Being a Santa

 Santa Claus is coming to town.

Yesterday was Christmas and it was a fun day. 

I have been listening to Christmas carols from the beginning of this month just to feel the Christmas spirit . I love the Christmas season. Well, I love all the seasons! Each season/month has a speciality and I like to get into the mode the season calls for .

So Christmas and Santa go hand in hand, right? I love to wear Santa caps, wear red dresses, drink hot chocolate, sip handmade wine, wear mittens to cover myself from the cold, feel the snow, set up a Christmas tree, decorate the tree and eat plum cakes!

Ha ha ha! 

I love snowy winters during Christmas! I love the festivities that come with Christmas and the way it is celebrated in western countries where the whole family comes together.

So, come, holidays, I started watching 'Christmas' movies on Netflix  with a nice cup of hot chocolate in my hand. I drew Santa with my kids, made Christmas theme rangolis, ate plum cakes, set up our Christmas tree and decorated the tree. Like last year, we filled our stockings with gifts for the people who help us out. 

On the day of Christmas, I started my day cleaning the house and getting rid of things we didn't need. We went out towards the city centre to bask in the huge Christmas tree vibes, had snacks and coffee and headed back home. At home we had a tiny Christmas scene where we exchanged 'secret Santa' gifts with plum cake, music and home-made wine.

Since yesterday I have been thinking about the name Santa Claus and I keep getting reminded of real time Santas in my life. I have so many real life Santas in my life - who give and give, WITHOUT EXPECTING anything in return. This post is dedicated to all the SANTAS we come across, who give from the heart. 

This post is to inspire myself to be a Santa to others all the time. It is a reminder to myself that the world needs Santas, and so to start by being one. 

This giving does not mean giving material things. Giving comes in so many ways right - giving our time to someone, giving through our actions, giving through words, giving by being kind etc.

I can also say that I was a Santa to myself this Christmas, which is equally important!

Ho ho ho, let us be a joy to the world and bring in cheer to everyone!

Hot chocolate, plum cake

No to Yes

 I am so excited about something soooooooo small, I am wondering if I should even write about it. But here I am

I started learning how to put a rangoli this year! I had thought that I could never put a rangoli on as I had never done it in my entire life. But I started, thanks to my kind neighbor who motivated me to start one day. Ever since then one can see a rangoli in front of my main door. It used to be random lines/curves initially, but slowly few patterns emerged. Finally I realized I could copy patterns from the internet. This motivated me to do patterns related to festivals and events. 

I was having fun doing these rangolis . I would do it anytime I had some free time, as it takes time.

Come Christmas holidays, I was excited to try out the Christmas theme rangolis everyday The best part for me was that I could find rangolis with dots.  Doing rangoli with dots helped me with the symmetry part and it was easy for me to do.

Now the whole day I have been over excited because I put a rangoli and it came out well. I used colour rangoli for the first time and I did a rangoli without dots. I can say that I am proud of myself today . Please don't laugh! hehe, but I have been so excited about this. 

I feel that if I can do it, anyone can. We keep telling our children so often - Don't say no without trying - but don't we as adults do it even more? I caught myself saying no to my little one so many times today. It hit me that we are teaching our kids to say no without even trying, because we are doing the exact same thing! 

Just think about it. Don't we resist trying new things? Don't we say no to our kids? 

Let us try to change this NO to YES and see what happens. 

I resisted learning or trying to put rangoli all my life. Maybe the fear of failure makes us not try? makes us say no?

Well, here's to saying more of YES and trying out new things

The Unknown

 It is again the famous holiday season :) - the Christmas holidays -  the year 2024 will end and a new year will begin. 

The whole world seems to put on the traveling hat during holidays. Even I used to, but now I have reduced. I start off the holiday season by just stepping out for walks in the morning. It is so refreshing. Just like my other posts, walks seem to trigger my writing :)

So this morning when I stepped out, I realized that I prefer walking in parks compared to roads. Many years ago, I used to not like walking in parks and loved walking on the roads. It used to be a different road everytime and I had no idea which road I would be taking. My feet decided the path at that moment. I used to love this road walking as I would get to see so many new things everytime.

