Bravery

My favourite words, my own, yet I relate to it a lot.

Now I am not much of a person to make leaps of faith, the sort that changes worlds and likely turn them upside down. I see myself as a realist, some see it a bit extreme to the point of calling me a pessimist. I can live with that I guess, after all a realist is a pessimist who has aspirations of an optimist but with a bit of experience as well.

But wait, don’t write me off me as a boring, orthodox & unimaginative person, I make my leaps as well. But I make them count and so far down the lane, most of them have counted a lot. I have had my fair share of regrets, but they have turned out to be lessons for the future. But it prepares you

I would say make your leaps with a fair measure of foresight. But think your head and live with your heart. Never lose the romanticism when you take life as it comes, never forget that passionate people can get the best out of things no matter the circumstances.

Being brave is all about facing your apprehensions and letting go of all the inhibitions.

 

Take your brave little leap, but take a look before you do, that is the brave thing to do.

That’s what I would do.

Words. A lot of them.

Who doesn’t jot down a few words here and there? A quirky facebook comment, a text message to a friend, a tweet update, a correspondence email. We all do that, quite frequently, daily.

But the joy of writing down those post-it notes of thoughts stuck deep inside your mind is something else.  Earnest Hemingway had it spot on when he said “All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know”. It couldn’t get truer than those pent up thoughts waiting in line to be written down.

Ever since I can remember I used to love writing whatever nonsense that my head conceived. Tom Sawyer-ish adventures, Commando Comics inspired battles, fantasies & worlds unimaginable akin to The Chronicles of Narnia and so on. Of course, television had it’s own impact on my imagination. Fiction was  my favourite. It started showing on my academics, where fiction started creeping into my examination answers. Wholly factual yet slightly peppered with fictional stuffing.

A pencil and paper was enough to nspire me to wander into a world of my own. Where I had power over all, I was the creator and master of it. One of the wholesome experiences I have had during my early years of trysting with writing was with my paternal grandfather’s old typewriter. The jabbing sounds I would make as I carefully typed down each word still rings in my head. As ink ribbons made a fleeting marks on my small grubby fingers whenever I fiddled with the mechanism to load a new sheet of paper.

And now eons later (read years of procrastination) I am back to sharpen those brain cells and see if I can get together some words.

A lot of them.