Thought: Seven Hundred Eighty-Five ……………………………………………………… One. When you meet someone, you build an image of them. This image has to do with what they really are, it has to do with our expectations and has a lot to do with what they "sell" of themselves. It's the result of all that we fall in love with. If this person is very similar to the image they have designed for us, getting ourselves out of any kind of love later will not be so painful. There will be longing, perhaps a little hurting, but nothing that will last for a long time. In the end, the good memories will survive. But if this person "invented" a character, and you fell into the trap, then, added to the pain of separation, will come a slower suffering process: that of deconstruction of that person you thought was real. Thousands of people are living their days apparently in good shape, but inside they are deconstructing illusions, all because they fell in love with fraud, not someone authentic. Okay, it's natural that, on an approach, we "sell" more our qualities than defects. No one will start a story saying, with much pleasure: I am arrogant, lazy and kleptomaniac. None of that is going to happen, as it's time to charm. But that's at the beginning. Once the novel is engaged, then the defenses are put aside, and we show who we really are, our sweetness as well as our imperfections—what happens if we're honest. The dishonest people of love are those who manufacture ideas and attitudes, until one day they get tired of the joke, drop the mask and the other being there gets astonished. Anyone who fell in love with a counterfeiter has to deconstruct them to fall out of love. It's suffocating. It requires you to recognize that you have been seduced by a fantasy, that you are capable of letting yourself be confused, that your desire to love is stronger than your shrewdness. Furthermore, it means to face that someone for whom you dedicated a noble and true feeling did not come into existence, everything was nothing more than a performance and look, maybe it wasn't bad, it may be that this person doesn't even know themselves, so they invent themselves. We resist a lot to accept that someone we love is not, and never has been, special. How fortunate we are when we know whom we're dealing with: even if it comes to disappoint us one day, everything that's been built will stand by our side forever. Two. To escape from a wife's suspicion, being virtuous is not enough—being unmarried is equally essential! Three. Fear of Love? It seems absurd, with so many other fears that we have to face: fear of violence, fear of defeat, and no less feared loneliness, which is what makes us seek relationships. But absurd or not, the fear of love settles between our vertebrae, and we know why.
Love, so noble, so dense, so intense, ends. It tears us inside, makes a deep cut that goes from the chest to the groin, love ends abruptly because suddenly a third person has emerged or simply because there is no more interest or attraction, I don’t know, go know what interrupts a feeling, it is an indecipherable mystery. But the love ends, ungratefully ends, and ends only on one side, never ends in two hearts at the same time, slows down one before the other, and goes a little pain to each corner. It hurts those who took the initiative to break up because breaking is not easy, breaking routines is always traumatic. Beyond love, there is the friendship that remains and the presence with which one gets used, breaking a love is not nonsense, it is a fact of great responsibility, it is a wound that opens in the body of the other, in the affection of the other, and in itself, even with less gravity.
And to have love rejected, not spoken, is an open fracture, we languish in public, we shrink the soul, we almost wish for any violence coming from the street to forget this violence coming from time spent and lived, this assault in which we have been robbed of everything, love and what comes with it, trust and stability. Without love, nothing remains, belief is undone, romanticism loses its meaning, stupid songs make us cry inside the car.
As passes the pain of love, comes the truce, the heart gets cleansed again, the eyes get dried again, the mouth gets empty. Nothing good is happening, but also nothing bad. A new love? There’s no way. Fear, we answer. How brave are we, who despite such a justified fear, love again and every time love calls us, feigning a little resistance but knowing that forever it is impossible to refuse it!
Thought: Seven Hundred Eighty-Six
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One. During a lifetime we are able to feel everything, there are countless sensations that invade us, and despite their presence art has also served itself with abundance. Passion, longing, guilt, elbow pain, remorse, excitement, optimism, desire – we know how to recognize each of these joys and sorrows, there is not much novelty, we have experienced a little of each thing, and what has not been experienced was at least witnessed through films, novels, music lyrics.
There is a feeling, however, that does not appear much, does not star in film scenes or turn verses often, and when we feel in our own skin, it is as if it were an uncomfortable visit. Of humiliation, I speak.
