M.P. Sharma's Blog, page 22

No matter what the question, chances are the answer lies ...

No matter what the question, chances are the answer lies within you. It’s just waiting patiently to be discovered.

How was your weekend?

Mine was good until I decided to watch my karma.

So … I decided it was mean to cancel on my personal trainer friend. Just a word of warning to my valued readers, next time don’t be fooled by that smug bugger sitting on your right shoulder, at least the Devil perched on your left one doesn’t pretend to be nice when it’s channeling “Chucky”, the evil doll!

Because I truly believe you can learn something from every experience, here’s a pointer or two:

1. Personal Trainers never “mistakenly” set a meeting spot near an obstacle course.

2. Trust your “spidey sense” that is ricocheting against the walls of your skull when it tells you there is something DEFINITELY wrong with this picture if a personal trainer entices you with “Come over, it’ll be fun. We can have ice cream later on”.

I worked out on my day off, which should be a punishable offence in a court of law by the way, and paid for my ice cream twice with a “casual run” (try blood pumping, heart attack inducing sprint that would put Usain Bolt to shame).

My friend promised me that my backside would thank me today. Apparently, dead things can’t talk … or give pep talks, and because my body was bludgeoned to death yesterday, let’s just say, I’m still waiting for my thank you.

Supposedly life’s all about turns, twists and bumps, whic...

Supposedly life’s all about turns, twists and bumps, which makes sense seeing as mine looks a bit like this:

I mean seriously, who’d want this, right?

—————————————————————————————————————————–

B-O-R-I-N-G!

Besides, I have a lifetime of experience disentangling my grandmothers’ yarns of wool. My current life has nothing on their knitting escapades! :)

Could we be any more screwed?

A lot has happened in the World this week, as it does every week.

We’ve had a Soccer World Cup finish, Australian Swim Legend Ian Thorpe has come out as being gay, a few choice celebrities (no names being mentioned) have gone around doing what they do best, being social misfits and poor examples of role models for those who tinker on their seats edges wondering what their next moves are going to be, and something else I quite can’t recall. It’s on the tip of my tongue, so I’m guessing it’s semi important?

Oh that’s right, that little pesky thing the World is snappily entitling The Gaza Strip. Maybe not as catchy as Brangelina, but then again, it isn’t quite as important either, is it?

I mean how could an entire nation of people in devastating upheaval and pain, a clear brazen example of genocide occurring under our very noses in the twenty first century, a blatant demolishing of the very concept of human rights, truly compare to whether Germany actually deserved to take home the inanimate Gold Cup, the gender Ian Thorpe chooses to spend his private life and nights with, and whether Justin Bieber’s crotch shot was a misguided PR stunt? The answer is simple, it can’t.

It’s not bedazzling enough for all of us, sitting here comfortably in our arm chairs in our own little private havens with our fingers securely brushing our remote controls ready to tap the buttons lightly to change the channel every time a haunting image of what’s occurring in the Middle East has the audacity to interrupt our lives and assault our screens. I mean, how dare they? It’s happening a world away, why should I care?

I’m not here to make a statement on who’s right or wrong in this war occurring on the same planet we all share, but what I am incensed about is our extreme powers of “de-sensitsation”.

Who’s right or wrong is hardly significant really, what does matter though is the mammoth loss of life that the rest of us couldn’t care less about. I am met with a lot of anger and opposing comments every time I dare to broach this subject, you know the kind – scathing hate like “Why should we interfere?”, “They don’t want us to get involved”, “It’s their problem, not mine”, “If they’re too stupid to understand, that’s their fault”, and the undulating list rolls on.

Hailing from a nation that prides itself on never having invaded another’s home, I couldn’t agree more. The rest of us shouldn’t interfere, because the message that gives is that we don’t think you’re civilised enough to deal with this problem on your own, but how does that justify turning a blind eye to the pain and misery of our fellow brothers and sisters?

How does understanding, making our children aware of what seething animosity results in so that they learn that war and inflicting torture on one another is not the solution, not make this world and our conjoined futures better? How does not teaching one another that no matter what our creed, caste, and colour, that we share our basic human emotions of grief, agony and turmoil at losing a father, a mother, a brother, or sister and our children, not be an absolutely imperative lesson to study for all of us?

Is the media to blame? I think this is far too simplistic and just another brazen example of ‘passing the buck’, shifting responsibility onto someone else humans so easily partake in to feel better. As hungry devourers of news, why do the people so often forget that the real power lies firmly enclosed in our palms? The fact that you chose to click on the photograph brazenly displaying one of the Kardashian sister’s blaring bikini clad behind more than the one that excruciatingly portrays a mother’s incomparable desperate desolation at the loss of a child as she clutches her daughter or son’s lifeless, dismembered body to her bosom, begging for it all to stop while she cradles them both into oblivion, dictates what the media gives you.

