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Courage

A little girl was walking to the fountain. She saw a lady in a white sari resting by the fountain. The little girl asked the lady, “Who are you?” The lady replied, “Courage”. The little girl twirled her braid and asked, “What is that? I have never heard of this name.” Courage replied, “If you …

sun coming out of clouds shown to emphasize positive change (1)

Experiential and Practical Tips on Making a Bad Day Better

Some days are harder than others. Everything seems to fall apart on these days.

I could not sleep last night. At 2:50 am, the hour of deepest sleep, I woke up when an intruding mosquito buzzed in my ear. I went to the bathroom, came back, drank some water, and lied down. I was drowsy and it hurt to keep my eyes open. But the first step to sleep was killing the mosquito. After many desperate attempts, I took its life away.

Meanwhile, the brain kept at its activity. The ideas of my mother about me (unmarried, jobless, etc) encroached me from all directions. If I think about me the way she does, I feel that my life is doomed. Then I judged the nooks and corners of my relationships.

As promised in this photo diary of the street life and rich food of Vietnam, I am back with a Vietnam photo album which showcases the country’s painting-like greenery and its rich temples.

Certain days at work, when I sit in a room and work from my desk for hours at a stretch, these photos make me feel that I am out in the green, running with the water stream, or bathing in the sunshine, or singing with the rain, or listening to the tall waterfall falling over the stones, or fine-tuning with the birds that flew above my head under the vast blue sky of those foreign lands.

Do you also long for a place that you visited in the past when you look at your travel photos? Do you still feel connected to that place?

After an hour or two of the daily evening walk, I tell myself I should go home and read. But sometimes, I want to keep walking with my friend. I want to sleep at 4 am after Netflixing zombie movies back to back. I want to wake up late and then write and let the day design its schedule.

But during those zombie movies, I keep looking at the watch. The MacBook throws the low-battery warning, but I don’t plug in the charger as I want the computer to sleep its natural course. And then we can sleep too. But then we stay awake some more and talk about our lives.

As every hour passes by, I realize that my waking up time is getting shifted by one hour and that I had to sleep early and start the next day with a fresh run in the morning. But I continue the conversation as that was what I wanted to do at that moment.

And the next day, when I start writing at 11, I brood over the valuable time that I lost by getting up late.

Also Read: How to Make a Schedule – To Live and Work Better

Why can’t we do what we want to do when we want to do it?

Why do we think about the future – the most uncertain and unpredictable – and not about now? Why do we follow so many small daily habits?

What do we want out of life?

Why do we wait for Sundays for lunch with our family?

Why do we make a house and live in it and go to the office and come back to do the same all over again?

How do we choose between ambition and happiness?

In today’s noisy world, learning how not to care is indispensable.

But tell this to the neurons in our brain. They don’t rest even when we want to stop thinking. Sometimes, we cannot control our mind which runs around like a cat chasing its tail.

To pause our thoughts, we hang out with friends on Saturday evenings. We dance to rhythmic music or Netflix and drink – all to take our minds off things.

Imagine – if we could be in that thoughtless state most of the time. If we could block the redundant noise to focus on the important matter at hand. Or if we could just sit down quietly with a cup of tea on Sunday evening.

Practice being mindful (by doing meditation) helps. But we have to pull out some of our deep-rooted agonies otherwise even after a one-hour Vipassana we will be nourishing the same soul-sucking creepers that never bloom.

But what worries fill our minds?

Mostly we think about two kinds of things:

The important ones
And the ones that are not important

Unimportant things cloud our minds like the winter fog. Except that we rarely have a change of weather. Clear days with the sun shining bright outside our window are forever elusive.

Let us look at some of the fog that can be lifted to make way for sunlight.

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I went to Chile in July 2016, and going to South America was the best decision of my life. That vibrant continent added an additional layer to my personality. It was like discovering rosemary suddenly.

I learned so much in those nine months that I would not have in many years in my home country India.