There are many ways for a person to feel humiliated. The most common is the one where someone directly despises us, reduces us, puts us in our proper place—what is this place that does not allow movement? Crossing? Usually, they are hierarchical oppressions: employer-employee, teacher-student, adult-child.
We respect hierarchy, but we do not swallow the pride of others, and this kind of humiliation just does not do greater damage because we know that it is the fruit of arrogance, and the arrogant are nothing more than people with an inferiority complex. They often humiliate themselves, so they don’t feel humiliated.
But when is humiliation not the fruit of hierarchy, but of something much greater and more devastating: ignorance about ourselves? We try to overcome old pain, and we can’t. We try to become friends with those we once loved and fall into old traps armed by the heart. Furthermore, we offer our body and our affection to those who no longer need neither one nor the other. Noble motives, but the result is zero.
In such cases, there was no evil, no one intended to sneer at us. We were just facing the unknown: ourselves, our weaknesses, our most hidden emotions, those that we thought were overcome, forever asleep, but that from time to time wake up to, mercilessly, put us in our proper place.
Two. Marriage is permanent, courtship is provisional.
Love is permanent, passion is temporary.
A profession is permanent, a job is temporary.
An address is permanent, a stay is temporary.
Art is permanent, the trend is temporary.
Do you agree? Neither do I.
A marriage that lasts even 20 years is also temporary. Period.
We are not repetitions of ourselves, every moment we are surprised by new thoughts that come to us through reading, cinema, meditation. What I was yesterday, the day before yesterday, is already a memory. Ladder won step by step, but what I am right now is what counts, my decisions are worth for now, only today is my day, no other.
Love… how we cling to this illusion! Because if even love for us itself resists so long without a few reassessments. That’s why we’ve become, we’re a good place to learn, to improve, to leave behind our immeasurable mistakes, our aches, our prejudices, everything we did thinking it right and today we condemn. Love seeps into us, but you all keep moving: you, the love of your life and what you feel. All pulsating independently, and likely to stray from each other.
An address is not forever, a profession can be thrown out the window, friendship is very strong until you find an even stronger disappointment, art goes through cycles, and if all this is sovereign and has supreme value, it is because today we believe in it, today we are superior to the past and the future, now is that our belief stabilizes, the need manifests itself, the will is imposed—until time turns.
I make fewer plans and grow fewer memories. I don’t keep a lot of papers, and I don’t get attached to things much.
I move in a space whose size suits me, I reach my limits with my hands, it is in it that I settle and live with the possible integrity. I get tired less, I have more fun, and I don’t lose the faith that nothing is obvious: everything is temporary, including us.
Three. No person is a place of rest. This line haunts me, back and forth. A microscopic view of what this millennium offers us: a vast array of sexual choices and complete detachment from eternity—nothing has been built to last. Whoever isn’t happy can simply pack up, leave, and slam the door. More honest, more practical, and more thrilling relationships. It should feel like paradise, but the truth is, we left the theater with a bitter taste in our mouths.
Over time, we become mature people, learn to cope with our losses, and no longer harbor so many illusions. We know we will not find a person who alone can fulfill 100% of our expectations—sexual, emotional, and intellectual. Those who refuse to accept this embrace the rotation and enjoy life. Good, that’s wonderful—so you should suffer less, right? The problem is that no one is mature enough to surrender what remains of innocence. It still hurts to trade romanticism for skepticism; we still carry remnants of fairy tales. Even when we find life out there brazenly flirting with us, seducing us with offers like “buy two, pay for one!” The idea of contradicting life’s course and finding someone to calm our hysteria and make us stop searching still seems tempting.
There is nothing wrong with enjoying the gentleness of a relationship that is no longer passionate but offers in return the blessing of intimacy and shared silence, where no one has to worry about lying or telling the truth. When you’ve been with the same person for many years, there’s a good chance they know you well—you don’t have to constantly explain your contradictions, motives, desires. You save considerably on words, on gestures that speak for themselves.
