Be Selfish!

While growing up the common theme seen/heard in all the movies/ family dramas was to sacrifice, to adjust! When I witnessed my elder cousins/aunts getting married, the main advice they received was the secret to a long-lasting married life is to adjust. If you want to make any relationship last then the secret sauce is to remain silent. It was an unspoken rule that such silence was expected from women. Women were expected to stay quiet in case their in-laws were being irrational if their husbands were angry, or if there was any outburst of emotions by anyone in the family! In India, even today when a girl is married off she bids farewell to her family, her home forever. Quite often she gets reminded that her husband’s family home is her in-laws' place, so she has to behave in certain ways. Many generations of women have been obedient and followed what their grandmothers/mothers did and remained silent. These women were not even aware that they could be treated any better. They did not know that they could have their own choices, their ambitions could mean anything. They just mastered the skill of remaining silent and gained long-lasting marriages, keeping the families intact. The cost of such silence often meant terminal diseases, unresolved issues, emotional and even physical abuse which eventually became the expected outcome! Slowly and steadily each generation is breaking away from the traditional way of accepting life as-is. Women are becoming aware of their rights, and their choices. The last few generations of women have been financially independent. However, their responsibilities in the household did not decrease. They were expected to start earning, in addition to the traditional duties of raising the kids and running the household, while remaining silent! These so-called modern women rarely had the freedom to spend their money or time at their discretion. They were labeled as selfish, and egoistic because they were allowed to step out and earn money. Times are changing and for good reasons. Yet I see women canceling their plans with their friends for movies/dinners/weekend gateways or trips away from their families. I would not dare to say that this is the case for all women, but can definitely say that is the case for a majority of us. We feel guilty for making time for us. Ask any new mom, if she could keep the baby down for enjoying her coffee daily while it was still warm. We continue sacrificing at such a minuscule level that it becomes part of our life. If we have to travel for work then the families tend to adjust without our presence, but if we take a leisure trip then it is still frowned upon. If there is an exception of a married woman going on trips then her husband gets all the praise for looking after HER kids, while she is prioritizing her time for doing things that she likes to do. So fellow ladies, be selfish. Live a little! No matter how you live your life- staying silent, earning-not earning, staying home, or traveling the world, you are bound to get labeled regardless. So be selfish to embrace your happiness. Sip up that coffee while it is still warm, and remind yourself that you cannot pour from the empty cup! Do not give the key to your happiness to anyone else! Be selfish and be happy today, the next week, next year, and throughout your life. No prince charming is coming for rescue from any of the labels, you will have to free yourselves from self-inflicted realities.

Because I could!

 

After our EBC (Everest Base Camp) trek, one of our friends’ wives organized a big party to celebrate us all and invited a bunch of other friends as well. There, they displayed the pictures taken during the trek. It was a nice party with a lot of food and drinks, and six of us, who went on the trek together were getting all sorts of questions about our recent trek experience. After dinner, the hostess asked us to share our experiences/funny memories.

Everyone started chiming in. One recalled that no matter how many layers we wore at Gorakshep, it was still so cold that we shivered for the longest time. Another friend shared that the food in Nepal had garlic in everything- including tea, pancakes, French toast, and, of course, in daal-bhaat too! Nepalis believe in natural remedies, and using garlic as the natural blood thinner helps with AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness). Food was challenging for us during the trek. Although it was nutritional food, eating the same bland food for each meal got boring after a while.

Some of us had milder AMS symptoms, whereas some of the bigger group had to be evacuated, and some chose to back out voluntarily because they got sick and did not wish to continue. One friend recalled that after the trek was finished, we flew back to Kathmandu and were seated in a van to return to the hotel. And, after using walking as the only way of transportation, sitting in a moving vehicle seemed very strange! We had seen some people in Namche Bazaar who had never been outside that beautiful village at an elevation of 11,286 ft. Namche Bazaar was the first acclimatization point for us where we spent two nights getting used to the increasing elevation. They have never traveled in a plane or any moving vehicle for generations! We could relate to them just after thirteen days in the mountains. Throughout the trek, we stayed in teahouses and did not have to sleep in the tents, which seemed luxurious to some extent. However, running water is not available after Namche Bazaar. So, we could not take showers until we returned to Namche Bazaar. At Gorakshep, almost 250 people stayed in the teahouse with only four restrooms and no running water. The water stored in the big blue containers was super cold. You can only imagine the dire situation of freezing early mornings.

