.. prolly another weird post.

broad strokes.

i was watching a french movie the other day with a friend of mine. the film had no sub titles, neither did we speak french. so it was like watching a painting made from broad strokes - apparent, but left to perception.

i tripped sometime later.

to understand something when words have no meaning. lemme tell you some things that you prolly know..

most movies are the same thing told in a different way. most things in life mean the same movie may be, forgotten in a different way.

for the last few months, i was stressed from work. i am in a much better place in my mind right now though, but i gathered.. to realise the loss of balance, is a fair step towards regaining it.

things in our lives are self serving. egoistic parables we tell ourselves. from the hour we wake up to the late shuteye, the day is filled with little activities of self indulgence. and, this is bad. no matter how compelling the world sounds, or how pampered the ego resides, that is bad.

well, there is no certification as to how to lead ones life.. but i found religion helpful. i am not a terribly unilateral person, but i did nt find a better way to lead a life than what was taught to me on doordarshan or in social studies classes. and most of it dealt with the so-called terms, happiness and peace.

to be happy is to do things outside yourself. a tremendously buddhist sounding philosophy, this.. of being at peace by controlling the mind thing, which is a tad difficult. and acting outside ones self and being compassionate, are not really as natural as they sound. but they go towards addressing little things you can so easily afford everyday - smile, talk, be pleasant (even if it is out of character/mood) - easy things.

a sorta.. habit of happiness. this is a strange term. i dont believe you can be happy all the time, especially leading a life like we do - peppered with subconscious judgements, arrogance, jealousy, hatred - the mildly dormant side of bipolarity, that is almost hard to conceal from one's self. we are not talking about extremist terrorists here, just regular people off the street. like us. we frown at ourselves coz we believe in this little drama in our heads. that these seemingly important things that we do, are so critical for our well being. only until we redefine these things. chasing big things in life, fighting the shadows in our heads - hard things.

we do the hard things, forget the easy things.

"we ll try to make a story up ourselves if we are completely lost" one of us told the other addressing the skepticism of the foreign language in the movie.

happiness is prolly easy, if we get out of our heads and pretend we are watching a movie; make the story work. let the characters get along. its sometimes simple to live a life - just try to be nice. you might succeed.

(end)


what do i do with the ego? that's a beast we kill one day at a time.