Thought: Seven Hundred Fifty-Seven
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One. Those who forcibly grab people, calling them up, dragging them out of their holes if necessary, desperately trying to impart their experiential wisdom, tying them up with rope if they could just to dispense knowledge, who can do nothing else for others but consider their own imparted knowledge supremely valuable—I believe such people have certain intellectual problems of their own. When I generally feel the need to know something about a subject, I voluntarily approach the person who seems sufficiently experienced in that matter or whose words I can trust, and ask them about it, seek to learn.
Some people force-feed knowledge in such a way that after swallowing their words under duress, when they finally move away, I feel like sticking my finger down my throat and vomiting to cleanse myself. When that same person later comes looking to dispense more wisdom, I simply start walking in the opposite direction; even casual exchanges trigger equal measures of fear and irritation. Fools don’t realize when they become the source of people’s annoyance. When thirsty, the parched will seek water themselves—anyone lacking this elementary understanding can be anything but wise.
Even when I need advice, if it comes from someone I would never approach for counsel, such unsolicited guidance feels utterly pointless.
Two. Finally I learned this: you know, I actually cannot stay away from you, no matter how hard I try. The more I try, the more I end up directing all my attention this way, remaining preoccupied with you in both conscious and unconscious states. You probably think, “This girl just keeps messaging all the time—where does she find so much time!” Even I don’t know where I find the time. So it’s better for me to stop this pointless attempt to flee and hide from you. Whatever happens, let everything be ruined for me; if I die, so be it.
I don’t enjoy any of this anymore. What have I started these days with all this! The mind becomes different at different times. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. When it turns bad, I speak terribly to you; when it’s good, I act excessively crazy. What I do when—perhaps I myself don’t quite know. Let me not try so hard anymore! Better to accept everything with bowed head—that’s better. Otherwise I’ll truly go mad one day. I really am very restless. No good work can be done with such an agitated mind. Even all these words I’m saying now—this too is nonsense. I’m leaving—you stay, prepare for how to give me the next dose of pain.
No one has the power to approach the sun. Whoever dares to go near the sun must burn and turn to coal. You are like the sun, fierce is your heat; since I have dared to come so close to you, I must surely burn!
Three. A writer is the loneliest person in the world. To forget this solitude, writers seek not love, but necessity. For them, need takes precedence over heart. As a result, their loneliness never truly dissipates.
Writers only seek beauty. From one to another, then to yet another… beauty never ends, only its form changes.
Perhaps this is why love too is relative. Writers understand love’s relativity, and this is why they fall in love again and again. To them, love is something that cannot be forcibly held onto. A writer’s love is always free, like a flowing spring. On the other hand, ordinary people understand love only as forcible possession. This is why ordinary people fall in love sparingly. I am ordinary, so in my life love has only one name, and that is ‘you’.
Four. I have nothing new left to lose. Especially when I have already lost everything, let whatever remains go wherever it pleases. Nothing punishes me anymore. I am destitute, and I remain so, without any pretense of nobility about anything.
Being half-mad isn’t good, you know? If you’re going to be mad, you must be completely mad. That way, even the awareness that you’ve gone mad doesn’t remain. You can act however you please. I understood this by loving you.
You are a very good person. What kind of individual you are, I don’t know, nor do I want to know. You have given me so much love; yes, you have given so much, for which I had not the slightest qualification and which I didn’t deserve. I am deeply grateful to you. Whatever terrible behavior I showed toward you, all of it was my mistake, my fault. Despite all these faults, all these mistakes, you loved me, kept on loving me. Please forgive me if you can. I am truly sorry.
‘Sorry’ is such a small word, I know. And I don’t have the habit of saying sorry at every turn, that’s also true. But I am guilty before you. I have committed many wrongs against you—if someone else had been in your place, they would have spat in my face and left, because there is nothing in me worth staying for, nothing worth loving. You know your own heart best. If you can, please forgive me, and pray that I might be able to change myself even a little. At least that I might truly become worthy of your love. I had no qualification to receive your love; you loved me always out of your own goodness. May you stay well, stay healthy, may the Creator grant you even greater prosperity. I love you!
Thought: Seven Hundred Fifty-Eight
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One. The girl who expects ‘ten-thousand-word essay’ type messages—what does fate give her but a boyfriend who sends perfunctory messages with tiny little emojis!
Two. If only you had wanted, I could have become your every single afternoon!