Long relationships manage to cross that strange border where one becomes the homeland of the other. Friendship with sex is also a legitimate way to relate, even if not well regarded by emotion-seekers. It is not through anxiety that one measures the magnitude of a feeling. To sit together facing the moon, when there is a moon, or facing rain, when there is rain; and together raise glasses in a toast, whether they contain wine or coffee—this is called a truce. A calm relationship between two people who, without worrying about being modern or eternal, make each other their resting place. Too lazy to return to the hunt? Often, yes. But who knows—it could also be love.
Thought: Seven Hundred and Eighty-Seven
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One.
People condemn others for experiencing illicit pleasures not so much because of the illegality, but far more because they themselves cannot attain that pleasure. The source of such condemnation is not conscience, but envy.
Two. Never impose your own decisions upon anyone against their will, no matter how close they may be to you. For if that decision later brings sorrow into their life, they will never be able to erase the hatred and revulsion toward you from their heart, despite a hundred efforts. No one in this world can take responsibility for another’s happiness. Rather, as resentment accumulates, their affection for you will gradually diminish. The attempt to bind someone within your own rules breeds disrespect and indifference toward you in their heart.
When people make mistakes through their own decisions, they can accept them, but when they are forced to err through others’ decisions, it gives birth to rebellion within them.
Three. We spend our entire lives on our own dime, but on others’ terms. That is why we achieve great heights in life, accomplish much, yet cannot find happiness. The moment we try to do something for our own joy with our own money, the oblique glances of those whose money we don’t depend upon pierce us so deeply that existence itself seems meaningless. Not everyone wants to die from melancholy; many also wish to die from the sorrow of being unable to live according to their own nature. Financial independence sows the seeds of spiritual bondage.
Four. The very one who would have forced you to fast at every meal if absent—
Do you not think of them as the slave of your mind!
Five. Perhaps it is so simple, foolish and natural that you have never stopped to think: learning how to make your love beautiful. Make your love be or look beautiful—that’s all. Just learn the hard art of loving beautiful. Liking is so easy that no one agrees to learn it.
I have seen a lot of love out there where love becomes, really, courageous, gigantic, massive, deep, sincere, full of delivery, giving and giving, but they run into the difficulty of becoming beautiful. Just that: beautiful, more beautiful or embellished, treated with affection, care and attention. Loves carried with the art and tenderness of flower-hands.
Then these loves that are true, eternal and heavenly suddenly perceive themselves threatened only because they do not know how to be beautiful: they charge; require; routinize; complain carelessly; no longer understand; need more than they offer; need more than they meet; are filled with reasons. Yes, love ruins itself for reasons! Being right is the greatest danger in love.
Those who are right always feel entitled (and have) to claim, to demand justice, equity, equalization, without claiming that what is without reason may go through a moment in their life in which they cannot be right. You don’t even want to be right. Being right is a danger: in general, it worsens love, for it is invoked with justice but at the wrong time. Beautiful love knows the time to be right.
Put your hand on your conscience. Are you sure you’re making your love beautiful?
