Tip of the iceberg

Every successful person , man or woman has a story to tell.
Most of the time the stories are left unsaid. Many a times the changes could be so overwhelming that even the protagonist could be forgetting the intricacies of the life drama.In this busy world who has the time to connect the dots?

Well ,the reader might have made a guess that the post is a usual rant on how the life is materialistic , speedy etc..hey! Wait it isn't.
The subject of success has been in literature since time immemorial. From Veda Vyasa to Stephen Covey , everyone has had something to comment about success - habits , attitudes ,how to earn , how to spend, the so called secrets of success and what not. Even as I'm typing this,some pseudo intellectual might be penning down his version of tips on personality development. Chuck them all..bring home the point.
Hmm..success is not instantaneous. Its hardwork , failure ,patience, reward and happiness - in that order. Always. Trust me.
If you think you are successful without any failures , then it's someone else's sacrifice.
And that sacrifice would have stemmed out of love.
If you were not patient enough and left your endeavors mid-way , poor soul you have missed out on the miracle that was waiting for you at the end.

Reward is when that imminent happens. People would call you lucky, fortunate. The world would hail you for your success.Yeah , but remember just a few months back, when you failed,it was all between you and God( atheists can read it as inner voice).

The most important phase is hard work. Your potential must be polished. Passion alone has never taken anyone to glory. It takes effort. Passion is directly related to brainpower. When you ask people who made it to the top they might just tell you ' hey I was passionate about it '. ' its passion that makes all the difference '. My dear friend , beware of the catch here. It isnt passion that pulled the magic, instead it's the zeal that came out of it. Bill Gates worked for hours and hours in front of his workstation , coordinated with a lot of people,in his late teens and early twenties ,in order to become a multi billionaire in his forties. Break the myth my friend,nothing just happens with passion alone.
To succeed in love you need to taste failure once. To clear a test you might have to attempt more than once. To achieve your dream you will definitely have to reach out and do something that you haven't tried so far.Only when you deserve it truly , it will be yours.

Feel your existence. Feel emotions- the entire spectrum. Get hurt .Play ,fall down. Laugh , talk. Learn , think . Don't cage yourself in. Don't let anybody do that either. Be a free soul. Ultimately that's whats gonna make all the difference.

Life is like that. There's a lot of abstraction. When you look without insight its always the tip of the iceberg that you get to see. Hell man, nine tenths is hidden under the ocean out of your sight.

Quoting from one of my all time favorite movies " Jerry Maguire " ; this is how the narration goes at the climax -" Hey I don't have all the answers. In life,to be honest , I've failed as much as I've succeeded. But I love my wife. I love my life. And I wish you my kind of successes."

The Sage and The Hippy

A lot can happen over a year!
Goodbye from college life
A promise-adding hope to life.
A new job new dimension to live
And an awesome new set of friends
Total colors!

Life may time and again pose you with two contradicting yet beautiful concepts:chasing and waiting.You dream,you work for realizing it and thereby chase your dream.You love,you trust ,you hope and then you wait for your dream to come true.( Waiting for December ;) ).

What I wish to share today are my ideas about planning ones own life. I wish to discuss on the effectiveness of sticking to your passions.Is scheming out your paths and living life,walking through the path that opens up through honest hard work and goodwill- Is it indeed the way to live?
Or is a life subjected to drifting under external influences and sailing through ,eventually losing ones self more beautiful?A life that could be hampered with vices,travel and hook-ups..-someone who categorically rebels the established social norms and expectations of being 'good'.
Which is more enriching?A roller coaster ride through the sweet and sour that the world has to offer or a sage like inner discipline and contentment that comes out of living a life fed by your passions and dreams?
I'm gonna untangle this twisted mass of thought-thread quite slowly now.
When a baby is born,a soul starts its journey afresh. When we were infants we never questioned fate,alas! fate as such was alien to us. We were innocent ,were carried by what came to us,what talked to us and what became of us. Like how the wise look at it,children are the true manifestations of God.By God I mean what's the truth,what is bound to happen which no wisdom (either learned or gained from experience ) can stop or control. Here I'm not just talking about those landmark events in your life.The events which you spit out when some random friend asks you 'how's life?'/'watsup?'. Instead,by God, I mean every single experience that touches your soul,causing the metamorphosis..Change is life.God is the love that flows to you from the fellow beings.God is the truth that you are living,your current sphere of existence and perception.

Let me put it like this.Each infant is given an empty basket.
As the  child develops consciousness about his/her capabilities,needs and relationships,he/she begins filling this basket. And this basket is named "I"-the ego.
(Here on I shall be using the generic pronoun he)
Slowly he discovers what he is capable of doing.He discovers love and hatred.He learns virtues and culture,debates and battles his identity.He discovers what makes him happy,what makes him cry.He identifies importance to people,friends, relatives etc. He finds out that he can mandate over certain things,and this is indeed the greatest power that a man/woman can have.
"Certain things"? Well,  at this point I would step back to the questions that I posed before.
The fundamental difference between the two styles of living that I posed in my questions is nothing but these "certain things". Let me explain.
Spiritual souls dwell into soul searching at an early age.They are disheartened at the meaninglessness of cover-ups,fake smiles and the evident fragility of the material world. They yearn for constancy, for truth.And from these endeavors they discover their identity. The identity of the soul of the world.To such a person,anything is possible. He has full control over his senses. His thought, speech and action are well synchronized. He becomes a master of his self. He is well aware of what fills his basket and is ready to get rid of them.A capacity for sacrifice is always there.There is a sense of universal brotherhood and openness to learn.
His rebel counterpart is the one who identifies himself with the things in the basket.He mandates over the material objects,in his own basket,which he has gathered and piled up in his course of life. His relationships,achievements, loss, revenge, fame and fake accolades all become his kingdom. He is unaware of his true being,and never tries to find it. He is lost but never understands that he is.This is because he's immersed in material pleasures and works and toils hard to keep his basket full. He's not ready to give anything away. His life shall be full of experiences and he dies living these experiences while not attaining the purpose of having experiences.

Only a disciplined soul can charter his life according to the voice from his inner self. He will work hard to achieve it.He knows the power of a true heart. He can let his reins go when he wishes to and hold them tight when need comes. Such a way of living is the one that immensely serves both the individual and the people around him. This way of living is the one that brings out the shine in you. All your talents, capabilities shall be wasted if it is not used with a sense of service-either to yourself, or others, or to certain cause.

And yeah, there ends the story of the sage and the hippy.