Does love complement or Supplement our lives?

A quote on a sitcom I was watching recently got me thinking. One of the actresses, playing the role of a simple ambitious small town girl who is desolate and gasps...”All I needed was to fall in love with a person who completes me”.

I was stunned & befuddled.

Why do we need anything or anyone to complete us? Are we saying we aren’t good enough as we already are? Do we need things to make us feel special, other people to validate us and make us feel treasured or loved? Are single/divorced/widowed men or women leading incomplete and hopeless lives?

I think the issue is not this EXACT question itself. What the character in the episode and so many people I know ( sometimes myself) are really saying is: “We need certain pre-defined gratification for us to feel validated, important & arrived in our lives” The issue is the mindset that most people have around a variety of what they term as ‘well-defined routes to happiness’ which makes them think to themselves:

·         If I find a job that pays me X, I will feel complete/happy.

·         If I find a job with THAT company, I will feel complete/happy

·         If I find THAT kinda PERSON to marry & fall in love with, I will feel complete/happy

·         If I realize THAT DREAM, I will feel complete/happy.

 Truth is, at various points in my own life I myself have felt that the gratification of a certain goal will make or break my life. I know the gnawing pull, that uncomfortable sensation in the heart which comes from constantly fixating on a goal my mind has set itself on. But the truth also is, I also know the temporary & fleeting sense of happiness that lasts shorter than the life of a flower in full bloom , when we do meet our goals. It doesn't stay.

Its in those times that we wish we could achieve the fine balance of consistent  Self love & Ambition, a force that constantly invigorates our inner strength delving in self love along with the force that pushes us further ahead, edging us on to take newer flights, make newer dreamboards.

We are NOT our jobs, our dreams, our marriages, our relationships. They are a part of US. They ARE NOT Us. Don't define your life with the parameters of what you have achieved. The world judges you basis your achievements & that's a parameter designed to always make you feel lesser than who you really are. 

The Unaffordable Self Love paradigm

Its simple. 

Its not how you dress, or how your hair looks. 

It is not the Clarks or a Hill road kolhapuri. 

The Fossil or a Thai Fossil

Your bad vocabulary or a few loaned words

poor Skilled or Skilled poorly

It doesnt matter. 

It doesnt matter except to you. 

It matters to you and tips the scale 

of self love and acceptance

It builds and stalls your anxieties 

of strange glances and uncomfortable pitch

As though all the lies they screamed through the Screen told you, are true. 

They lied, you believed. 

Who needs to pay a price for self esteem?

Who worries if self love is affordable?

Who cares if we succeed with both?

They lied, and we will not believe. 

Peace, Confidence & Love are as free as the Stars. 

And naked we embrace all of it. 

A man at the coffee shop and my favorite cappuchino

I am sitting at a coffee shop in a decently crowded mall. I can see a lot of families , parents with their kids , husbands and wives, grand parents and grand children looking at the myriad displays of toys, jewellery, sarees, books, home furniture. Many look past the windows and some enter. Many find the stuff expensive, few pay up and leave.

At the coffee shop is a man. Aged 30-35 probably . I notice he wears a hearing aid. I know that he cant hear me. Ive been to this place too many times now. I remember him. I ‘enunciate’ the word ‘ cappuchino’ . He nods his head. I add ‘small’. He half nods. Im not sure he heard me. I use my hands to demonstrate. I make a C with a palm of my hand and I say ‘ small’ He nods in affirmation, quite confidently this time. I take a seat.
I see a young 27-28 year old woman arrive with a man by her side. They look like a couple, unmarried. She wants Tea. They don’t really know why this man at the counter is not able to understand her. He write down the word “ tea? Tea bag is available”. She asks him a few more questions by writing on a piece of paper. And now he knows what she wants. Hes struggling, but he looks very confident. Not a hint of unsurety.
I look at him and I look at me. His loneliness must be so much worse than mine I imagine. At least my loneliness can be escaped for a while by all this noise. I can escape with music, by theatre, by the sound of my own voice and the sound of other people’s too. I can escape the depths of darkness and the Silence that I dread, by filling up life with as much noise as I can. Can he? What does he do when he wants to talk to someone and express his deepest fears and joys? What does he do when he’s so angry and hurt, when all that he needs to do to let it out is scream and shout? How does he sincerely, continuously work every single day, without the music to pep him up when he’s travelling or to calm him down when hes tired and frustrated. He’s as much human as you and me. Im sure he struggles to live with constant hopelessness of extraordinary life, extraordinary love and extraordinary lifestyle.
As I see him relentlessly working through all the work he’s been doing as I write; I wonder if he has faith. I wonder if he worries so much about a future he hasn’t seen and about a present hes probably not very happy with. Is he happy about where he is? Does he believe that life will get better as he goes along? Does he live in faith and hope, believing that God is looking after him. God wont disappoint him, that he will have everything he truly wishes for and prays for, if they are in God’s plan that is. God never disappoints, He has the best plans always. Hes working with so much sincerity; so much love. Maybe God wants us to have patience sometimes. The best things come to us when we wait. And Maybe the man in the coffee shop behind the counter is doing just that. How little faith we have, how little love.