ভঙ্গি থেকে, ক্রিয়া থেকে, প্রতিক্রিয়া থেকে, দৃষ্টি থেকে, আকাঙ্ক্ষা থেকে, সাক্ষাতের আনন্দ থেকে, অমিলের বেদনা থেকে, সর্বোচ্চ সম্ভাব্য সৌন্দর্য থেকে তুমি কী নিচ্ছ? হয়তো নাও নিচ্ছ। কারণে ভরা বা কারণহীন, তুমি ভালোবাসা থেকে কেবল তা-ই প্রত্যাশা করো যা তার প্রয়োজনী অংশগুলো দাবি করে, অথচ হয়তো তার উচিত কম প্রত্যাশা করা, যাতে মাঝে মাঝে যে মঙ্গল সে এনে দিতে পারে তার যথাযথ মূল্য দেওয়া যায়।
যারা এর চেয়ে বেশি প্রত্যাশা করে তারা কষ্ট পায় এবং কষ্ট সুন্দরভাবে ভালোবাসা বন্ধ করে দেয়। কষ্ট একটি শিশুর মতো প্রফুল্ল থাকা বন্ধ করে দেয়। আর শিশুর মন না রেখে কোনো প্রেম সুন্দর হয় না। রোমান্টিকতাকে ভয় পেয়ো না। অন্যের মতামতের বেড়া ভেঙে ফেলো। গোলাপের মুকুট তৈরি করো এবং যাদের ভালোবাসো তাদের মাথা সাজাও। গান গাইতে গাইতে বেরিয়ে এসো এবং প্রফুল্ল দেখাও।
সুপারিশ: ভালোবাসতে গিয়ে হাতেনাতে ধরা পড়ো; ভালোবাসতে এবং ভালোবাসায় ক্লান্ত হয়ো না; তত্ত্ব দিয়ে সহবাস বাধাগ্রস্ত করো না; সর্বদা স্থগিত রাখো, সম্ভব হলে চুম্বন দিয়ে, সেই গুরুত্বপূর্ণ কথাবার্তা শুরু করা যা আমাদের দরকার, যথাসম্ভব ছোট ছোট বিষয় ফাইল করে রাখো, অল্প মনোযোগ পাওয়ার অভিযোগ। যারা ভালোবাসে তাদের কাছে সব মনোযোগই সর্বদা অল্প। যারা কুৎসিত ভালোবাসে তারা জানে না যে একটুখানি মনোযোগ হতে পারে সমস্ত সম্ভাব্য মনোযোগ। যারা সুন্দর ভালোবাসে তারা এই মনোযোগের সময় কাটায় না সেই মনোযোগের জন্য দায়ী করতে যা আর নেই।
প্রেম নিয়ে তত্ত্ব করো না (সেটা আমাদের, দুর্ভাগা লেখকদের ছেড়ে দাও যারা জীবনকে দেখি জানালায় হেলান দিয়ে দাঁড়ানো নাকমুখো শিশুর মতো, আমাদের স্বপ্নের খেলনায় ভর্তি): প্রেম নিয়ে তত্ত্ব করো না, কেবল ভালোবাসো। এখানে এবং এখনই অনুভূতির নিয়তি অনুসরণ করো। ঠিক যা তুমি ভয় করো তাতেই ভয় পেয়ো না, যেমন আন্তরিকতা; কাজ না করা; তারপর কষ্ট পেতে আসা (যেভাবেই কষ্ট পাবে); হৃদয় খুলে দেওয়া; তোমার অনুভূত প্রেমের আকারের সত্য বলা। সব চাল, কৌশল, আঘাত, চালাকি, পরিচিত কার্যকর ভঙ্গি ছুড়ে ফেলো (পরিচিত হওয়া বুদ্ধিমানের কাজ নয়): কেবল তোমার আবেগ ও অভাবের উচ্চতায় তুমি হয়ে ওঠো, ঠিক সেই তুমি যাকে জীবন হতে দেয় না।
বেসুরে গান গাইতে, কিন্তু প্রতিদিন সকালে নিজে হও। বাজে কথা বলতে, কিন্তু সর্বদা সৃষ্টি করতে। ফুলের মতো তোতলামি করতে। শৈশবের উৎসবের সময়ের মতো হৃদস্পন্দন অনুভব করতে। শিশুর মতো নির্দেশনা নিয়ে স্নেহগুলো পুনর্জীবিত করতে। বলতে ভয় না পেয়ে, আমি চাই, আমার ভালো লাগে, আমার মন চায়।
হয়তো তখন তুমি তোমার প্রেমকে সুন্দর করতে পারবে, অথবা তোমার প্রেমকে সুন্দর করে তুলতে পারবে, অথবা তোমার প্রেমকে সুন্দর করতে করতে, অথবা তোমার প্রেমকে সুন্দর করে ভালোবাসতে পারবে (বাক্যের ক্রম ফলাফল বদলায় না), যখনই তা তোমার যা কিছু এবং কখনো যা ছাড়তে পারোনি, পরিচালনা করতে পারোনি, জানতে পারোনি, পারোনি, সম্ভবত, হতে পারোনি—তার সত্যতম প্রকাশ।
যদি প্রেম থাকে, তার বিষয়বস্তু ইতিমধ্যে প্রকাশিত। এ নিয়ে এবং এর পরিবেশ নিয়ে আর চিন্তা করো না। এখন আকৃতির যত্ন নাও। কণ্ঠের যত্ন নাও। কথার যত্ন নাও। নিজের যত্ন নাও। স্নেহের যত্ন নাও। তোমার প্রিয়জনের যত্ন নাও।
Love yourself enough to be able to enjoy love and so you can start trying to make each other happy.