I don't remember when it changed, but for the last few years I have been walking only inside parks. And now I do not want to walk on roads. 

I realized that there is a stark difference between the two. 

Park walking indicates - a fixed path, predictability, certainty, fixed distance and it is a known path.

Road walking indicates - can be different every time, no certainty, distance can vary, opportunities to take new roads.

I was wondering how my mind is choosing certainty and is holding on to it. We always prefer the known. Very rarely do we want to walk into unknown territory. One of the main reasons for all our worries is we want to be prepared for the future. We want to know. Whereas the reality is there is no way we can know our future, no matter how much we plan for it. There is no certainty about anything. 

That is probably the beauty of life - everything is uncertain, but we believe that everything is certain and plan for our future as if we know everything.  

Let us try and embrace the uncertainty, let us be mesmerized by the unknown, because no one knows what the future holds! 

When I embrace the unknown, new path

A new path can turn out to be a bed of flowers 😀

A new flower everyday
fresh coffee everyday 😛
helps us in seeing life new and fresh everyday, every moment

The only worry

 A sudden holiday on a weekday and here I am with my coffee and writing. Kids are still asleep, as one of the things they enjoy about a holiday is waking up late 

I am a huge country music fan! Fell in love with country music when I started living in Texas and we used to go-to many local music fairs and a few country music concerts!  

It has been a long time since I listened to country music. Last week kids were playing their playlist in the car and I happened to listen to one of Zac Brown Band's songs - Knee deep. 

It goes like this - 

Gonna put the world away for a minute

Pretend I don't live in it

Sunshine gonna wash all my blues away

.

.

and it goes on.

One line from this song that has been playing in my mind is - 

Only worry in the world is the tide gonna reach my chair

It is so beautiful. I can't stop thinking about how if the only worry we have is a very small worry like this and not big worries.

So if the only worry we have are -

I have to get up early

I have to cook

I have to do some work

I/child has to study

etc. compared to bigger worries, isn't our life blissful. 

Let us keep comparing our worries to - Only worry in the world is the tide gonna reach my chair

- and believe that Sunshine gonna wash all my blues away

Haha, I know if only life was that simple, or our worries were this simple. But the fact is whether we worry or not, whatever is supposed to happen will happen. So why do we worry or think so much about every single tiny thing? 

Life will be so much simpler if we just listen to the music and follow the lyrics 

To music!

The only worry for now is to get this perfect 😛

Let us choose our worries wisely 😊😍

Appreciate

 Appreciation, acknowledgement, approval - a man seeks or craves all these from others. But why? Why do we have a need to be appreciated? Why do we need to be acknowledged by others? Why do we wait for approval? Don't we all, in some way or the other, feel good when we are praised? Is it an innate quality of human beings to thrive on these? I hope not. 

The reason I am writing about this is I see every moment how it is affecting the quality of each one's life. Whether we agree or not, whether we are aware or not, we are looking for these appreciations/acknowledgements and approvals. A good and simple example is to ask ourselves if we are totally fine when we are ignored by others. If the answer is yes, then we are really doing great! 

Few questions we can ask ourselves to become aware of ourselves - 

Am I ok if an acquaintance does not smile at me

Am I ok if a friend does not greet me

Am I ok if someone does not respond to my messages

Am I ok if someone does not pick or return my call

Am I ok if someone does not appreciate my work

Am I ok if my close friends don't listen/value my words

Am I ok if someone does not say I look good when I dress up

The list can go on and on right? 

And the answer to all the above and many more questions is that YES IT IS ABSOLUTELY OK, we do not need to be praised or acknowledged by anyone. IT IS OK! 

Most of the time we tell ourselves that we don't care what others think, but the truth is somewhere in subtle ways it affects our mood. Let us try and not give the remote control of our moods to someone else. 

If someone doesn't smile at us, let us give ourselves a huge smile :)

If someone doesn't greet us, let us say a big hello to ourselves

If someone doesn't pick up our calls, then we get more time for ourselves

If someone doesn't appreciate our work, we pat our own back

If someone doesn't say we look good, we look in the mirror and we know we look great!

