Blogfest - Destiny

I have the privilege of hosting this week's prompt "Destiny" for The Writer's Post blog hop

Destiny is a topic that fascinates me. 

But is destiny real or is it just a case of mind over matter?

There are moments in my life when I've done things that I never thought I was capable of doing and then there are times when I've failed to do something relatively simple.

Even when I felt some trepidation or where the task seemed impossible, my mind willed me forward to achieve. Mind over matter prevailed.

But if mind does prevail over matter, then how does one explain those events where seemingly simple things just don't seem to fly, plans fall apart, nothing fits together. The mind just cannot find a way to succeed.

Is destiny the quiet ally or saboteur?

I believe that when it is meant to be, destiny the ally drives the circumstances for the mind to prevail over matter and when it's not meant to be, destiny the saboteur steers you away from success.

So is destiny carved in stone or can we change our destiny - or in other words do we have free will?

I believe that in the journey of our life we have a major destiny and a multitude of  minor ones that lead us to our major destiny.

Our major and minor destinies are pre-determined and will eventually be reached but there are many pathways to each destiny point.

The choices we make during the journey will determine the road we take to those points. Or in other words, we have free will to choose the path to that destiny point.

Our gut feel or intuition signals unease if we are veering off the path and will plant the deep desire to turn towards our pre-determined destination. Often we will heed this very reliable indicator and change paths ourselves.

But the Universe also lends us a helping hand and gently points us back in the direction of our destiny when we veer off the path significantly.

Free will was given to us so we could learn, experience and grow.  If everything was pre-determined, I don't think there would be any purpose in life. The choices we make and the journey itself  makes our life interesting, exciting, worthwhile and fulfilling.

We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny. But what we put into it is ours. 

~ Dag Hammarskjold

This is a combination of some posts I had written a long time ago. This blog hop gives me the opportunity to present them again. Is this destiny?

Please join in this blog hop and share your thoughts on Destiny or take the prompt and use it any way you want. I look forward to reading your posts.

Hope you have an interesting day and I also hope that today Destiny is your ally.


Warm Regards

Blog Hop - Invisible People

Invisible People

Jo Heroux - My Wandering Mind is this week's host for The Writer's Post blog hop.

I just had a scene play continuously in my head and when you get that, you have to go with it so here it is ...

I'm walking down Lambton Quay, the main street in Wellington, with people milling all around me at lunchtime and yet I am oblivious to them. If someone smiled at me or waved at me, I would never know.  I am so conscious of the shops, the street signs, the buses and cars, but people - they just seem to disappear from view. Invisible people!

And that scene suddenly reminded me of this song ... The Girl from Ipanema by Frank Sinatra

Youtube - The girl from Ipanema

And then I thought about all the people out there who are perhaps trying to catch my eye.  So from now on I will try to look at all the lovely people and hopefully when they smile, I will catch that and smile back!

Have a happy day.

Warm Regards

Blog Hop #55 - Half Empty or Half Full

Angela Tjong of Journey of Life is the host for this week for The Writer's Post blog hop

Do you see the glass half empty or half full?

I had to think about this for a while as my first reaction to this was "Of course I see it as half full" after all we need to keep a positive view of life.

But in thinking about this some more, I concluded, for myself, that to maintain a continuous positive outlook on life would not only be impossible but it would make me quite weary as well.

I believe that all things in life must balance and hence sometimes it is necessary to see the glass as half empty.

At work as a project manager I need to view my project in the half empty mode. This helps me plan for worst case scenarios, anticipate issues that could derail my project and take necessary steps to give my project the best chance of success. Taking a half full view would not be advantageous.

Sometime we face circumstances in our life where taking a half full view is simply not possible. There is nothing on earth that will make me view the last hours of my father's life with a half full view. His death for me is a hard loss to bear. I miss him everyday. I have an acceptance of his death but for me there is no positive outcome from his passing. For that the glass will always be half empty for me as he has left a void in my life that is hard to fill.

Living by and large with a positive outlook on life of course makes life infinitely easier to journey through.
But in all honesty, I really don't analyse - when it's necessary to take the half empty view I do that and then move on.

Wishing you all a peaceful life

Warm Regards

Old post resurrection - Who do you need to forgive?

Thanks Sandra Tyler for giving us an opportunity to resurrect an old post.