It’s time we take a little bit of time out of our busy reality television watching schedules and participate in a little reality check of our own. Try and think about how it would feel to be in the middle of that tumultuous turbulence and what you’d experience if you truly believed you were all alone and that no one else cared enough to think, even in fleeting, about how your life was worthless.

This world is never going to improve if we don’t stop for a moment and think “what am I doing to make this better?” Make your voices heard people, the powerful in our society don’t own half as much as you believe they do and they know it. They’re just waiting for you to fight for your basic human right to tell them that.

Could someone, anyone please explain how telling me it’s ...

Could someone, anyone please explain how telling me it’s Hump Day on Wednesday is going to make me feel any better about the weekend still being more than 48 hours away?

I mean seriously, how is this explanation supposed to help my predicament?

If I am guardedly suspicious about my personal trainer fr...

If I am guardedly suspicious about my personal trainer friend inviting me for a picnic this weekend dangerously close to an obstacle course, does this make me a bad person?

I don’t care; I’m going to cancel on her anyway.

Having your faith waver is normal when you travel your jo...

Having your faith waver is normal when you travel your journey of life, but no matter what the circumstances, or what anyone says or does, never ever let your belief in yourself falter.

I’m convinced my car is actually a Transformer …

I’ve been trying to channel Bumblebee to transform from my car, I’m sure he’s hidden in there … somewhere deep, deep inside.

(Feel free to click on the link attached to the photo to check out the original post for this & some other wannabe Transformers, as it may be hard to believe, but this isn’t really my car, even if it’s not too far from it) :D

Write for yourself and you’ll be right

Apparently, writing is an art form. It can seem more like a torture mechanism often but that’s another post entirely – the one that goes near the “I’m about to slit my wrists” archive I have yet to create. For some of us though, it is also a release of pent up emotions and frustrations, the type you can never quite seem to explain in voice but are so much better at in the written word.

Like all creative acts however, writing is extremely personal. You either get it or you don’t, you either love it or you hate it and you either write it or you don’t. For those of us who are too poor to afford it, writing is also our personal shrink, cathartic the way we’d expect our counsellors to be if we could pay for a sounding board, which we usually can’t because you know, we write!

Which is why, even as hard as it can seemingly be, it is really important to never lose sight of the bigger picture and that is, are you ready? Drumroll. To write for yourself, what you want to, without giving a crap about what anyone says, if anyone reads it, loves it or hates it because guess what, you couldn’t care less even if you tried, right? If it’s not, it should be, especially if you’re using writing as your outlet to staying sane.

Writing as a journalist means I have to write what others want, if I’m not being hammered by my number crunching bosses, I’m being dictated by what my readers would like to see splattered across their computer screens and front, mid, back, whatever, covers. Rarely can I write what I want to.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s extremely easy to fall into the trap of writing what I potentially know will sell or even get me a publisher. As an Indian female, I know I would maybe, most likely, probably, (who am I kidding?), absolutely get myself readers. Mention the words rape, torture, submissive, oppressed, Indian & woman in this day and age, and if I’m really in an exploitive mood, I’ll just chuck in child marriage into the equation and voila, I would almost bet my bottom dollar I could wrangle a publisher or two who may be interested in my work (and that’s saying a lot seeing as I love my money!).

I however, made a promise to myself when I started this whole journey. I was going to write what I wanted to, unfazed by the many stereotypes out there around my gender, my race, my supposed “way of thinking”, my philosophies, well, the list goes on. Has it been easy? Absolutely not. Have I been successful? In monetary terms – probably not. In emotional endeavours? Truthfully, sometimes – but only when I’m not wallowing in my grief and abusing my vanity in obsessing over my readership numbers and views. If I could go back and do it again, would I change my decision? To this I can at least defiantly and emphatically state a loud, determined No. Because I know I can live happily with having refrained from taking the easy way out and perpetuating the many stereotypes that supposedly make all of me, and I’m not sure I could have if I’d chosen to go with the flow like a lot of my fellow writers do/have.

So, if I am in a position to give any sort of advice to all you talented people out there, whether writers or not, I’d suggest to do what you want to do without thinking about the consequences or what society is going to think of you. Because in the end, you’re the only one who has to look in the mirror and truly be okay with what you see staring back.

Happily be yourself every time, all the time :)

I have come to realise that you can learn everything from...

I have come to realise that you can learn everything from someone or something from everyone.