Why didn’t you want that?
Three. A missing person notice. As of 7:10 this evening, my son-in-law has gone missing. If any kind-hearted person has found my son-in-law, they will be gifted exactly 1000 kisses as a reward. If you have found him, please contact us immediately. Oh wait, I mean—if the son-in-law is found, the kisses will be given to the son-in-law himself.
Four. Staring at my phone waiting for you, I realized today that in these two years, I have looked at this phone screen, gazed at it with such intensity, that never in my entire life have I looked at anyone with such attention and expectation for so long… believe me.
Five. Don’t ever call me again. You live your life, I’ll live mine. I will try not to call or message you in any way. It’s impossible for me to accept someone else in your life and remain in this relationship. I never could. It’s better to step away now.
Even if I showed patience, the outcome would be the same. I’d have to carry this pain for the rest of my life, and in your eyes, nothing about me has any value, nor will it ever. In this lifetime, even if I died, I would never have you completely, and for me, having only a mental connection isn’t enough. I will never have you the way I want you. You could never understand me from where I stand, and enduring all this daily is impossible for me. I don’t have that strength inside me; I can’t do this anymore. I will gradually become ill, mentally and physically too. Leave me alone in my own way, let me sort myself out as I see fit. Please, at least help me this much.
This is what you want anyway—for me to quietly accept everything and endure it all. You stay, have your fun. Do whatever you want, whatever pleases you. Just don’t cause me needless pain. Leave me to myself. I understand very well that you’re still talking to him under one pretext or another, and of course you still love him today, but you never admit it to my face. You’ve started playing games with my emotions.
I am shameless, I am without dignity, I take kicks like a dog again and again, yet I keep coming back to the same place. I should really be taken to a three-way intersection and slapped across the face with a shoe. Even then, only Allah knows if I’d feel any shame. I am a devil. I take such beatings, and then nothing stays in my memory. Even if someone made me stand in front of the market every day and beat me with a stick, I wouldn’t feel shame. Still, I would keep coming back here. Why did I become like this! What a strange thing this love is!
Six. I cannot remain without speaking to you—this simple thing you fail to understand. Will you tell me truthfully, do you really love me or not? If you truly loved me, there would be no question of not understanding me today; you would understand on your own why I act this way.
You don’t give me your complete time—this is my only complaint. I have never reproached you for anything else. For this one reason alone I complain so much, create so much trouble, and for nothing else.
You could force many things upon me if you wished, and I would accept them all, but take a moment to think and see what I do and why I do it. Peace is dear to you; for peace you could even sacrifice love! Very well! But I say this time has not yet come! If it ever does, then instead of keeping yourself in a safe zone, be truly alone, and then tell me what is greater—peace or love!
Seven. When the person I love most doesn’t understand anything, then I have no regrets left for anyone else. I don’t know if you were ever truly capable of love. I have remained forever in the realm of fools!
My purpose isn’t to hurt you and speak in complaints. But when I see you indifferent to everything about me, yet active in other directions, while you say exactly the opposite with your mouth, then nothing feels right anymore. Often when I come to say something beautiful, my mood gets spoiled, it goes unsaid, and instead I end up saying something else entirely—something I had never planned to say, something I didn’t even know existed within me before.
Eight. How did I end up loving someone where I have nothing that is truly mine? I never knew I would do such a thing.
That strength I once had inside me is gone. Before, I dismissed all kinds of wounds with utter disdain. Neither wounds nor humiliation could weaken my inner self, but now if someone speaks even a little harshly, it feels as though everything will crumble and fall upon my head all at once.
Even having no one at all never caused such pain. There were other sorrows, other deprivations, but they never twisted my insides this way. I could bear everything easily, but now I cannot endure even the lightest things. Everything feels unbearable. All this time love never functioned as a separate awareness; I never thought about it this much—wanting someone to love me, or the feeling of love itself—I never understood these things this way. But now it feels as though I simply cannot survive.
If I hadn’t met you, hadn’t spoken with you, hadn’t become entangled in this relationship, I could at least have lived without love. I wouldn’t have had to die slowly, moment by moment, gasping for breath.
Nothing feels good. Nothing at all feels good except you. Perhaps I have committed sins throughout my entire life, or some great sin, and for this reason God gave you to me for a glimpse and then took you away again. If He will take you away like this, then why give you even for a glimpse? He could have simply not given you at all!