Thought: Seven Hundred Eighty-Eight
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One. If you can’t handle the limits of others, it’s because you can’t handle your limits. Rejection is a process of seeing one another.
Every time I want to get in the other person what I lack, I make it an object. I may even admire in them that I don’t have in myself, but I have no right to make them a representation of what I lack. That’s not loving, that’s a child’s thing.
Anonymity is a danger to us. It’s always good that we’re with people who know who we are and what decisions we make in life. It’s always good to be in a place that protects us.
To love someone is to live the constant exercise of not wanting to make the other person what we would like them to be. The experience of loving and being loved is above all the experience of respect.
How is our ability to love? It is one thing to love out of necessity and another one to love for value. To love out of necessity is to always want the other to be what you want. To love for value is to love the other person as they are when they have nothing left to offer, when they are useless and so you love them so much. By the time your utilities go away, you’ll know how much you’re loved!
Everything will be lost; just hope you don’t get lost. As long as you don’t get lost in yourself you will be loved, for what you are means so much more than what you do! May you be more than you do!
Two. What is this life, really?
What does it want?
Why does it never tell us beforehand what it wants us to do?
In what way, on which path do all of life’s mysteries unfold one by one?
When I stand on the shore, there’s the fear of rust gathering on the mind’s surface, and when I begin to move with the current’s rhythm, there’s still profound uncertainty—where will this boat finally stop? Will I glimpse that dream-kingdom? Or will I sink into some deep, bottomless depth? So many questions peek through the mind’s windows. Sometimes, in life’s various complex circumstances, uncertainty’s fear envelops from all directions so completely that it seems I might indeed sink! In that fear I stop again, decide to return to shore, but again and again the past appears before my eyes, I remember what came before. I remember—I was on the shore, I had given life into its own hands so it could guide me as it wished, because I had grown weary, repeatedly failing to organize everything and wanting to surrender it all to life’s hands. I had felt that no matter how much I tried, nothing was happening! Then let it remain as it pleases, let life flow as it wants! But even that led nowhere, nothing stirred anywhere, only I stood there…waiting for life to come to me, into my hands.
What awaits me at the end? Nothing but neglect?
Walking along dust-laden paths, I wonder if I too might be reduced to dust among this very dust! Events unfolding around me thus disturb me with questions and fears; I think, what if my end is also like that? Then I feel like abandoning everything. If such is to be the fruit of all effort, then perhaps not trying at all would be more logical. But how can one abandon everything when there remains no opportunity even to abandon? What of one who must continue doing everything out of sheer compulsion, who has no other recourse? Does such a person have any justification for seeking meaning in life? Can they hold any hope from life?
These days no color draws me anymore. I understand very well now that colors have lost their power to paint the human heart. When one’s inner hue fades, all colors of life appear colorless to them. It seems grayness is life’s true color, or perhaps life is the name of that color which dissolves into whiteness. The faded, melancholy, dust-covered paths around me seem to merge with my eternity. Nowhere in this world is there truly any color that harmonizes with life’s reckonings. One for whom all colors of life appear faded in profound emptiness knows not what a colorful life looks like. Painting oneself in the splendor of colors becomes meaningless for one who knows no colors, or for whom life must be written in the color of blood. After paying the price of all colors throughout life, does life finally purchase a white shroud?
What does life want—let it speak once!
Can it not speak openly?
If it could ask, everything could be provided, for one who wants nothing actually wants everything! But what exactly does “everything” mean? How much blood would life need to give me that bit of whiteness in return? Alas, such is the price of this meager, trivial, colorless existence!
Three. Rather than living a second-class life despite getting first class in all examinations, it is far better to live a first-class life even while getting second class in all examinations.