This post was part of my Question of the Day series.

So who do I need to forgive?

I thought about this a lot as there are so many instances where people have seemingly committed injustices (small or big) towards me (or so I think) or where an action towards someone else has affected me.

But reality is that what I deem to be an injustice, the other may deem to be a necessity.

So how then does forgiveness work?

I have to take a spiritual perspective on this.

Mother Teresa summed it up well; "In the end it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway".

If we take the wisdom from Mother Teresa then the only person I need to forgive is myself.

This however raises several questions ....

Does this mean that by default I also take responsibility for the actions of others? That seems completely unfair and illogical.

Or does this mean that I only forgive myself for my actions and take no responsibility for others? That unfortunately leaves me with the inability to move on as I am now stuck with an action I cannot forgive.

In the end, my only recourse to forgiving myself for my own misdeeds and for the misdeeds of others was to understand that forgiving does not mean that I overlook or dismiss the action (whether it be mine or someone else's).

To forgive myself for an act I have committed also means that I take responsibility to not repeat that act again.

To forgive myself for an act someone else has committed towards me or for one that was committed towards another but affected me in some way, does not mean I take responsibility for the act, only the responsibility that it affected me in some way. In other words, I forgive myself for being affected. And having forgiven myself, I now have the ability to detach from that incident.

In both instances (my acts and acts of others where I am affected directly or indirectly), I take responsibility to understand that there may be a lesson in it for me and learn the lesson when I identify it. I also take responsibility to understand the reason for the action. I may not agree with the reason, but having understood the reason, I can then let it go.

Have a peaceful day

Warm Regards

Blog Hop #54 - Picture Prompt

This week's picture prompt is hosted by Jenn at Wine-n-Chat for The Writer's Post blog hop

I guess as this is a photo prompt, I can interpret this any way I want. 

And the first thing that came to mind was ...

"If music be the food of love, play on" by William Shakespeare in his book "The Twelfth Night". These words are ingrained in my brain - we had to study this book in school.

And from that the word "quotes" kept flashing in my mind so here they are ....

Keys to life 

Life is like a piano, what you get out of it depends on how you play it.  ~ Tom Lehrer

              That is so true. Life is what we make it. The choices we make are the paths we carve.

              On a personal note with the piano ...

              I tried to learn it when I was about 6 but never took to it - I played it really badly.                       

              Reading notes was like trying to decipher Latin and Greek blindfolded. Besides which I

              wanted to play all the nifty pop songs my brother played on his guitar, not the classical 

              stuff! But I regret giving it up and wish I had persevered. Trying to learn the keyboard

              now on my own, but I think I might have to join a class.

Sometimes we drop the keys ...

It still brings me up short to walk by somebody who appears to be talking to themselves 

~ Rob Newhart          

              I can so relate to this. 

              Sometimes I hear a hello right behind me or next to me and then I feel pretty

              foolish for saying hello back. At least if they had the phone in their hands you'd know

              they were conversing with someone.

A different key is needed each day. Today I thought of this one from an incident at work.

Smile, it is the key that fits the lock of everybody's heart ~ Anthony J. D'Angelo

               This is something I have learned first hand particularly in difficult situations. 

               A smile definitely diffuses tension. And conversely prevents tension too.

Somebody said once or wrote once: We are all of us children in a vast kindergarten trying to spell God's name with the wrong alphabet blocks! ~ Tennessee Williams, Suddenly Last Summer

                But eventually I hope someone will hand us the right blocks!

                Or in the context of this post ... the right keys.

Sending you all a virtual smile. Enjoy life.


Warm Regards

Blogfest - Favourite Halloween Memory

Kathy Combs is the host for this prompt for Blogfest 2012

Halloween is not celebrated widely in New Zealand and never heard of it when I was back in India. 

But some years ago the mall close to where I live (in NZ) hosted a Halloween party for kids - the idea was to keep kids supervised in a safe environment, off the streets and out of the cold and wet (the weather here is so unpredictable).

This was my son's first Halloween. He dressed up as Batman and his "loot catcher" was an ordinary plastic bag with a picture of a pumpkin that my daughter pasted on.

He was so cute. As we walked from shop to shop he whispered trick or treat - so quietly you could barely hear him. The sales people in the shops just loved him. He came home with a lot of loot.

