Tag: Growing Pains

Growing Up #16: Stop and Stare by OneRepublic

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Stop and stare
I think I’m moving but I go nowhere
Yeah, I know that everyone gets scared
But I’ve become what I can’t be, oh

Stop and stare
You start to wonder why you’re here not there
And you’d give anything to get what’s fair
But fair ain’t what you really need
Oh, can you see what I see?
– Stop and Stare, OneRepublic

Some songs are more than songs, their lines run like verses of poetry. When you take the music out of it’s soul, something is still beating – its words.

Growing up it seems resonates so much with the chorus of this song by the wonderful OneRepublic.

The second verse you see:

I think I’m moving but I go nowhere

We run around, here, there, everywhere and then suddenly land back on square one, like an impending traffic jam was there all along and all we were really doing was trying a different route without understanding that it led to the same blockage.

But well,

Yeah, I know that everyone gets scared

maybe we’ll all in this together. This feeling of being like a spaghetti – twisted and turned.

That’s how everything around us prepared us:

And you’d give anything to get what’s fair

only to now change the rules of the game.

Wonder now:

But fair ain’t what you really need
Oh, can you see what I see?

what it really is.

Now, the full song. Adding music back to the words.

Growing Up – week 16 of writing about it. I might have slacked off this week, typing this on a Thursday. 

Growing Up #14: A List of Random Little Things of Joy

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Sometimes scared of being alone, other times scared of being surrounded by people; tears dripping out incessantly without any particular reason. One moment feeling like you can fight the world, a while later breaking down while climbing the never ending staircase. Some days of growing up can be terrifying. Since growing up is perpetual, the terrifying days are stretched across the horizon.

It’s strange. What can we possibly do.

A wise friend suggested, do random things and ignore everything else to feel better. So here are my list of random little things of joy.

  1. Pet the pets, brush their hair
  2. Sing or upload a song
  3. Dance random moves
  4. Listen to the rain
  5. Have a conversation
  6. Hot chocolate
  7. Be kind
  8. Arrange the closet
  9. Clean the book rack
  10. Hoover the carpet
  11. Crack a lame joke/listen to a lame joke
  12. Read
  13. Write poetry
  14. Record a poetry
  15. Arrange your desktop
  16. Sleep
  17. Stretch
  18. Write some more poetry
  19. Remember the most incredible thing that happened this year
  20. Smell coffee beans
  21. Practice handwriting
  22. Vision your wildest dream for the upcoming year
  23. Visit a book store
  24. Read Murakami San’s stories and wonder about human nature
  25. Watch an animated movie
  26. Make a list like this
  27. Read science articles on Medium
  28. Send poetry for publication (it might just get accepted!)
  29. Stay silent
  30. Turn off the wifi

Growing Up, a series on Growing Up, every Saturday – because Saturdays are perfect for overthinking. 

Growing Up #10: What Have We Done to Our Homes?

Alfa Maiya4 Comments

I’ve always been a fan of retreats, but then it struck me this time. What have we done to our homes that we must go far far away from it to find our peace back? Isn’t home supposed to be the inviolable place we rested our minds, the impermeable barrier that kept us safe, the impervious door no evil could pass?

This is of course not to say travel and retreats are a waste. It’s just very ironic that our schedules have made us their slaves. We’re always connected, and a few minutes of disconnection can feel like a year of missing out.

I’ve been reading Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, and a line from the book about the domestication of wheat strikes so familiar to what technology has done to us:

We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us. 

Perhaps technology has domesticated us. Harari calls us a hackable creature, thanks to technology again. Read about it here.

I’ve known myself as someone who has always loved being home. I might be the classic introvert that personality quizzes describe. I love being at home – wiping dust off the book shelf, arranging and rearranging toiletries on the rack, or just playing the keyboard.

These days though I find stress creeping into the walls of my room, insecurity emerging out of social media taking over my dusty study desk, unnecessary emails gnawing up my creating time.

And I ask myself, what have I done to my home?

I must change it. It must be changed. Drawing lines – it might just be as simple, undecorated and acetic as that. Just as hard.

Growing Up is a weekly series on well, growing up, published every Saturday (Cheat week this Week as I wrote this on a Tuesday). It’s been 10 consecutive weeks I’ve been writing this specific column in my blog here. Can’t believe it’s 10 weeks already. They were right: time passes any way.  

Growing Up #9: ‘Tis The Season of Goodbyes

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August – the eighth month of the calendar, the month when Summer isn’t gone yet, but the winds begin to feel chilly, a telling sign of how we have lived past over half of the year; a sign of the coming cold in the horizons.

August – a month of goodbyes when the suitcases are neatly packed, weighed, and wrapped. They hold not just belongings but memories and scents of yesterday, and now have pasted tags over their bodies keeping them from getting lost. It is how much can fit inside the weighing limit that one can carry of ones past – crunched, crumbled, convoluted.

I bid goodbye to friends, their eyes yearning for a better tomorrow and their hearts swelling with hope. I wish them the best that there can be. Together we’ve bid our goodbyes to many it seems. Maybe we have lost count now. Some goodbyes are left for electronic wires to convey, some other even unsaid.

There’s something strange about this season, a signal of transition. A fleeting season that could define many tomorrows, or may be it could just be a passing season. An ephemeral season that holds a memory or two for most, of when they left, and when they let go.

August – when the leaves turn yellow in some places, it’s still green here.

Growing Up, a series on Growing Up, every Saturday – because Saturdays are perfect for overthinking.