Mind you, getting second class in all examinations doesn’t necessarily guarantee a first-class life. Nor is it true that getting first class in all examinations won’t allow for a first-class life.
Thought: Seven hundred and ninety-nine
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One. Living a truly loving experience is one of life’s greatest pleasures. To like is to feel with the soul, but to express the feelings depends on the ideas of the individual. We condition love to our neurotic needs and end it. We live a life trying to get others to take responsibility for our needs while we abandon ourselves irresponsibly.
We want to be loved, and we do not love each other, we want to be understood, and we do not understand each other, we want the support of others, and we do not give ours to them. We are the Alices in a Wonderland.
When we leave, we want to find someone who will fill the hole we dig. Dissatisfaction, inner emptiness is transformed into the continuous search for new relationships, whose frustrating results will be repeated.
Everyone is solely responsible for their own needs. Only those who love can sometimes find in their life real love.
Two.
A person feels most secure with someone in whose presence they can close their eyes and make mistakes without hesitation. That person is one before whom their small errors never register as errors at all. One who does not grant you the right to err can never become close to you.
The person who achieves such perfection in assignments, exams, or interviews that not even a single letter goes wrong—that very person sends letters filled with spelling mistakes, line after line, to their beloved without the slightest doubt. Because they know that the person on the other end will read not the letters wrapped in misspellings, but the words wrapped in love, and after reading, perhaps while wiping their eyes, will plant a gentle kiss upon those very words! In the radiance of that kiss hides love, not correctness.
The person who returns from office and carelessly leaves shoes in one corner, shirt in another, or after showering, thoughtlessly tosses the wet towel into some corner of the drawer—they know perfectly well that someone will set right these messy, irritating habits of theirs, will gladly correct them. Someone will fold their clothes and place them properly in the wardrobe, arrange their shoes neatly on the rack, and hang the wet towel to dry on the balcony. How can someone before whom you cannot be disheveled ever become the person of your heart?
This unhesitating certainty is called trust, dependence, faith.
This freedom to err as one pleases is called safe harbor.
One before whom you cannot err without reservation never becomes beloved. They become the office boss, or the examiner on the interview board.
One in whose presence you cannot remain without concern for any kind of correctness or incorrectness—whatever else they may be—cannot be kept within the heart.
To discover the love in a human heart, you must look into those eyes with which they smilingly forgive their child’s childhood mistakes. One into whose eyes they cannot look—them they do not love; not at all.
One who cannot easily accept my mistakes does not deserve to receive my correctness.
One who cannot love my flaws has no right to love me. They are nothing to me, nothing at all.
To love a person, you must accept all their mistakes and limitations.
Kiss me on my kohl-stained eyes, my sun-chapped lips, if you are truly beloved! Many are drawn to a perfect me; but tell me, how many are truly drawn to me?
I call only that person beloved who can accept me as I am! How can one who cannot find melody in my off-key voice find me?
Let it be known: the touch of love can lift a person far above all faults and errors, can give great courage and strength to someone who simply stands beside you. People live like kings not through correctness, but through love.
Three. At the very moment when someone lies writhing in a hospital corridor, desperate for even one more hour of life, somewhere else in this world someone is putting a noose around their neck, swallowing poison, or killing themselves with an overdose of sleeping pills.
Someone fights continuously to live, while another grows desperate to die. What a strange distance lies between thoughts!
Some people, despite having homes and cars, wealth and bank balances, quietly choose to die by their own hand, while others without even a roof over their heads persist—driving rickshaws with missing limbs, doing day labor, fighting desperately just to stay alive somehow.
Tell me, why is there such vast difference in thought and desire between one human being and another?
The difference lies, in truth, in the life force itself—the difference is in happiness and the perception of happiness.
Some have everything yet lack something deeply beloved, while others, possessing nothing, find some cherished joy that keeps them fiercely alive.
In this twenty-first century, people don’t really die from want of things—in this age, people die primarily from want of happiness.
It’s this very absence of happiness that drives someone to suicide every forty seconds.