Reflection: Seven Hundred Fifty-Nine
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One. The cat you killed with such cheerful abandon, laughing as you flung it into the garbage for stealing food—have you ever bothered to check if somewhere in a hovel or thicket, two or three of its kittens are crying out in hunger, waiting for their mother’s return?
The puppy you crushed carelessly while driving, then went home to sleep peacefully—did you ever wonder if that night a loving mother dog spent sleepless hours frantically searching for her beloved child?
Those ant colonies that looked like tiny buildings, which you trampled underfoot for no reason before going home to rest in comfort—did you ever think about the hundreds of thousands of hardworking, organized creatures you left homeless and displaced?
Even the fiercest lion in the forest, when not hungry, will not kill a deer standing before it. Yet humans alone kill without need, for the sheer taste of cruelty.
This world does not belong to humans alone. Every creature has an equal right to live here in peace.
Taking the life of any being without cause or necessity is as grave a sin as murder.
They may not be human, these helpless creatures. But they too have intense emotions and feelings like you and me. They too have homes, families, loved ones. They too possess that miraculous capacity to love.
When their skin is hurt, they feel the same sharp pain. They too weep, they too cry.
Their agony in death is as acute as yours or mine. In intense pain, in tremendous suffering, they writhe just as you or I would.
Two. The miser eats his own head,
Bald from worry, you can tell.
Even seeing two-rupee peanuts,
The miser cries, “Oh hell!”
Like a shrew, secretly,
He wants to eat more still!
Three. I’ll take the beating,
Pay for the beating too,
And cry for free besides!
—This, they say, is love!
Listen, your scolding has become an inseparable part of my life—sorry, I misspoke, not “part” but “organ.” I don’t feel right without being scolded by you. I’m thinking of saving all your scoldings in a separate folder. When my heart desperately misses your reproaches, I’ll feast on your saved scoldings to my heart’s content.
I really am a wicked girl. Talking to you and talking to a tree—it’s the same thing. I never had a habit of quarreling in my life, and now I’m consumed by just that. Does love then make people quarrelsome?
Four. I am human, but you imagine me divine.
You are divine, but I imagine you as a lover.
You think I am extraordinary, which is why you cannot accept anything about me the way you would from any ordinary girl. You cannot even think of expecting from me what they expect.
I think you are just like any other ordinary person in love, but you never are that.
This very misunderstanding keeps widening the distance between us.
Five. You know, when you behave with me like a stranger, treating me with distance, I feel like crying terribly, as if I have no one in this world. When you listen to the songs I send with joy, I wish I could sing something beautiful just for you! When I realize you love to eat, I want to cook all your favorite things, one by one, with great care and feed you. I also feel that perhaps all those childhood hours I spent in the kitchen were meant only for you.
I often think, if the Creator were to open only two paths before me for life—one filled with abundance, but the other where both you and death await—I feel that if the Creator also said that just after death I would have you near me as my own, then I would choose only you above everything else, at any cost I would want death to come first, eagerly counting the days to death while holding my restless heart. Whatever conditions the Creator might set before showing you to me as mine, I would gladly trample all those conditions underfoot and want only you. Nothing else, I want to be only yours.
Six. The cobbler boy on whose hand you contemptuously place your foot with shoes—those hands, dirty from the burden of labor, put food in someone’s mouth. Someone kisses those very dirty hands every day.
That street child whom you slap hard for the slightest reason—that street child is someone’s heart and soul. When he has even a slight fever, someone binds a wet cloth to his forehead and stays awake anxiously by his head all night.
The street cleaner from whom you turn away in disgust, pressing a handkerchief to your nose—in his home too someone waits for him, someone who will hold him tight in their arms and fall asleep peacefully when night comes.
The garment worker whom you constantly call ugly, wretched, unsightly because of her untidy clothes—perhaps she saves money on lipstick, kajal, and clothing to buy medicine for her parents with that money. In someone’s eyes she is a hundred times more beautiful than Cleopatra.
Every person in this world is strangely beautiful. You and I have not been given the responsibility to judge the beauty of marginalized people. These hardworking daily laborers too have a ramshackle tin house, they have one or two beloved dry faces in their homes, and those faces hold a few grayish dreams as well. They too have emotions and feelings. To them too, the smiles on their loved ones’ faces seem more precious than heaven.