Then, someone asked how you trained for such an arduous trek. And we started recalling all our practice hikes together. Staying in Arizona with scorching summers, we had to get up early to start the hike by 4.30 in the morning. And yet, many times, we had to face dehydration, sunburns, and blisters, to list the least! Although we were laughing remembering those long practice hikes, falling on the cactus/many physiotherapy sessions for recovering quickly from some or the other injuries and so on seemed daunting for others. Finally, one gentleman asked, this sounds so terrible. Why would you put yourself through this? And my friend answered, “Because we could!”

Many times, people question me: why do you like hiking so much? Especially living in Arizona, we are surrounded by barren mountains filled with cacti and desert vegetation. Therefore, there is no reward as a waterfall or shaded trails with soft grounds as you experience in California, Oregon, or the East Coast. Weather is so severe that even in subzero temperatures, one does not need more than one fleece jacket for protection from cold. My husband laughs at the pictures taken on my hikes, and he questions why you bother taking photos on these hikes. Each photo from your phone looks the same, how do you even differentiate? To some extent, he is right. You see cacti, beautiful sunrises with glowing horizons, dark silhouettes of tall mountains, and widely spread fields or just barren land spreading to the horizon. And that always mesmerizes me. I am in awe of such raw beauty and every time I witness it, it makes my heart full of gratitude! I believe this is love, how do you explain love to anyone? Can anyone explain why they love this particular person and not anyone else?

One of my friends is passionate about cooking. She makes everything from scratch. Most of us buy bread/peanut butter/jam from the store for breakfast every day. But she makes each of these at home: bread from the sourdough starter, peanut butter with freshly blended peanuts, and so on. Tonight, we were seated at the campfire, and someone said, I wish we had marshmallows for roasting. And she said, oh, I am making marshmallows tomorrow. All of us were amazed, and genuinely did not know that marshmallows can be made at home! That is the thing about passion- it is a form of love and cannot be reasoned with anyone.

Many of you writing regularly on Medium must be getting questions: how can you express yourself so precisely? I am amazed to see how you captured that in your writing! How did you come up with this story? And so on… Whether hiking, cooking, or writing, passion for something is beyond explanation and can seem crazy to many. People cannot comprehend your happiness or your craziness to some extent when they have not experienced it. Passion makes you lose yourself and fall in love head over heels without reasoning. There is no good reason other than saying, “Because I could!”

Spontaneous vs. Impulsive: Two Sides of the Same Coin

 

Would you be Spontaneous in hugging, holding hands, kissing, or saying “I love you” or shrug off such PDA because you are afraid of being labeled as “Impulsive”?

In the dictionary, Spontaneous is defined as: “coming or resulting from a natural impulse or tendency; without effort or premeditation; natural and unconstrained; unplanned”, and

Impulsive is defined as: “actuated or swayed by emotional or involuntary impulses”

Although both words indicate “in-the-moment” actions, I think there is a positive connotation to being Spontaneous  and a somewhat convoluted tinge to being Impulsive. If you plan a fun trip or go to a movie without much planning, you will call it a spontaneous action. However, if you are enraged at someone’s hurtful words/actions, you would be acting impulsively. Everything changes how we perceive these actions. Your significant other might love your Spontaneous gesture or frown considering it as Impulsive behavior, based on their state of mind at that time. it changes time-to-time.

Past experiences dictate how we behave in certain ways. When you have kids with a little age gap, often the older one is expected to act mature before they are ready. The older ones are expected to share toys or give a bigger portion of the treat to the younger ones. Your first reaction was to hit your younger sibling rather than to express your need for attention to be treated as a kid! You got labeled as Impulsive. How fair is that?