Happiness doesn’t depend on attainment or non-attainment, rather happiness depends on contentment. How much you can be satisfied—on that depends whether you’ll be happy at all.
A street child selling scraps might find such contentment and happiness from selling a hundred rupees more in a day, while some big shot, sitting in an air-conditioned room earning a lakh rupees a month, might not feel nearly as satisfied.
The man who begs all day and returns home to sleep with his child pressed to his chest has found the contentment of that embrace, while another, living in utmost luxury, suffers day after day from the dissatisfaction of not having someone beloved nearby.
Happiness is always relative. You can only be happy when you’ve learned the magic of finding satisfaction in very little.
Our lives too are like mathematics. Know the formula and the sum becomes easy, the calculation works out. Get the formula wrong and there’s only trouble upon trouble—the accounts will go awry all too easily.
Thought: Seven Hundred and Ninety
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One. Those who hate me I love you all. And I wouldn’t be even half of what I am without you, I swear. It’s your deep hatred that gives me the strength to move on, exactly in my own way. Promise me you’ll never stop hating me, otherwise, I don’t know if life would still make sense to me.
I’d wander the streets, insecure, not knowing what I did so wrong. If someone like you doesn’t hate me, it’s because, at the very least, I’m not expressing myself right. I know you keep talking about me around every time you get the chance, and that kind of word-of-mouth advertising is priceless. Thank you for hating and talking about me, unpaid.
I feel happy especially when everyone gets interested in meeting a person who’s like that, I mean, the opposite of what you are. And let’s face it: there is no greater praise than to be hated by the hateful, for the most odious reasons. Here “negative” means the best possible result.
Look, my gratitude has no limits, because I know you might as well be doing other things instead of hating me—minding your own business, dedicating yourself more to your work, studying a little. But no: you’d rather spend your precious time hating me! I don’t even know if I’m worthy of such consideration.
Well, as you may have noticed, this is a love letter.
And since every good love letter ends full of promises, here’s mine: I promise never to disappoint you by doing something you like. On the contrary, I’m looking forward to accomplishing things that should make you even more nervous about me. I promise not to change, especially in the details you hate the most, also not forgetting to always try to find new ways to make you angry.
I promise never to answer you to the height of hatred when you are eventually rude to me, by verbalizing such immense hatred. Because I know that would make you happy with an attitude of mine, being a threat to the feeling so pure that you dedicate to me.
I promise, lastly, that if one day, in one of those laps that life takes, you stop hating me for no reason, I will still love you. Because I’m not one of those who forget who contributed to their success. Too bad if you’re not seeing me right now, even, because you’d see my sincere little smile, grateful, and you’d hate me even more.
With love from your eternal headache
দুই। Love is eternal and wonderful in its essence, capable of accomplishing the most important transformations in a human being.
Some live with love in its fullness by simply having it in abundance. They learn to love, to give themselves to being loved, and to establish creative relationships. Others suffer from their loving relationship. After some disappointments, they tend to isolate themselves and adopt a sceptical attitude towards love. They’d rather stay home, watch a film. They spend every weekend alone. Not only that, but they never accept a colleague’s invitation to dinner. At first, they feel relieved, because they think it is better to avoid problems than to go out in search of love. But after a while, loneliness begins to tighten the heart.
Never give up on love. Always take the risk of showing your love, even if the other person will not accept it, because loving someone is neither a problem nor a defect; it’s a virtue. If they don’t accept your love, it’s not your problem, because once you’ve figured out the way to love, you’re just going to find a mate for the two-way trip. If you are alone, open your heart, put a smile on your face, take back the sparkle in your eyes and believe that life prepares you wonderful surprises.
I hope that with this conversation of ours you have gained more energy and inspiration to enjoy love better, a reality too valuable to be trivialized. And remember: you are the author of your life and can write a very beautiful love story, in which you receive and give a lot of love. Always know that love can work, as long as you take care of love with great affection and wisdom. People today are hurt very much because they have not learnt to love fully.
The problem is not in love.
