Musings by Taniya

I don't remember the exact words of Dumbledore in Harry Potter when he said.... It takes courage to fight your enemies  It takes even more courage to fight your friends (...and family) This is where its supposed to end.... But I wish to add a corollary. It takes a herculean amount of courage to fight ourselves. Our naked, self loathing and resenting selves. To move beyond our guilt and self reproach To courageously face our biases, limiting beliefs and ideologies. That my dear,  Is the bravest of them all the toughest of them all And frankly speaking, the most foolhardy of them all. Because how do we even begin fighting ourselves? To honestly re evaluate and rewire ourselves to the very core. To accept how and why we have lived till this day, might not be apt for us and then modulating it to suit our ever changing whims, times and ethos. I hope you agree that to face our inner demons is truly the scariest amongst the demons paying us a personal visit. It takes immense courage ...

I think there should be class on how to live life?  We spend most of our lives blasting and blundering through around absolutely clueless about our own aspirations, direction or purpose. We waste most of it on borrowed beliefs and ideas. We are so easily swayed by external manipulation, peer pressure and diktats of society. And before we know it, most of our life is done and dusted.  Then the epiphany strikes, that what we have been doing and how we have been living, is not how we actually we wanted it to be. But where do we go from there henceforth, is different for all. Some lament the loss of what they wanted but never tried for, and then waste the rest of the life drowning in the river of self blame and pessimism. Some blitz through the infamous mid-life crises reinventing themselves or seek frivolous or oftentimes mundane endeavours. Then there are some who get themselves entrenched in radicalizing ideologies, spiritualism bordering on fanaticism, and sometimes even cults...