Love them, speak a few kind words with respect and humility. You will see that the grateful smile you receive in return might just be the reason for your most peaceful and fulfilling sleep that night—a sleep you perhaps haven’t been able to have in years.
Reflection: Seven Hundred Sixty
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One. The person a human being can trust more than their own breath—it is almost always observed that they cannot stay with that very person for a lifetime. What could be more painful than this!
Two. This love that is now fierce and tumultuous,
This moment when all conventional rituals and celebrations of the twentieth century have ceased,
The open window by your bedside is now simply open,
Occasionally all your love-talk now remains stored as the most desired sanctuary…
Come, let us sit for a while, side by side, and watch your very being gradually dissolve into yourself…
Three. Someone once told you…if you ever get angry, feel like scolding or have an urge to hit someone, give it all to me. I don’t deserve your love, but I am here to receive your hatred. Someone told you many things…you remember none of it.
It seems my mistakes just keep multiplying! What should I do, tell me? I seek forgiveness from Allah every day. Some things I can mend, some I cannot. But you know one thing—I have the courage to acknowledge everything.
Somehow I feel you can be loved, you can be trusted, but you cannot be disturbed. I want you to live in peace. That’s why I don’t even want you to come into my life. I fear that if I make any mistake that becomes a cause of your distress.
Hey boy, who are you going to run away with? Just try running once, and I’ll puncture your belly. As for whoever you run away with, we’ll see about them later. File a police report in my name. I’ll tell you my address…unbutton your shirt and place your hand on your chest. Exactly where you’ve placed your hand—that’s my address.
Four. Beloved person, beloved love…
The entire realm of emotions now,
Is just a fairy tale of being well!
The twenty-fifth of Phagun or the twenty-sixth of spring—
Everything feels like the first of Phalgun now…!
This free sky…this beautiful nature…this colorful world…
Everything seems to be my vivid existence today!
I am happy today,
I am deeply content,
Today I am immensely happy seeing the form of my own happiness!
The sovereign of love is today my realm of feelings!
Today I am happy,
Today I am content.
Five. The world-stunning beauty Princess Diana married Prince Charles. This graceful beauty Diana, the dream woman of thousands of men, was never truly loved by Prince Charles. The Diana who drove the entire world crazy was devoted to Charles, and that same Charles was obsessed with receiving Camilla’s love. Most people remain intoxicated by the love of the wrong person, day after day. Why humans do this, I still haven’t found any explanation for it.
Perhaps we live our entire lives suffering and dying for the wrong people. We weep most for those who least deserve our tears. Sometimes indifference or apathy gives birth to more love than love itself.
The world is strangely confused. In this confused world, the most mysterious, complex, difficult, and unresolved matter of the Creator’s design is love. Who loves whom, when, and for exactly what reason—no one in this world has yet been able to solve this equation correctly.
The most agonizing feeling in the world is when you see that the one you love with your everything loves someone else with their everything. The death of a beloved causes pain, but a thousandfold more unbearable is the torment when that beloved loves another.
That the one I love doesn’t love me—this can be accepted. But that they love someone else—this can never be accepted by any logic in the world. Love gives birth to a kind of reckless possessiveness. Whether they love me or not, they cannot love anyone else—such a strange thought takes root in the mind without our knowing. In matters of love, humans are deeply selfish creatures.
This is why a person, for no reason, ‘irrationally’ hates most of all the very person whom their beloved loves most.
I love you, you don’t love me at all; yet my heart would tremble to hurt you even slightly.
The one I love loves you, you have never caused me the slightest harm; yet not a hair on my hand would tremble to hurt you.
—I have observed this strange characteristic in human nature.
Six. Because you don’t hold on, perhaps…
I keep returning.
Because I don’t hold on, perhaps…
You don’t let me be lost.
Seven. In everyone’s false stories…
There remains one true ‘you’.
In the end,
Every false story becomes true, one by one,
Only the true ‘you’ becomes false!
Eight. 1. How many tears a person must spend to produce one perfect smile—no one knows this secret. Those whose smiles are beautiful, whose smiles fill the heart just by seeing them—if you saw them weeping, you would think these two faces belonged to completely different people.
2. Just as a person cannot laugh constantly even if they wish to, they cannot cry constantly either, even if they wish to. It may be fine not to laugh at something funny, but when pain brings tears and you cannot cry, when you cannot force tears to come even by trying—that becomes a vast helplessness.