**Reflection: Seven Hundred and Ninety-One**
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One. When you speak with me, even just a little, I want to live—to fight against everything if I must. I think: if I remain alive, I can speak with you, I can hear words from you. Your few words transform my entire life; your few words give me the courage to fight. How deeply I wish to wait through eternity just to hear what you might say!
They are born with great fortune, those whose beloved speaks to them of love’s feelings. You have never, not once until today, said such things to me. I simply cannot understand whether you love me at all! The one I have loved for so long—whether she loves me, I do not know! This is a kind of waiting. This waiting is staring with empty eyes into emptiness.
May no one ever know the pain of loving from afar.
May everyone find their beloved close to them… and if not, may they at least know whether their beloved thinks of them, whether their sorrow brings tears to their beloved’s eyes, whether they are held in the sanctuary of their beloved’s prayers and well-wishes.
Two. There is no greater relationship in this world than love. The very feeling of love, or the ability to love someone by pouring out one’s entire self, by transcending one’s whole being—this is itself a priceless gift to oneself. We cannot truly love anyone more than we love ourselves. No one can simply choose to love another beyond themselves, but if someone can somehow achieve this, it surely comes from some invisible source of creation itself—such power exists only within the Creator. A person who once loves someone in this way can never form any other new relationship with them, whether of hatred or mere friendship! Though a friend may sometimes become a beloved, a beloved rarely becomes merely a friend. Relationships without love may sometimes merge into love, but love never dissolves into lovelessness.
One who receives such love comes with great fortune. Whatever else may be forced, genuine love cannot be obtained by force. All the wealth in the world cannot buy that authentic love. Friendship is a relationship of trust or reliance. Two people, man and woman, can spend their entire lives as each other’s support and confidant without loving each other in the slightest, but two people in love can never rise above love to entangle themselves in ordinary friendship again. If someone can do so, then certainly it was never truly love to begin with.
How mad I have become—I did not understand this myself for so long. I was so immersed in my own work, in seeking my own fulfillment, that it never occurred to me which path I was taking, which way I was walking. Somehow, somehow I began leaving my own road to walk along your path. Now that consciousness has returned, I see that I am no longer on my own road—my own path has been lost in the folds of your path. But did I never know that there would be no place for me to walk on your path?
Yes, I knew it of course, and because I knew it, I never wanted to speak my heart’s words, my unspoken thoughts. I didn’t speak them for many years, but suddenly somehow I lost all consciousness, as if I forgot what I was doing, what I was meant to do, what I had wanted to do, which path I had been walking—suddenly forgetting everything, I began walking on your path. Without knowing it, losing my mind, losing my way, in some unknown enchantment, some unknown melody, I began speaking my own words.
Today when consciousness suddenly returned and I looked back once, I saw how far I had walked on the wrong path, how many miles away I had left myself, where I had ended up—I know nothing of all this! What have I done to myself! I have deceived myself! But then, have I deceived you in the same way? I knew all along that there would never be a place for me on your path. I knew everything, so why didn’t I stop myself! Your arranged path, in that complete world of yours, you will never need me.
Where there is no lack, the need for anything is utterly trivial!
I was never on your list of needs, yet suddenly deceiving myself, distancing myself from myself at every moment—to whom was I offering all my mornings and evenings! Why didn’t my eyes see all this before? Why did my soul keep me intoxicated with temptation throughout the evening? What shall I deny to myself today! I had knowingly lost myself in delusion! Was it all false then! You were always conscious of your work, while I, losing all my consciousness, seduced myself day after day…to whom shall I tell all this!
No, I will never forgive myself. This mistake is mine alone, I alone am responsible for it. I shouldn’t have made such a grave error, I never went anywhere without thinking…then how did such a great mistake happen through me. I deceived myself, I cannot separate myself from my own conscience and the ocean of my own questions by placing blame on your shoulders. I must face my own questions, I must bring this despicable form of mine before myself, I must place myself in the dock of my own judgment, I must suffer the punishment for this. I must give an account of all my mistakes to myself.
Three. (Before)
: What does your son do?
: My son lives abroad.
(Now)
: What does your son do?
: My son is a hater of Sushanta Paul.
(What I understood from this)
As time changes, so do people’s professions.