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Dive Deep

In one of those weekly fights with my elder sister (when we were really young), for a change my mom had taken her side. I was furious and not knowing how to channel my anger, I put some home-made scrub into the back pockets of her jeans, that were hanging behind the bathroom door. That doused my anger immediately and I went about my days and forgot, until it was found out. I have surely been as annoying as an alarm clock to my siblings, more than they deserved and I didn’t feel even a pinch of guilt. (**Asian Sky shop moment- I am a changed person now). Maisie Williams (Acted as Arya Stark in Game of thrones) had a problem feeling her emotions and facing them, during a short period of time. On-screen and off-screen, she couldn’t get herself to cry.

Maisie Williams as Arya Stark of Winterfell

The internet gets truck loads of posts everyday, telling you- how to manage your anger and control it; not be upset and how to find true happiness; remain calm and not over-react; and there is a one-sided opinion. We are biased towards different feelings; branding half of them to be negative and the others to be positive. The downside to this partiality in our mind-set is that, we are never accepting to the situation at hand and resist it just to avoid the ‘defamed feelings’. 

This makes me think of the black and white symbol of Yin and Yang. We need both black and white to balance out our emotional self and feel whole. Never are we always happy or always sad; that’s unnatural. Even when we are happy we do have reasons to feel sad but we have more reason to be happy. Even when we are sad we do have reason to be grateful and happy, but in this moment we are acknowledging the grief. The curvy line in the symbol signifies that there are no absolute separations between the two opposites. Similarly, I don’t think there is a defined line as to our emotions and we can switch over when ever we want. 

Have you ever gone scuba diving or underwater in a submarine? It’s a strange experience. Underwater the same colours are seen as darker or as a different shade (watch video- link for the same). We breathe through our mouth and cannot communicate except using hand gestures, in a dive. Even time seems to pass quickly when we’re inside. There is very little thinking and more observing; we almost forget ourselves for a bit. Synonymously different emotions make us see the world differently. Like the colours, the same people we love become our worst nightmares; Time flies when we are doing something we love and it seems a drag when we hate doing something; Anger makes us oblivious to everything, shortens the breath and we can’t focus on anything except ourselves, while bliss makes us want to indulge in things around us, breathe with ease and lose ourselves in the act. 

Staying underwater for long is not comfortable for new divers. Its takes time to understand how to manoeuvre and handle ourselves. We are not born with this knowledge but it’s learnt. It’s obviously not a mandate to learn to be a diver, but I see more people challenging themselves and getting coached to be professional divers. Why are we not diving deep into our emotional needs as a person? Resisting the discomfort of new and defamed emotions will never get us through. Validation and judgements, try and scare us away from being open to feeling everything. If we want to learn how to manoeuvre and handle ourselves through every emotion, we have to dive deep. 

We should wish that better things happen to us, but if it doesn’t then we might as well, get to know ourselves in the worst. When the situation calls for you to feel sad, angry, remorseful, unsatisfied, guilty, fearful, hateful, pissed off, frustrated, irritated, anxious and all those under-the-carpet feels; you be ready to feel it, just as readily we want to feel the opposite. That for me is being vulnerable to yourself first. If you can face your emotions, you’re better placed to manage sharing it with others. 

If we all hide our feelings and don’t express it, we wouldn’t be any different from robots. Vulnerability is defined as – “exposed to the possibility of being attacked or harmed, either physically or emotionally.” However, being vulnerable is credited to empowering you and giving you strength. Contradictory? The crux of it is that, if you have been through the drama; and know yourself through and through— you know you can handle the worst that will be thrown at you. Knowing that gives you confidence and strength to be bare and not hide any part of you. This comes only when you have experienced the feelings (that we resisted); let it come and let it go, leaving you a changed person. 

To all the Hit-and-Run drivers out there- the seriousness of not repeating a mistake, is felt only after being ashamed about it the first time? The fire and rage to fight all odds again, comes so easily when you have faced your failures. I was down with some illness for a month and recovery took another; which got me really weak and drained. I felt the emotion strongly at that point of time; angered and frustrated not having trained for two months. Getting back in the game after the frustration of two months couldn’t be more sweet. Let us allow ourselves to feeling everything we can, to diving in deeper waters only to come out, seeing the same lands with different eyes. 

