Hate me

Hate me because I know how to say ‘No.’ I am not the polite female who would say yes to everything and suffer the miseries of not being able to do the impossible. Instead, I have learnt to accept only the responsibilities I can fulfill; the rest is somebody else’s cup of tea.

Hate me because I go by the tradition. I believe in the customs that bind me to my preceding generations. I trust in the safety it gives to a society; a power of which could have made the world a better place even without rules and regulations.

Hate me because my life does not breathe technology. I can still scribble letters, can spell without the spell-check, and do handwritten assignments without getting the grammar wrong. I can fall asleep without taking leave from the Twitter community and get up without worrying about how to greet Facebook friends.

Hate me because I do not build my world around anyone else. I decide my life’s itinerary and guidelines to live. Like anyone else, I am born with a free will; and exercising it the way I want is my right. I am not answerable to anyone who is not part of my life nor am I anyone’s private property. If anyone expects me to be hurt, trampled or bruised by trivial things, I am not responsible for their disappointments or heartbreaks.   

Hate me because I am blunt. My frankness is a product of those who mistook my courteousness to meekness. Politeness comes in small doses. As for me, they are always saved for the people who deserve it the most.

Hate me because I do not let my life be entertainment fodder for gossip-mongers. I do not support those who dig into other people’s private lives all the while holding onto their diaries tight. Privacy should not be penetrable and confidence is something that has to be won, not demanded.

Hate me because I make blunders. Whatever I have l learnt so far, I learnt through trial and error. For me, perfection is not an inherent characteristic but a result of a gradual process. I make mistakes and am humble enough to admit them. Unlike those who run away from error, I take its responsibility, put my head down, and start over again.

Hate me because I speak my mind. My life is not for public entertainment. I stand up for what I believe in and criticize where criticism is necessary. I can be a hermit and a rebel at the same time. There is a saint and a devil within me. There is both fire and ice. Getting frozen or burnt is your choice!

Bend in the road

Every time when things don’t go the way you want them to be, you begin to wonder who controls your life; the one which you are supposed to control, but often lose its reins.

Seeing the children in orphanages, shanties in the heart of Colombo and even the rural childhoods who seemed to be immune to the evils of poverty, beckons your spirit to the far away corners of your own childhood. Groping for the childhood comforts, you think that life would have been different; it would have even been brighter despite the circumstances that changed your way once you entered the adult world.

Every time a plane flies above your head, you wonder what you are doing down here on earth, when your place would have been the sky. But again you doubt whether it was just another childhood fantasy  or something little more than that-to become a pilot who would have known the sky more than you know the earth now. As a pilot would you ever yearn to be on the ground and do a kind of a job now you seem to be doing?

The truth is that, you and I are adamant to have the best of both worlds without getting used to transition. Even when you are hit with the reality that you are a poor multi-tasker, your heart is not made up to let go of one thing. Because, more often than not, one of them is what you are really good at, while the other is, what you want yourself to be good at. Though, things seem to be sad on the surface, those who make a choice are always being compensated, no matter whether their decision is right or wrong.

When you look around your office, you find many of them end up there by their choice, for the others, it is the sheer chance. It was the tempest that tossed their lives that landed them there.

There are those who aspire to become writers but never make it to a newspaper. On the other hand, there are those who never wish to become journalists until accidentally they discover that their writing is as good as if not better than the regular press people. This is how reality dawns to them. The night watchman becomes a regular fighter in the frontline.

Life is a funny pantomime whose strings are in invisible hands. True enough, we know very little about the complicated details of living; as a result of which we go by what we see.

But the truth is, it is not “what you see is what you get” for there seems to be a lot of things we don’t seem to know and when suddenly it hits you, you will only exclaim that it was what you have been looking for all through your life.