. . . .

I know the day will come

When my sight of this world shall be lost

Life will take its leave in silence

Drawing the last curtain before my eyes

Yet stars will still shine at night

And mornings rise as before

And hours will still heave like sea waves

Casting up pleasures and pains

When I think of this end of my moments

The barrier of the moments breaks

And I see by the light of death

Your world with its careless treasures

Rare is its meanest of lives

Rare is its lowliest eat

Things that I longed for in vain

And things that I got—let them pass

Let me but truly possess

The things that I ever spurned and overlooked

(Rabindranath Tagore, 1913) 

A Paradoxical Perspective

On earth it seems that most people fret, worry, and lose sleep over some of the silliest things they’ve done. But what’s funny is that later on, from here, more often than not, it’s the things they didn’t do that haunt them. I’m not laughing, either.

I think people are stressing out even more not when they do not know what they want or need; it is because they know exactly, and yet still caught up with the illusion of “being safe”.The illusion of safe is guarded by the lists of “maybe”, “sometime”, “I don’t know, and the lists go on and on.

How can you know that something hasn’t worked out, unless you quit?

They say what’s really beautiful is Confidence

They say what’s really powerful is Persistence

Perhaps the most exiting realization in the world finally understands that living the life of your dreams is entirely up to you.  It’s also about the scariest.

It is said that if we can’t choose and control what we want to think, then we are in deep trouble. For the rest of our life . So the strategy here is by putting our thoughts in boxes, differentiating between positive and negative thoughts. But what happens next is by having positive and negative thoughts obviously creating unthinkable thinking arriving extreme ideas. Is there anything in between those two?

It is like when I think I have my own personal ideal concept of something (or someone), does it lead to idealism? Which the arrows will lead to high expectation, then scepticism eventually. How can one thought of positivity leads to negativity? 

All those things I thought I knew about writing, were wrong

Writing is about freedom of speech, so it should be in a state of freedom, no matter what kind of writings. Do not focus on the outline, outline is just a roadmap. Jailed. Outline is just a tool when we lose our track of mind.

Do not worry for the reader, worry for the story. It’s all about point of view, doesn’t matter where we start. Writing is hard criticism. Works best if we focus on imagination. Start with a thought of not thinking of writing, not to focus on what other people would think, rather, focus on the state of mind, focus on the freedom of thinking, not freedom of writing. Writing comes after thinking and imagination; free the imagination, free the thoughts.

Write anything we want, not necessarily have to be a happy ending, do not think of the ending, let the writing speaks to itself.   Sometimes we may be affected by our mood, we’re receptive to our imagination, sometimes we shut it out. When we know something doesn’t work, and we chuck it, the feeling is pure liberation, nearly as good as doing something right in the first place. Actually, the feeling is better because the elimination of the wrong choice fortifies the rightness of the right one. Never wed-ourselves to a piece till it’s finished and we’re satisfied that all the parts work together. Often the section we prize the most, the one we’ve fallen head-over-heels in love with, turns out to be expendable. Toss it. We’ll be deliriously happy to discover how thrilling it feels to get rid of something that doesn’t fit our story—just like life.

In the end, eventually our writing validates our lives. No topic in writing is independent of any other, and nothing is ever done with.

Good readers make good writings. Write like we read. Everyone can read. Everyone can write. So everyone can speak up their mind. What’s your method of choice? You already know what mine is.

(Unless it moves the human heart: The Craft and Art of Writing – Roger Rosenblatt)