3. Many people think of certain wrong words and wrong people late at night, thoughts they actually have no real reason to think about.
4. Most likely, the ocean understands human sorrow. If you pay attention to the sound of waves in the deep of night, you’ll notice it seems like the collective cries of many people can be heard. You might observe another thing as well. Merely going to the seashore makes the heart melancholy, brings back memories of so many things in life. And when returning home from the shore, one begins to feel much lighter… I still haven’t found an explanation for why all this happens! To me, the ocean doesn’t seem mysterious—rather, mystery itself seems like an ocean!
Nine. Lying in the same bed every day, mere half-inches apart, sometimes the distance between two people remains billions of light-years; and sometimes it happens that two people thousands of miles apart have no distance between them at all—not even half an inch!
When love exists, no relationship in the world is illegitimate; rather, relationships without love are each an illegitimate bond. Yet we understand legitimacy to mean merely a signature on paper. In truth, love is the real legitimacy of any relationship. Marriage can only provide social legitimacy, not emotional legitimacy.
In this world there are many people who live for ages under the same roof without any love whatsoever; sometimes, there isn’t even affection! Then again, there are people who haven’t seen each other for ages, yet have loved each other until death! Staying beside someone without mutual affection is just another name for death.
Being side by side doesn’t mean being close. Being far away doesn’t necessarily create distance. Proximity and distance depend on how much two souls, transcending the boundaries of their bodies, have truly merged with each other.
To come close requires not the body, but the mind.
Physical closeness has no relationship whatsoever with emotional closeness.
Thought: Seven Hundred Sixty-One
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One. Relationships die not so much from lack of love as they die a hundred times more from lack of care.
Two. You had said you would return!
So I understood perfectly well that you would never come back. Those who return say nothing; they simply return. Not everyone knows how to return. Life doesn’t teach everyone to come back.
You never did return to prove my assumption wrong! Once you make a promise to return, it takes great strength of heart to keep it!
We were supposed to spend an entire life holding hands… Yes, I am spending it!
My hand remains in yours even today! The hand you never held—I dedicated that very hand to your name from the day I first felt that even a fool like me has a personal ‘you’!
Today I understand that fools are born to suffer! Who knew that without even touching the heart, one could so easily touch the hand!
Leaving doesn’t mean one can simply go away!
Letting go doesn’t mean one can simply leave!
Be happy, my dear; sorrow doesn’t suit you.
Three. How much love, how much enchantment lies hidden in just a fleeting glance—even after living an entire life, building a home and family, you still haven’t discovered this, my child!
Alas, those eyes of yours went blind far too soon!
Four. Fate,
we haven’t walked together for so long…
Will you take me in your arms for a while…?
Fate is deaf, I say,
But being able to say even this much to him—that gives me peace!
If that’s how it is,
The Other Self: He wanted it too…
Did you give it? You didn’t!
Ha ha ha… wanted it, you think…!?
You believe him too!?
Let it be a lie, but still he had asked!
I do give… sometimes…
But you didn’t give it that day, did you?
I will, I’ll give it anyway…
But that giving in response to his asking—
that kind of giving I cannot do!
In his terms, I simply
cannot call him mad!
Rather, it’s madness to look at me!
Are you still caught up in those words?
When storms blow, dust flies too,
and until the storm stops, even particles of dust keep moving.
And don’t show me that maternal sympathy, Other Self!
The pain of not keeping his word…
doesn’t burn you more than it does me!
Some relationships without relation are so strange…
Love itself reveals so clearly—
how distant that person is!
Five. She always forgets me anyway! Then why does it hurt so much when she forgets!?
Six. Those three stages of love…
At one time, for the sake of love, one wants to destroy anything and everything… the heart yearns to abandon everything and just walk away…
Then comes a stage where one no longer wants to do that. One realizes that love is such a vast thing that nothing should be destroyed for its sake…
Then at some point, love matures further… crosses a certain threshold. Then destroying anything in the name of love becomes so trivial to love itself that one no longer wants to do it.
In love that once was, if love is not colored by the hue of desire, one can simply shatter and destroy everything around at will!
When everything breaks and fragments, looking at that destruction, the wise mind within finally thinks: when will the heart grow a little larger, when emotions will no longer come rushing out, when they can be held tight within…? If only they could be contained, perhaps it would have been so much better!
