At the outset I would like to say a huge thank you for the tremendous response and positive feedback I have been receiving from you all about my daily blogs. It feels good to know that people do appreciate certain things and feels even better to be able to make a difference in some way to somebody in becoming a better person with a healthier and happier outlook.
So today’s piece is the outcome of the feedback I got from my college buddies Shalaka & Ginella. Though we rarely meet, but somehow throughout the years we have stayed in touch – not too much, but just enough to retain that bond. And of course social media has made life easier for us to stay in touch and we have a whatsapp group of four college buddies including our friend Smita, who is highly occupied in her daily battles with life and seldom messages, but her presence is appreciated.
As life happens to people after student phase is over, people get a job, get married, settle down in different places and gradually you lose touch. My buddies and me also went through the same rigmarole of life and Ginella is now based in the US of A and the rest of us in Mumbai but still not close enough to meet on regular basis. But as they say about friendships, it is not the physical distance that matters in friendships – you may be thousands of miles apart, but if the bond that you have survives the attacks of time, then nothing can break it ever. So in a way, we drifted apart after college and then gradually bonded again and today we are there as same college buddies, with that same carefree bond without having any expectations from one another of any sort.
Bringing me to the topic of the day I decided to cover, Ginella read my blog on childhood friendships and expressed her sentiments after reading the same and which I am producing verbatim here. She said that “I feel life is a stage and even though we play our roles, we always aspire for the better role without even realizing that we are missing out on the fun & joy of our current role”. How true this is…….we always look at others and try to be like them or at least aspire to be like them, but in this whole effort of copying someone, we don’t even bother to see that how much more interesting or fun our own lives are or can be , if we make an effort. It is always that the grass is greener on the other side.
Ginella said that to be satisfied with what we have, takes a lot of introspection & she has decided personally to let go of the clutter in her personal life and try to learn to live and love what she has, without craving for the latest trends. These few simple words are so deeply rooted and carry so much weight in them. Yes friends, like my friend Ginella, we all carry around so much of emotional clutter in our lives and keep on hoarding and accumulating so much of it that we forget what we are and what we want to do and slowly this clutter subsumes us and we drown behind the growing pile.
We all need to be strong like Ginella and we all need to take a firm decision to let go of all the clutter in our lives – let us stop hoarding all this emotional baggage and free ourselves of all this unnecessary excess baggage that we are pushing around. We all need to learn to live with what we have been given by life and god, and also to start loving it. We need to accept it and make it our own – this alone will give you oodles of happiness and joy and fill your life with contentment.
I am also quoting my dear friend Shalaka’s views here which are also so relevant and applicable to us in our lives. According to her, “We must all Live in the Day and let bygones be bygones. While performing our daily roles, we mustn’t forget the little soul of a small child hiding within all of us. We all must learn to forgive and forget and move on. Anger, hatred and greed will not take us anywhere and we must learn to enjoy the smallest things in our lives”
Such simple words but yet so true and meaningful and that is why I thought that I must share these gems with you all my dear readers because after all that is what T-Talk is all about, Sharing experiences of common people with common people so that we all can collectively learn and take inspiration from these everyday experiences.
So it is time to let go of all the emotional clutter that is clogging up our lives and set ourselves free. Make a firm decision to appreciate what life has given you and be happy and content with it. Start loving it and you will find that true happiness is within your reach.
I will sum up this piece with a quote from my friend Shalaka’s treasury of wisdom. She says that, “Laugh, Smile & stay honest with yourself, the rest will fall in place automatically”
So let us pledge to be clutter free emotionally and accept and love what we have and live in the day.
Dr. Rajesh Mankani