This is from the last season of the Game of Thrones.
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Of Borders and Lipsticks: a case on vulnerability


Recently I was in a situation where I was so attached to the person, in conversation and obsessed about the relationship that I didn’t realise who I was being. I’m normally so chatty that I don’t realise I’m completely exposed emotionally. I give away too much of myself and only realise after I’m ambushed and my ego is hurt. Why do they have this power over my emotional balance and how did just a few words seem so important?

I was giving way more than asked for. There is a reason why people started having borders in countries, a fence outside their compound, a door to be knocked to enter their house, and the most important things are locked away in a safe, you’d probably never have any access to. Why do we have these checkpoints and boundaries that we don’t want a few selected people to enter? Does revealing everything about you put you in a precarious position? Bingo!

When people know me through and through, it makes it easy for them to say things to me or behave in a way that they know or think will tick me off. I’ve given that away in the past about myself; showed that I’m angered by something they did. Knowing that about me gave them the remote-control of my mood. Knowledge is power, I guess. The cosmetic industry has capitalizing on the knowledge of our body image issues, making appearance everything that matters about us. Everything had to be covered up: our dark circles, spot marks and pale skins. If I’m wearing make-up when I’m out with you, may be I still haven’t found reasons to trust you completely. Don’t tell me it’s to feel good, because then I’d want to see people wear it all the time. We don’t want everyone to know our flaws, though we know everybody is flawed, how ironical.

“…often others see you as you see yourself.” The Palace of illusion, Page 9.

Does being an open book with everyone and revealing your insecurities make you vulnerable? Yes, it does, and this makes it tough to be yourself. Even letting people in wasn’t easy for me, I still fear that revealing myself completely would be taken advantage of. Not everyone can be trusted, with our secrets, failures, insecurities and even self-worth. So there are cover ups for everything today. You put up something you’re not. How we hide our insecurities has become an art, to save ourselves the trouble of facing rejection. How do you really be yourself if you’re constantly worried about being accepted? You accept that not everyone can love your flaws and give you that space to be yourself. A few people may not love you in that way; some people will even make you pay for your mistakes. It’s the hard truth, the world is still not a safe place to trust blindly with your deepest insecurities.

After the recent Sri Lanka and New Zealand attacks, our safety is questionable? We have our national boundaries and national security, what’s going wrong then? How are these attackers getting an opening into our holy places and allowed the power to shake our faith in our own? Mostly we were not alert and the checking system is relaxed. Could be an internal political weakness, that they took advantage of. Any mistake from the securities would not be forgiven. 

Internally, if we are at an emotional conflict and always self-doubting, it weakens our alertness. We are constantly anxious about how we are being perceived; blinding us to noticing others’ actions and behaviours. They may disprove and over-react and we oblige with it. Red flags go unnoticed, we forget to a step back and do things differently. This sad event has opened up, that if anyone has the power to unsettle your state, no one’s to be blamed but we ourselves. We have to know ourselves better to protect ourselves better. If someone loved you or their country and even this environment, they’d never take advantage of their vulnerability. It can only be a selfish act to attack. Vulnerability in the wrong hands costs us our self belief and security.

Being vulnerable in a relationship is inevitable sometimes. With the right people it gives you the freedom of being yourself and having that space to make mistakes. We can set healthy boundaries but we cannot be fake and be too cautious with everyone. If someone really loves you, they will not want to take advantage of you for opening up about yourself or kill you for being wrong.

They might take from you but they will not forget to contribute. If they do, it’s your job to communicate. Get here with all your relationships, communicate what’s okay for healthy relationship and what’s not. Self-worth becomes dangerous only if, at the cost of the relationship. It is “we” over “me”. If you don’t get that then trust me you’ll be a lonely chap inside, however hard you smile on the outside. Draw your lines on your bad ego, while setting boundaries for your healthy self-worth, if you have to protect what you have to. Other than that give yourself to others as the sun gives its warmth to our planet.