Then time flows on…so much changes…love becomes more mature and profound…expands…a dozen children of sorrow are born…they touch the sky…
Love that is not-false on this shore discovers love that is not-true on the other shore…the intensity of feeling grows, every foot of love felt for one soul becomes aware of every inch of unlove toward another! Yet the shameless heart still loves…
Exhausted by countless visible and invisible storms, the mind finally thinks of destroying everything, shattering it all like in love’s childhood…but that can no longer be done…love has grown up! It can no longer indulge in such childish tantrums.
Once the mind wanted to grow up in expressing feelings…today, when it has grown and matured, it wants to become small again!
It wishes, while sitting down to eat, in the smallest sulk, to pour all the food over their head…since they’re not near, to pour it over its own head…!
And in so many sulks, on some melancholy day, gazing at the blue and white sky, to think—
Someone can be given
The heart itself!
Emptying heaven and earth,
One can love!
One can write
An ocean of words!
But—
‘You know, I’m not feeling good…’
Or ‘I’m not well…’
Or ‘You know, it hurts so much…’
Such a simple sentence—
Can no longer be spoken…
Something blocks it somewhere!
Because what it takes to say it exists only on the other shore…!
Though the wind is invisible—its destruction is anything but invisible!!
Seven. Oh yes…I was quite angry with you!
Later I thought, never mind, the girl is just such a crazy one…!
Eight. Keep following me. I’ll let you follow me. It’s to my advantage.
Why? It’s good for me if you keep following me. I don’t know you, nor do I have time to know you. But I’ll smile to myself knowing that ‘people’ like you will stay ‘behind’ me for life.
I envy you all. Where do you find so much time, boss?
Nine. My lovers keep me alive as they cannot stop thinking and talking about me.
My haters keep me alive as they cannot stop thinking and talking about me.
Some love me as they cannot ignore me.
Some hate me as they cannot ignore me.
My haters give me the same priority as my lovers do.
Ten. On other occasions, I could have churned out a few ounces of motivation for those who performed poorly in their Higher Secondary exams, scheming to gain some followers; this time I couldn’t even manage that. Sad life!
In my heartache, I wept an entire swimming pool’s worth of tears.
Thought: Seven Hundred Sixty-Two
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One. With necessary support, even an unnecessary vine can touch the blue glory of the sky. Given the chance, even weeds can reach heights equal to trees.
Two. How old could he be? At most seven or eight, isn’t that right? Yet poverty has dragged and stretched his seven or eight years into seventy or eighty.
At the age when he should be carrying a school bag on his back learning addition and subtraction, he has shouldered the burden of a household, balancing the ledger of life.
At the age when he should be causing mischief in the neighborhood and coming home to his mother’s scolding, this boy peddles life through alleys and lanes for the price of a sliver of smile.
For everyone, life doesn’t mean life—for some, life means nothing but war.
Be kind to these little warriors, honor their work. No work in the world is small. He’s neither begging nor stealing. If you encounter such a person on the street, buy something from them—whether you need it or not—even for five or ten rupees.
These people, who shoulder life’s burdens before understanding what life is, may one day write the greatest stories of success on this earth.
Three. The world-famous American comedian Robin Williams spent his entire life making the whole world laugh, while secretly drowning in deep depression. The man busy making audiences laugh on screen had no laughter in his own life. This legendary comedian, one of the greatest in world history, hanged himself at home to escape his depression. Yes, someone as outwardly cheerful and radiant as him had secretly chosen the path of voluntary death.
Marilyn Monroe, the graceful and extraordinarily beautiful actress who possessed fame, glory, beauty, and piles of money, suffered day after day from a strange and terrible inner anguish behind the colorful world. Emptied by life’s various blows and setbacks, lonely and solitary despite the countless crowds around her, Monroe at merely thirty-six years of age voluntarily sought freedom from all worldly suffering in death, by taking an overdose of sleeping pills.
Michael Jackson, the world-shaking pop star and owner of immense wealth, could never sleep a single night without high-dose sleeping medication. He died at just 50 years old due to the severe side effects of these drugs. No, the death of this world’s greatest pop star of all time was not peaceful. The man whose song lyrics could make our hands and feet dance unconsciously just by coming to mind—his own personal life was still and stagnant.
The history of the world bears witness that ‘happiness’ has always remained a relative matter. Even amidst the abundance of everything, some people gasp through sleepless nights in terrible, infinite emptiness. Meanwhile, many people without any worldly wealth fall asleep comfortably, snoring away, even before night fully arrives.
