1. This night, this solitude, this memory— I love them all, because right now I'm feeling quite sleepy. 2. Why do you think I only compete with God? There could be friendship too! 3. Everyone knows I'm mad, that's why I can get away with such madness! 4. Why is the sky weeping so? Who touched it today? Or is it because no one touched it at all… 5. Why do you ask for the body? I wanted to be a queen, not a beggar! 6. Even anguish has its limits! Yet your memory knows no bounds! 7. How do I sleep at night! Close my eyes and you come in dreams! Open them and you float in the sky! 8. Either stay together, or part ways completely! How much longer must I keep house with your mother-in-law! 9. What friendship this is between your dreams and my sleep! Both rise and sit up together! 10. People search and still can't find a job! And here I am, unable to quit this job of thinking about you, even when I want to! 11. How many more installments of suffering before the installments of your memory run out? 12. Take good care of yourself. I've learned to accept that I won't have you. I still haven't learned to accept that you're not well! 13. I didn't get you—no sorrow in that. The only sorrow is this: I didn't get the responsibility of keeping you well! 14. What a world this is! Stay quiet and everyone asks, What's your sorrow about? Smile a little and… the very same people say, What happened? Why are you laughing? 15. After seeing you I didn't lose myself, rather I was born again! 16. Why did you come? I was fine before! Why do you stay? I live in anguish now! 17. Because I found you, today I live as my heart desires! 18. The one who saw the wealth in me that no one else did— that's who I call beloved! 19. Why should I fear? What's there to fear from someone who gives up all claims!? 20. Many touch the body; fortune belongs only to the one who touches the heart!
# Thoughts in Bonsai: Twenty The mind is a peculiar gardener. It tends to cultivate what it shouldn't, and neglects what it should nurture. We water our anxieties with such devotion that they grow into towering trees, while our dreams remain stunted in small pots, barely surviving our indifference. I've noticed how we obsess over the wrong things. We spend hours perfecting the art of worry, becoming virtuosos of what-ifs and masters of imagined disasters. But ask us to tend to our aspirations with the same care, and suddenly we're too busy, too tired, too realistic. There's something almost comical about this misallocation of attention. We're like gardeners who spend all day watering the weeds and wondering why the roses won't bloom. The very energy we waste on problems that may never come to pass could have been the fuel for dreams that desperately need our care. Perhaps this is the truest form of self-sabotage: not the dramatic kind we see in stories, but this quiet, persistent tendency to nurture what diminishes us while starving what could elevate us. We become curators of our own limitations, collectors of reasons why things won't work. But awareness, they say, is the first step toward change. Once we see the absurdity of our gardening habits, we might just learn to redirect our nurturing hands toward worthier soil.
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