I started speaking a new language – Spanish, made friends from all over the world, taught English, lived with strangers from different continents, ended up loving those people, experienced the Latin American culture closely, traveled to places that I had no idea existed, and made life-long friends.

The Spanish accent in Orange is the New Black was the initial pull but there is a difference between the fictional world and the real one. In fiction, everything looks glamorous. Reality is not that glossy.

Except that it was.

South America gave me a new energy and a new outlook.

I did not know all of this when I left. Then why did I leave?

Purposeful, Healthy, and Mindful Living.

About Looking Inwards crumb trails on the road again, break the routine, travel resources, sacred place and years of hard work, travel books, and recent adventures Dear Reader, Thank you for joining me. I hope the weeks have been good to you. Apologies for being away again! But that giant project is off my hands, …

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Why do we need a purposeful, meaningful life?

We are born, play around, attend school and college, get a job, set up a family, and then die. Each one of us – hopefully – adds something to the world; we evolve, the human race becomes smarter, and this repeats.

In the end, we do not get out alive, then why does everything – a broken relationship, a layoff, a fight at work, a stomach ache, a smartwatch – matter so much? What is all of this adding up to? Evolution?

All of this is adding up to these moments that the life is collectively composed of.

Why is it important to have a meaning in our life? So that all these moments together sing a melodious song and not blare out a cacophonous cry.

in lake titicaca living a nomadic life solo traveler priyanka gupta

Why I Travel

Since I started traveling relentlessly for the past few years, my friends, family, and everyone else started asking me that why do people travel so much, what did I do for six months in Chile traveling alone, what did I see, how did I feel in a country where I couldn’t even speak the language, how did I manage to travel for so long, and how did my family react?

They say I’m lucky I get to travel so much.

I smile. I lecture everybody that they can travel, too. I ask them why don’t they take a sabbatical and go? I elaborate on why traveling is important even though no one might be listening.

People laugh. They shake their heads as if I had asked them to do the impossible. They say it is not easy. What would their parents say? Their boss won’t allow. They are settled with their partners. Traveling would be too expensive.

They think these are unique problems. And they don’t get that why do people travel so much.

As I travel a lot myself, I understand why people leave their homes and travel around the world. In this poetic essay, I will tell you why do I travel and why traveling is important.

a female monkey woeing a male monkey used for women approach men article feature image

Over the years, I have approached various men – both successfully and unsuccessfully.

I initiated the flirting and conversations and intimacy. I have realized expression makes everything easier. Don’t bottle up your feelings for long – unless expression would ruin everything.

Think what is the worst that can happen.

In college, I approached a friend – we used to gel well together – but he acted as if there was nothing. Hurt, I acted stupid, and this rejection gave me the best-drunk story of my life. More on that in another article.

All of us – men and women – think that we need seductive powers to approach people. No. Approaching people – some of whom might be our romantic interests – need confidence and social skills. It is not a mission – it is a day to day activity. You need to make people comfortable around you. No magic tricks, no email courses, no guides, no love gurus can teach you this.

To understand how to approach women, let us look at what are women exactly looking for.

I was unsure about this topic but then I thought of all friends, their friends, colleagues, men and women on internet and dating applications or marriage websites (this is specific to India) – looking for a date, a relationship, a life partner. Someone to share spaghetti and a glass of red wine at the end of the day or a samosa and a chai in the evening. To watch a movie on a Saturday night tucked in bed with grilled chicken on plate and whiskey on the rocks in glasses. To go for an impromptu drive in rain on a Friday evening with classical music on the radio. A post-Sunday-lunch nap with soft music in the background.

We all have friends, family, roommates, work, paychecks, hobbies, goals but we all need someone to look at us with a burning warmth in their eyes. To say that we mean the world to them. To say that they won’t be able to live without us. They crave that one hug of ours in the morning. They want us to bear their children, sleep the rest of the nights in one bed, and celebrate Diwali and Christmas together. When they see a slight cut on our finger, they overreact. They hold our hands and tell us that everything would be all right.