The person you look at and think, “Ah, what a happy, what a complete human being!” while sighing as you look at yourself—they too, perhaps, just like you, are looking at someone else and sighing, constantly seeking peaceful sleep through sleeping pills to escape the grasp of melancholy.
Dale Carnegie, this world’s greatest motivational speaker and bestselling author, spent his entire life tirelessly inspiring others to live, while personally living as an unhappy, melancholy man.
Actually, you know what? The lines from Guru Ayub Bachchu’s song are the greatest truth of this world:
A world of happiness, an act of happiness,
However much you hide it, no one is truly happy.
Forever sorrowful in their own world, no one is truly happy.
…Look into it, and you’ll see that none of us are actually happy, absolutely none!
Living is difficult, I know. Still, live on, don’t lose yourself. I can say with certainty that there are countless people in this world who are sadder, more unhappy, more failed than you. All the arrangements for living not as the unhappy among the happy, but as the less unhappy among the more unhappy, lie right before your eyes.
I speak from experience: measured laughter is not life’s yardstick; rather, suppressed tears are life’s true measure.
Four. The ocean never worries about the rain!
Girl, instead of becoming a lover, become an ocean,
And effortlessly swallow all those teardrops!
Five. How would you live if there were no songs in life? You’re probably thinking that songs are also necessary in life? “Probably” “also”… think like this! Are you annoyed? How do you actually live? How do you manage the poverty of the heart?
How do you live quite well alongside other market commodities without such songs? Money is beautiful, but is it very beautiful? I mean, very? How are you living with all this garbage?
Are you informing God how you’re living? Why do you feel that your way of living is God-approved? Do you understand feelings? Rain, cool breeze, sunshine… do they feel good? Do they awaken something within your soul? Or do only love, lust, desires… that’s it… awaken those?
What’s in your head? Brain, or feelings? Your failures lack depth, you cry so easily, your successes lack legitimacy. Therefore, your life is quite beautiful! The share of joy is greater, sorrow… what is that anyway? Sweet, sweet!
Six. The person who doesn’t cook mutton at home despite loving to eat it himself, because you have allergies—that person loves you.
Even after fierce quarrels have ended all communication between two people, the person who firmly takes your hand while crossing the street, walks ahead protectively, and safely guides you across—that person loves you.
The person who goes outside to smoke in secret because you can’t tolerate cigarette smoke—that person loves you.
When leaving, the person who gazes at you steadily and silently from behind, as long as you remain visible, until you disappear from sight—that person truly, truly loves you.
Love needs no proof. Love requires no words. Love can never be measured on the scales of language. Many people know how to love deeply without ever saying “I love you.” For this reason, even someone born mute need never spend a single word in their lifetime to love.
Seven. The ocean has never
touched the sky…
The sky has never
crossed the sea.
Only in a strange circular water
do they touch each other.
To the sun,
they remain forever grateful.
Eight. There are many differences between successful and unsuccessful people. Let me tell you one.
Those who are unsuccessful say they will do many things. They keep talking about what they’ll do—this and that. Some of these things they manage to accomplish, others they don’t.
The successful say only as much as they can demonstrate through action. They don’t make grand proclamations in advance. Their work is their introduction.
The interesting thing is, this success or failure—both are actually two kinds of mindset. Your mindset determines which path you’ll walk. I haven’t seen people with a failure mindset progress much toward success, and the reverse is equally true.
That friend of ours who used to tell everyone he’d be the first among us to buy a car—he still calls some of us looking for a decent job. If Destiny company hadn’t collapsed, perhaps our friend could have given us rides in his own car. A company that operates on its customers’ face value can’t go very far—that’s only natural.
Let me humbly remind you again: success and failure are essentially mindsets, not external circumstances. Once you get the mindset right, the rest follows naturally.
(The desire to write about this in greater detail while sitting by the seashore remains. Why I said “by the seashore,” I’ll explain this evening.)
Reflection: Seven Hundred Sixty-Three
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One. Life’s final word is neither meaning nor love; life’s final word is peace and peace alone. We search for meaning and love to find peace, yet in the end we lose that very peace! Better hatred than love that brings no peace. Better suffering than wealth that destroys peace. One who doesn’t find love may weep; one who doesn’t find peace dies. What use is being burdened by a love that destroys the very peace of mind? Better to count one’s days without love! Mere survival is not life; living in peace is life.
