Where have I Disappeared

For nearly a decade, I have been writing blogs regularly.

Over these years, I have been fortunate to build a small community of readers who read my blogs sincerely, share their thoughts, give me feedback, and, most importantly, keep encouraging and motivating me to write.

So, during the recent Ganpati festivities, when I met some of them, I was quite surprised by how concerned they were that I had stopped writing blogs.

I have been writing poems. I have been writing prose. I have been expressing myself in different forms. But I haven't really written a blog for quite some time now.

And that made me wonder — why?

It wasn't something I had consciously decided. I hadn't told myself that I was going to stop blogging. It just happened.

The more I thought about it, the more I realised that perhaps there was a reason.

For the first several years of my blogging journey, most of what I wrote was about what I observed around me — people, situations, relationships, emotions, reactions and responses to things happening in the world around me.

My blogs were largely about the outside world.

But over the last few years, certain things happened in my own life that affected me deeply. And those experiences pushed me into a completely different space — introspection.

I was no longer just observing what was happening around me.

I was forced to look within.

What was going wrong?

What was I doing wrong?

Why were certain patterns repeating in my life?

Why was I responding to situations in a particular way?

Why did certain things affect me so deeply?

I guess this happens to all of us at some point in our lives.Sometimes, we reach a stage where we feel frustrated, helpless, hurt or exhausted. We feel victimised. We feel that we have been treated unfairly.

We wonder, “Why me?” or “I haven't done anything wrong, so why is this happening to me?”

We feel we deserve better.

Or why was I Born.. Whats the very purpose of this life ?

And when we reach that point, perhaps the only way forward is to start looking for answers within ourselves.

That is what I have been doing for the last few years.And somewhere along the way, this introspection has given me some answers and, more importantly, some clarity too.

The first lesson: Let go.

One of the biggest things I have learnt is that we hold on to far too much.

We hold on to people.

We hold on to situations.

We hold on to expectations.

We hold on to hurt.

We hold on to memories.

We hold on to relationships .

And by holding on, we make our own lives complicated.

Sometimes, we simply need to let go.

Let people be who they are. Let them behave the way they choose to behave. Set them free.

Love is not something that can be demanded, extracted or forced out of another person. It grows naturally when two people genuinely connect.

It isn't a transaction. It isn't a give-and-take arrangement.

So let go.

Be with yourself.

Because the moment we start becoming dependent on another person, place or thing for our happiness, we create a doorway for disappointment to enter our lives.

Dependency can be emotional, mental, physical or financial. And the greater the dependency, the greater the possibility of pain when that dependency is not met.

We cannot control what another person feels.

But we can control how much of our peace we hand over to them.

And perhaps that is what letting go really means.

The second lesson: Forgive.

Forgiveness has been another important lesson.When we don't forgive, we continue carrying someone else's actions inside us.Someone may have hurt us once, but every time we replay that incident in our minds, we hurt ourselves all over again.

The incident may have happened once.But our mind keeps playing the tape.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Until we consciously decide to switch it off.

Forgive.

Forget.

Move on.

Human beings are naturally going to make mistakes. This world, as I see it, is a place of learning. We have all come here to learn our lessons.

And while learning, we will make mistakes.

We will make blunders.

We will hurt people.

And sometimes, we will be hurt by others.

That doesn't make anyone inherently bad. It makes us human.If someone has hurt us, we have a choice — we can carry that hurt as baggage, or we can forgive and move forward.

Forgiveness isn't necessarily about saying that what someone did was right.

It is about deciding that what someone did will no longer have the power to control our peace.

The third lesson: Keep moving.

The other thing I have learnt is keep moving.

Physically.

Emotionally.

Mentally.

Intellectually.

Keep learning. Keep exploring. Keep experiencing. Keep growing.

The moment we stop moving, we begin to stagnate.And stagnation, in my experience, brings sadness, disappointment and a feeling of being stuck.But when we keep moving, we remain curious.

We feel fresh.

We feel alive.

We feel rejuvenated.

Age is not merely about the number of years we have lived. Sometimes, we age much faster when we stop learning, stop exploring and stop growing.

So I want to consciously ensure that I am never idle esp intellectually.I want to keep feeding my mind and my soul something new every day.

And perhaps, this is why I paused..

Maybe I didn't really stop writing.

Maybe I simply changed what I was writing about.

I moved from observing the world outside to observing the world within.

Perhaps I needed this pause.

Perhaps I needed to live through certain experiences before I could write about them.

Now there are so many thoughts waiting to be expressed. So many lessons still unfolding. So many questions worth discussing.

And I hope that, just like before, these writings will become a dialogue.

You may agree.

You may disagree.

You may have a completely different perspective.

You may have experienced something similar.

And that's exactly what I would love.

Because writing, for me, has always been about starting a thought.Starting a conversation.I believe my journey as a writer will continue with more intropection and little more clarity.