Tag: Art

Growing Up #5: To see oneself from somebody else’s eyes

Alfa M. ShakyaLeave a comment

A strange desire overcomes me. I would like to see myself from somebody else’s eyes.

Would they see me as someone whose inbox is filled with rejection letters? Someone who’s unable to walk the linear path of life, someone who does not understand the way the world runs? Someone who cannot connect the dots of her career, jumping from one area into another? Someone who is not clever enough to navigate through the spider webs of life, someone who doesn’t know where all of this is heading?

If I could see myself from somebody else’s eyes, what would I see? Maybe I wouldn’t see much of anything.

I’d be busy in my own spider webs.

Growing Up, a series on well growing up. Every Saturday, breaking the rule this week (again! because what a Saturday it has been). 

 

Classic or Clown

Alfa M. ShakyaLeave a comment

They speak of names,
like they are friends –
those names I have only heard of;
never read.

I am told,
the craft in front
is not what it is supposed to be;
they don’t tell me I can’t
neither do they say I can.

Classic or clown,
who can tell.

Growing Up#4: By deFault or By deS!gN

Alfa M. ShakyaLeave a comment

I said I’d be writing every Saturday about growing up – the growing pains, the dumb decisions, the indecisiveness, maybe half of the parties, and a quarter of the youth. But here I go breaking the chain, right in the fourth week. And I have a superb reason: sometimes an entire Saturday is not enough for overthinking, and it spills on to the Sunday and even Monday. So here it is on a Monday.

Last Saturday I was having a heartfelt conversation with a friend about growing up (half of my conversations are about it these days), where she shared a brilliant snippet of growing up by default or by design. I was intrigued. Some of us it seem live by default, do things by default. We concluded that necessarily isn’t wrong. It’s worked out well for some. And then there are some other who live by design, and this doesn’t necessarily make them superior either.

In the words of Adam Grant (someone I have harbored the secret dream of meeting in person):

Don’t ask which is better Stanford or Harvard? Ask where you fit better.

The idea of living life by default, where we live the narrative arc as suggested by the world – education, marriage, work, and the idea of living life by design where we create our own path, neither is better. Borrowing from Adam Grant’s idea, it is where do we, where do I, fit better.

But I have a further question: how do I know which one is for me? Well, I guess I’ll just have to follow the stars for now. Here’s what Nicola Yoon has to say about stars, from The Sun Is Also A Star:

I remind myself that stars are more than just poetic. If you need to, you can navigate your way by them

Till next week!

Growing Up, a short snippet series every Saturday, because Saturdays are perfect for overthinking, maybe Sundays too and Mondays as well. 

Growing Up #3: Age is just a number?

Alfa M. ShakyaLeave a comment

Age is just a number, they say.

Maybe they are right, it’s an arbitrary measure of how long you have lived chronologically.  But only if life could be lived in the simple timelines that come ahead. Some days I am 10 years behind, like a kid that I always am. Some days I function like an adult, apt for the time. Some other days I am a toddler, whose insatiable demands leave me heart broken. Some other days I am a philosopher trying her tiny hands at solving problems that may appear 10 years from now.

It does seem age is just a number. Like a river that splits into tributaries that visits different landscapes as it journeys through time, twisted and turned. A part of me lies in the pristine mountains, some other submerged in the waters of the South. Perhaps it would be best to let the streams unwind on their own and be washed into the sea.

No number could ever justify the depth that we have seen amalgamated into one.

Growing Up – a series on well, growing up. Every Saturday because Saturdays are perfect for overthinking.