Two. Envy doesn’t arise from not having something, but from dissatisfaction with one’s own position. What richer person exists than the utterly poor man who is content with his station! Envy creates in people an acute sense of lack. This very feeling gradually weakens them. An envious person is fundamentally a weak person. One who has faith in their own abilities never envies anyone. To envy someone is to accept with bowed head that I can never become like them.
Three. Suppose you go somewhere with a friend who holds a high position. The people there offer your friend a chair because of his status, but not you. If he truly is your friend, he will surely ask for another chair for you as well. If he doesn’t, if he simply sits down leaving you standing, then rest assured—the one you consider a friend is merely someone you know, not a friend at all. Friendship is based not on equality of position but on equality of heart. One whose friendship is crushed under the weight of rank may have a weighty title, but has no friendship.
Four. Among the few heinous crimes in this world is saying “I love you” without truly loving.
Saying “I love you” is making a commitment. Yes, quite a profound commitment. Upon your spoken words “I love you” rest the other person’s trust, faith, and dependence… sometimes, an entire life! Imagine that!
“I love you”—this line means “I want to share life with you, I want to walk the remaining path holding your hand, I want to be a partner in your joys and sorrows.” Love means the absence of emotional distance. Removing physical distance while maintaining mental distance is called need, not love.
To say “I love you” to someone you cannot accept is utter cowardice. To say “I want you” to someone you cannot shelter is characterlessness. Offering patronage without sanctuary brings people close to death. To exploit someone’s body while trapped in the web of a relationship, invoking love as justification—this is truly a crime. Not just a crime, but an utterly despicable crime. At the end of the day, it is the body that is consumed, not the mind.
The person you are buying and selling in the name of love for bodily needs or other selfish interests—they may truly trust you, believe in you.
Trust is the rarest commodity in this world. Even God has not given you the right to casually shatter such a precious thing. By devaluing something as costly as trust, humans gradually cheapen themselves.
Do you have bodily needs? Yes, you very well might. For that, at street corners, in red-light districts, or somewhere or other, you can easily find bodies available for monetary exchange. Or invite someone to your bed who has no objection to sleeping with you. The body has exchange value, the heart does not. The claims of lust, the demands of desire are quite beautiful, quite honest—there’s no need for love-and-affection there. Even love and lust can arise for two different people, and there’s no sin in that. The body remains unbound, but the heart truly does get bound.
Wanting someone’s body without loving them is not wrong, but invoking love to obtain a body and then discarding that person is a crime equal to murder! Love is sacred, and trust is the most precious thing on earth. Binding these two with the rope of necessity and making merry—this reveals the mark of inhumanity.
If you cannot love someone, say so directly. The person you’re keeping tied with your “I love you”—if they don’t hear “I love you” from you, they might find life’s meaning with someone else. Let them go, the one you don’t love. Let them leave, whose hand you cannot hold onto in the end.
Before making a commitment, consider whether you can keep it. Before saying “I love you,” think whether you actually love them at all. The person you think of as a plaything—to them, you might mean an entire lifetime. What is merely a moment to you might be their whole life!
Only your life is a life in this world, while others’ lives are toys—that’s not how it works! Ten or fifteen years from now, the very same thing you’re doing to someone else today could happen to your sister, your daughter, your brother, your son, or someone very dear to you. Nature settles accounts down to the last penny. Immediately or eventually, the very arrow you’re shooting will turn around and come straight back at your chest. Sometimes, bearing the pain of someone dear before your eyes is much harder than enduring your own suffering. You will receive what you give—just wait.
Don’t play with anyone’s feelings. If you feel like playing, buy mobile games or toy games. Or play with someone who doesn’t mix love with play. There’s no sin in play—all the sin lies in what play becomes a pretext for! Life and feelings are not matters for play; they are matters for love! Love is always heavenly, eternally sacred. On the other hand, calculated love is merely another name for debits and credits.
Love and affection are by no means the same. Though affection may be love’s birthplace, love need not necessarily be born from affection. To touch the body, mere liking or simple desire suffices—but to touch the soul, love is absolutely essential. There is as much honesty in standing at the door of the heart and seeking to enter the room, as there is dishonesty in standing at the door of the room and seeking to enter the heart. If we can grasp this simple truth before it’s too late, many of life’s reckonings become far easier to navigate.