The looking glass

Writer’s block. Feeling uninspired. Finding your muse. Whatever the guise there are times when all of us pen happy people just refuse to give in to that temptation and calling within to write. We obstinately hold back whatever it is within us waiting to be unleashed like a monster and refuse to let it out. Maybe we’re just afraid to face what is really going on in our heads and hearts. This fact doesn’t only apply to a writer but to anybody and everybody. I think somewhere this is driven by a sense of restlessness and even to some level fear. Fear that we have nothing intelligent to say and fear of the opinion of the outside world. After not having written anything in a while I just realized that these same fears were becoming a driving force within me. Being a passionate member of the artistic fraternity many a times I forget what it was that got me into the realm of art in the first place. For me it was simply being a heart over head person. After having ardently defended the heart over head and encouraging others to use a bit of their heart to guide them all my life I realized I was falling into the trap of just existence and survival…allowing or rather forcing myself to go against my very basic instinct and following the nonsensical ramblings and stern demands of my head. That was it. The first steps towards the destruction of ones creative juices had been taken by me, resulting in many blockages!

Much silent coaxing from my guide, mentor, friend and in some sense even soul mate forced me to face the prison walls that I had built around my head and thought processes and wish that I could revisit myself. In trying to follow our heads over hearts very often we land up losing our inspiration and consequently ourselves. The heart inspires. Always. The only way to really live is to be able to look in the mirror and not see a stranger. Sometimes we just need to revisit that place inside to find our inspiration again.

As clichéd and over used as this idea might be there is nothing more true to helping one find that inspiration or their muse again. I’m talking about love and definitely and singularly not the love that exists in movies between a man and a woman but love that is much beyond that. Love that fills you with happiness every time you think of it or feel it and each of us will have a different way of getting that dose. Some get it from their children and loved ones, some from things they enjoy doing and obsessive about their camera type people like me get it from just doing what we love to do whether we do it best or not.

Sadly everything in our social system forces us to become somebody we are not and live a life that turns us into robots and robots don’t feel and robots don’t get inspired. During my moment of intense introspection I was blessed with the epiphany that I had managed to turn myself into a robot. Head over heart completely and doing things for the “right” reasons. The realization came with an intense need to break free and find that looking glass where I used to see myself.

Reconnecting with oneself is just an act of letting go. Letting go of fears, letting go of preconceived notions, letting go of mental barriers and letting go of any negativity in your life. I strongly believe in surrounding yourself with positivity and letting go of anything negative from your life no matter what or who that might be. Positivity and revisiting what you love is the best way to finding your muse. Simply let go for a while of what your head tells you and listen to that tiny little voice in your heart before it actually stops speaking to you. Be a child again, do stupid things, be free and feel alive. The only barriers that exist are the ones that we have built with our own thoughts. Sometimes losing yourself is the only way to finding yourself.

About the author: Neha Parmar is a wildlife photographer and a conservationist with some tolerable talent for writing. If you liked, connected or have a contrary perspective with anything that you read please feel to share your feedback. 

To see more work by Neha

Parmar  https://www.facebook.com/NehaParmarPhotography. 

Disclaimer: This article remains copyright of the author and is her individual perspective. If you wish to give any feedback please get in touch with the author. 

Destiny vs Choice

Once too often, I was always asked the same question, by the same person. Is it destiny or is it choice? And every time my answer would vary and be a little bit different as I would weigh all that had happened in between then and the last time I was asked the same question and I would rethink and decide that I was still not convinced by the answer of my choice. As much as I fought for choice as the answer, somewhere destiny did keep sticking it’s nagging head in and silently making a strong foothold over choice.

You see, I was always brought up in an extremely scientific environment, which was always swept clean of any superfluous or irrational thought. We were taught to believe that the only thing that made a difference were the choices that we made in life and our decisions, which would affect the outcome of our journeys. I cannot disagree with that even till today and yes I do believe our decisions on a day-to-day basis do define the next stage on the sets of life. But is there something more powerful at play? Is there a predetermined larger scheme of things guided by a force that we refuse to recognize, as we haven’t been tutored to believe in it?

An incident happened a couple of year’s back that made me retrace my steps and once again evaluate my own thought process. A few years back I had gone on vacation to the Mediterranean and once aboard a fancy Royal Caribbean cruise I decided to pick up a few souvenirs for loved ones. So I bought a t-shirt for a very dear Uncle of mine. Once I returned I gifted it to him and soon after since he had been suffering from a malignancy, he passed away. A year later I went to our ancestral home, where he had lived his entire life and which was located in a very small town in India, for his first death anniversary. To my amazement I found a favourite household help of my Uncles’s wearing that Royal Caribbean t-shirt that I had gifted to my Uncle. I then found out that before his death my Uncle had gifted that particular t-shirt to this fellow. As trivial as this incident sounds it just made me look at the larger perspective and think of how a t-shirt that was made somewhere in the middle of Europe, had been bought as a gift for somebody in India, had ended up on a man, who had absolutely no idea of what the Royal Caribbean was all about, in a tiny village in India.

I cannot say whether it was the destiny of that t-shirt to make this journey or of that man’s to own it. But here I was face to face with destiny and marveling at it for sure as this was not the journey that I had intended or chosen for that gift for my Uncle.

Life is unpredictable and as much as we like to plan nothing ever works out exactly like that. After much questioning and many mental dilemma’s I have come to appreciate that true happiness lies in enjoying the beauty of the unplanned and all the hidden surprises that come along in that package.  Maybe it is destiny over choice and maybe the only thing that is required from our end is some faith in our destiny. 

About the author: Neha Parmar is a wildlife photographer and a conservationist with some tolerable talent for writing. If you liked, connected or have a contrary perspective with anything that you read please feel to share your feedback. 

To see more work by Neha

Parmar  https://www.facebook.com/NehaParmarPhotography. 

Disclaimer: This article remains copyright of the author and is her individual perspective. If you wish to give any feedback please get in touch with the author.