly show it, you will break me.
Your easy smiles and gentle teasings strung my heart and blinded my eyes. I overlooked your veering lies and shady actions and glanced the other way when you enjoyed the company of other women more than mine, convincing myself that it was merely the green eyed monster rearing its ugly head. But when you strayed, I knew for sure that you took me for a mindless fool. You made a mockery of my love and blamed me for your straying.
You abused my innocent love and cut off the happy strings of my heart.
You aren't worth my time or even a fleeting thought; you are a bad story and I choose to only read good ones.
When my puppy is sick, when he wakes me up every few hours at night because he needs to visit the garden and all I want is sleep, I know it's time to make myself do the right thing. Getting out of the warm duvet into the cold night air, taking him downstairs and waiting for him to come back, is the harder thing to do, but I respect myself more for doing it because I'm doing what good people do, I'm building myself into a better version of me.
He sighed and looked at her with those blue eyes touched by storm clouds. She had never seen any emotion in them other than contempt. But now they embraced the wind. A brief gust before returning to a calm sea.
A key part of becoming more psychologically mature was to learn psychological independence. For that I needed to relate my relationships with every person only back to myself and not to any others. My interaction with each of them was a separate thing and they had the rights to interact with whomever they wished. That's when real self respect happens and you feel that you can rely on yourself, to trust yourself to see situations with greater clarity. A need to control others in a physical or emotional manner, or to control how others see them and treat them, is immaturity. Feeling a responsibility for others, to help create a stable environment of greater love and protection for the vulnerable, to let your inner hero out, is maturity. We are born to become the "wise chief" - with the courage to belong and the courage for independence. For only then have we truly left the cocoon of childhood and learned to fly. So now, after all those years of learning through self reflection, away from the social poisons of our era, I'm ready to explore the sky and feel the sunshine in the upper reaches.
I let my eyes rest a moment, to allow my other senses to rise, so that when I see the world anew, it comes as a brilliant beam of light into a room none realised had become so dull.
I sigh, closing my leather journal and setting it (along with my pen) aside in my small, light cerulean blue satchel. The satchel has been my best friend ever since I first found it in the antique store five and a half years ago when mom and dad had given this to me as a kind of early birthday gift. It was the last thing both my parents had given to me before passing.
The leather used to be new, polished, smooth even. Now after five years of having this satchel it's finally starting to look timeworn, but it's that kind of oldish, worn out look makes it all the more appealing for me.
The ferns formed a jubilant green sea that enveloped the pathway, their fronds dancing in the warm summery wind.
Avery whispers into the breeze, her eyelids fluttering closed as she breathes in the briny aroma. Scrunching her toes, she feels the softness of the sand, still damp from the retreating tide. She wiggles as a shiver cascades down her spine and her eyes burst open.The sand blurs out in a blissful trance, the shore fading into liquid gold, vivid in the brilliant light. Her pale lips curve upward.
Avery bestows her gaze to the far off horizon, the flaring hues of the sun melting into the sky and ocean like a divine painting. The forever stretching sea is masked with an apricot colour, that beautiful umber flowing into turquoise. Through narrowed eyes she watches as each wave overlaps one another, sending the white bubbling crests descending, masking the shore with the transparent fading water.
When we stop conflations as societies & storytellers when we see that everyone is a unique and beautiful recipe, divine and soulful. Then we will see that there are no groups at all. And when we are individualised in the right way, with great love and unconditional acceptance, we will become one humanity, peaceful, inclusive and capable of sustainability.