Destiny's Child (P.S: I'm so not talking about the band)

So I have finally figured out the whole "free will" concept. At least, in my head. It may be utter nonsense - but I think I can live in peace now. I used to think that free will is about getting everything in life to go your way as long as you worked hard enough for it. Now I have accepted one thing - if something has to come to pass - it will. However, if it's not meant to be, then you can hang yourself upside down for days at end willing it to happen - but it won't. The only choice that you have is the way you react to the good and bad that you may have to deal with from time to time. And experience has it - there's always something good, or at least something funny in every occurance in your life.

Attitude is everything. I have seen people cry about random "first world" problems and go into absolute depression because one small thing in life wasn't going their way (embarrassed to admit I was like that most of last year). I have been to lunch with people to expensive places just to be hear them whine all through about how terrible it all was - while observing poor workers having a ball with their meagre food rations on the way back.

You can have everything and be poor as hell - and have nothing and yet be rich -  as long as you are content. Again, being content does not mean sitting on your butt and not wanting anything ever again. It means enjoying where you are at the moment - while you may be working towards a distant dream - but you are happy where you are.

Doesn't it scare you that while you are cursing a gem of a life right now - which is perfect in itself (and I don't mean the crap we are sold on TV in the name of perfection) - in the hope of finding happiness somewhere somehow in the future - that these times are never to return and will be some of your best memories when you look back 10 years from now?

So why ruin the present? Live it up and make the moments count! You are free to be happy in all circumstances - you are free to create amazing memories right now - THAT is your free will. Stop trying to control the world - as long as you can control that mischievous mind of yours, you are set for life!

Explorations of the Runic kind

It all began in a small picturesque town called Solvang, lost in time and space - somewhere between LA and Salinas on the west coast of America. Even while I was visiting it, I was overcome by the strong feeling that it would disappear the moment I left it - as if it were something straight out of a fairy tale - like Alice's Wonderland - or maybe even Hogwarts!

It was a sleepy little town, with Windmills inspired by Netherlands and a museum dedicated to Hans Christian Andersen. Mesmerising to say the least.

My tryst with runes happened first in the basement of that museum that had a bunch of books to choose from. It was a small emerald green book on Runes that immediately caught my fancy. And like all things that immediately catch one's fancy, it lay among my collection of "precious" things in a corner of my cupboard.

I got re-interested in it sometime during a spring cleaning session in 2011 when it emerged out of the depths of my paraphernalia and I was hooked. For about a year, on and off, I meditated on those runes and made notes in my diary of any weird dreams that I had. I really didn't know to what extent my always fabulous and entertaining dreams were influenced by the runic meditations, and how much was a figment of my imagination. So eventually, I dropped the practice.

This year, on my birthday, I went back to my diary entry from my birthday last year. It was the last one connected to the runes and I had noted how puzzled I was about some of my dreams. A year from then, I realise that those things had happened even though I had totally forgotten about those particular dreams! And it wasn't a comfortable phase at all - but turned out for my good. And it tied back to the type of runes I had been meditating on - it was the EXACT effect that they are supposed to have in a person's life.

So it goes without saying I am back to Runic meditations. Excited about the adventures I am about to embark on :)