When you expressed your tender emotions to your first love and they made fun of you/humiliated you in front of others, just because they did not know how to respect love, wouldn’t you be afraid of expressing your love even when the other person is waiting for you to make that first move? If your love was reciprocated, then you were being Spontaneous or otherwise Impulsive.

With such experiences, we learn to sense the situations ahead of time. We tend to protect ourselves by walking away from getting hurt. Even after letting your parents know that you do not enjoy STEM and would rather be an artist/mountaineer/nomad than suffocate on the corporate ladder, you don’t get a choice of choosing your impulse. Our parents hope for a secure future for us. They tend to curb our impulses and push us into the conventional molds that have worked for generations to the best of their knowledge and purest intentions! Does that work for a long time? Is the course correction needed at some point? Absolutely!

We should ponder that Spontaneous or Impulsive are just adjectives, two sides of the same coin. Such labels should not deter us from taking chances, acting on a whim, or feeding our inner child. Next time, when you meet the right person (even) at the wrong time, hug them/kiss them, and express yourself, who knows that life might be introducing you to your soulmate albeit unexpectedly.

Telepathy

 

Have you ever experienced telepathy? Like you were thinking about someone on the other side of the world, and that person, as if reading your mind, pings you out of nowhere? I have experienced it many times. Let me backtrack: Telepathy is the transfer of thoughts from one person to another without using conventional communication channels.

The other day, I was thinking about a friend who lives in India. We have not been in contact for years. I woke up from a vivid dream that he was sick and looked very weak. In my dream, I felt very guilty for not being able to meet him on my last visit to India and felt the fear of not being able to see him ever again. So, the first thing I did after waking up was to call him. He was surprised to receive my call and sounded cheerful. And I was half relieved to hear his usual cheerful voice and half afraid of sharing my dream. After going through the usual- why didn’t you call earlier/how could you return w/o meeting me, etc., he asked me the reason for such a sudden call. Over the years, our friendships have grown from chatting every day to not being in touch for years and then starting over as if not a day has passed in between. That is how childhood friendships are, aren’t they? I told him that he was going to laugh at me and that I worried too much and needed to get checked by a psychiatrist. Yet, I told him about my dream and apologized for not meeting him on my last trip.

With that, he grew silent.  He mentioned that last month, he went through hospitalization to get a stent implanted as one of his arteries was 85% blocked. He was recovering now and thankful that his family doctor could find out and take preventive action before it was too late. Both of us were stunned! He is too young to get through such a scary ordeal. He and his wife are particular about following a healthy diet and regular exercise regimen. Therefore, his situation was shocking to everyone close to him. But there was no way for me to know about this as he had not shared it with either of our common friends. We had not been in touch for close to five years by then, and I had this weird dream out of nowhere! What is this connection? I was not even thinking about him or there was no mention of him in my recent interactions with our common friends either. Yet, the dream, the message was delivered to me. If I had not mentioned the dream, he would not have even mentioned this incident to me, like how he had not mentioned it to anyone else.  This, for me, was telepathy!

Reiki, distance healing, mediation, visualization, manifestation, and energy alignment scenarios have been controversial for years, yet believers feel the so-called “magic” happening for them. Many beliefs claim that conscious intention can affect living systems regardless of distance. I was curious to know if there is any scientific study on telepathy. Then I stumbled upon this NIH study that mentions, “Intercessory prayers, healing energy, and similar other methods have long been a part of medicine. Hence, analyzing the underpinnings of telepathy might potentially help in understanding the “distant-healing” phenomena also.” They tried to reveal the neural basis of telepathy by examining an individual claiming the telepathic phenomena. They studied two individuals, one transferring the pattern/message to the receiver, and studied their brain activities. The person claiming to have abilities to perform various paranormal tasks such as telekinesis, mind reading, and telepathy was given the task of drawing images, and the receiver was seated in a different room. When they compared the results of the images being transferred through telepathy and drawn by the subject, there was a significant match. They studied the MRI scans and established particular brain regions for activations. This has intrigued the scientists for further research.

Have you ever experienced any such telepathic phenomena? Share with me in the comments.

SOURCE: Investigating paranormal phenomena: Functional brain imaging of telepathy - PMC