These may seem very petty and silly. But these are the little demons that are hidden in most of us and we want to pretend they don't exist as it makes us look sad/petty/silly. But these subtle little demons have built a solid home in our minds since childhood. Remember how when a child makes sounds, we clap and cheer her. When a child walks we make it a big deal and clap. When a child holds a pencil and scribbles we say wow. So from birth we get used to these praises/cheering. So when we don't get them as we grow older and older, the expectation remains deep inside, though on the outside we claim that we don't expect. Food for thought :)

Let us always keep the remote control of our lives in our hands and see how life unfolds :)

Just like nature - just being - oblivion - doing its job 

It is what it is

 Why do they say life becomes easier as we grow older? That's just nonsense!

I think age has got nothing to do with life being easier. Life is easier if you have a loving family, loving friends and loving co-workers. That's it! period! 

But then we argue saying these are all external factors and we can't be dependent on the outside world. Though we talk big words, the ultimate truth is that we are social animals, and our internal and external are connected. So while the internal is everything, the external also has a major role to play in our life. When the external is not great, we try to focus on the internal to justify and convince ourselves that we can survive even when our external sucks. 

Just like everything else in life, having a balance between the internal and external helps navigate through life a lot better and makes it easier. 

Parenting

 I heard a character in a serial say "having a child is like watching your heart walk outside you"! I was stuck at this as it describes the feeling accurately! No one could have expressed it better! 

During the initial years of my writing blogs, I used to write about parenting. But I have not touched the subject in a very long time. I guess most of my generation agrees that it is like a roller coaster ride. I am specifically pointing out my generation because before our generation, most of our parents and ancestors used to have at least 10 or more children and sail through life. Of course there were challenges, but they accepted those challenges and lived life. Our generation has 1 or 2 children and are juggling between 100s of emotions as a parent. It makes me wonder if we are over analyzing everything because we don't have anything else to do. 

There is always a dilemma of whether -

to let children be or advice them

to be like a friend or like a parent

be strict or lenient

to say yes or no

to always say positive things

to watch our words and not utter negative words lest it scars them for life

- the list is endless. We have been told now that all our struggles are because of the experiences we have had as a child, because of the negative words we have heard as children etc. But honestly whether we had a great childhood or a tough childhood, each one of us turned out exactly the way we were supposed to turn out. Though we can easily blame someone else for our life, we are responsible for the way we are.

From what I see, the new generation children are resilient, confident, bold. So I think they are fine and will be fine. It is us, adults who need to take a step back and just observe the children and nudge them when needed. That way we get to enjoy the roller coaster ride 😊

 

Being child like

 It was Children's day, and as I am around children all the time, the excitement was even more. It is said that we become like the people we are surrounded by. I am not sure how true this is, but we definitely get influenced or affected by the people we are with. 

What does being like a child mean? What does "keeping the child in us alive" mean? Is it even necessary to be like a child or keep our inner child alive?

Aren't children the purest form of humanity?

Aren't children the most innocent?

Aren't children the most curious?

Don't children forget and forgive in a jiffy?

Children are probably the only versions of humans living in the present

Aren't children the most authentic version of life

Children get excited at every little thing

Children are happy for no reason

Children are playful

I had a very sweet and interesting conversation with a new friend yesterday. We were talking about 'learning' and 'procrastination'. It reminded me of how as we grow up, we hesitate to learn new things (even though we know we love doing that) and as a result prefer to procrastinate. Children on the other hand want to do things or learn new things (that they love) immediately.  

Children hardly have filters. They think, speak, and act according to their true nature without any pretense. 

Let us try and ignite the child that we once were! 

Let us forget the past! (because it doesn't exist)

Let us not think about tomorrow! 

Let us live for today!

Let us keep learning something new everyday!

Let us find joy in everything we do!

Let us be happy for no reason!

Let us be in awe of everything!

Let us bring the child-like excitement into every single thing we do!

The 3 monkeys

The joy of eating 😝

Love every sip of my coffee!

😍💗

Draw, jump, sing, dance, monkey around, laugh along = sail thru life