Unfortunately that was the only year the mall did a Halloween party. So that was really the only one we ever participated in.

Warm Regards

Blogfest - Creeping Obesity

Stuart is the host of this prompt for Blogfest 2012

I was a chubby kid, a chubby teenager, and now I am a chubby adult. The bmi indicator says I'm obese. - utter rubbish! How can a uk size 14 (us size 12) be obese?

There have been times in my life when I've looked at my weight as a problem but now over the years I have learned to live with it.

I exercise to keep fit, I eat healthy and within limits, I get a good night's sleep, I don't smoke nor do I drink alcohol, and I meditate to find the peace within. 

There was a time during my late teens and early twenties when I lost a lot of weight - and standing on the scale I was perfect for my height. I was skin and bone, I looked dreadful and malnutritioned, I looked half dead.  But my height-weight-bmi was perfect.

I got out of that madness as fast as I could - chubby looked and felt good. 

So my chubbiness no longer bothers me. 

Being healthy and fit is my aim - having the perfect height-weight-bmi score is not.  

Enjoy life.  Wishing you all good health and happiness.

Warm Regards

Blogfest - Monster Mash

Daphne Steinberg is the host of this prompt for Blogfest 2012

At first I really wasn't sure of how to tackle this prompt or what it really meant.  And I think everyone came up with a different take on it. So in typical Libra fashion I came up with different interpretations, pondered, procrastinated, argued about each in my head and then decided to take the literal view of "Monster" - foods that are for me complete monsters. 

And so here it is my take on the prompt.

For food to be delicious one has to engage all the senses - the aroma, the look, the taste, and the feel of it - they all have to mesh together beautifully like a symphony.

So on that basis I thought of the foods that totally put me off - I simply cannot eat these.

Here they are:

Fish dishes with eyes staring and open mouths - this puts me off completely. Lobster and crab dishes - they are just too creepy to eat. You can probably tell I'm not a seafood person.

When I was at school, we had the facility of hot lunches catered by the Bombay Gymkhana. The rice and pickle day was the worst day of the week for me. Right in the middle of my rice, they would put a blob of the most awful looking and tasting sweet pickle - put me off sweet pickle for the rest of my life.

Durian and Jackfruit - there is something extremely peculiar about the taste and smell of these. Definitely an acquired taste - one I haven't acquired yet. A story about the durian. Many years ago when I was little we were visiting my grandparents in Singapore and my brother and I got these coupons for free ice creams. How awesome ... NOT. The two of us gleefully walked to the ice cream stand to find that the only flavour we could get for free was durian! Talk about disappointment - this was it, and durian ice cream - just cruel.

Happy eating

Warm Regards

Blogfest - Vacation Happiness or Headache?

 Toni Lynn Ferro-Cloutier is the host of this prompt for Blogfest 2012

I love travelling and have been blessed to visit so many beautiful places in the world. I have travelled across the US, UK, Europe, a lot of Asia, Australia and New Zealand.

For me travel vacations are definitely happiness with a capital H. But living down under in New Zealand means that other than getting to Australia and some Pacific Islands, I have to travel long distances and that is definitely a headache. But always worth it in the end.

Over the years my idea of vacations has changed. Previously it was about the place, the thrill of seeing something new. Now it's all about the people. I vacation to visit my near and dear ones.

My favourite vacations now are in my beloved hometown Mumbai. I absolutely love it there. Amid the chaos, confusion, noise, pollution, dirt, smell ... I find my soul and it rejoices.

Here are some pics of my beloved Mumbai taken on my various visits there.

 Taj Mahal Hotel and Gateway of India

 Air India Building and Oberoi Hotel (don't know what it's called now, I know it as the Oberoi)

 Mantralaya - Administrative headquarters of the state of Maharashtra

 Marine Drive

Palm trees at the Otters Club

 Rajabai Tower

Sunset from Joggers Park

Happy Vacations whenever and wherever you go.


Warm Regards

Blogfest - One moment in my life

Angela Tjong is the host of this prompt for Blogfest 2012

This prompt reminded me of this song by Whitney Houston - One Moment in Time.
And the song truly sums up everything I want to say on this prompt.
So here it is.

Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zD6wcgYZdkk

Here's wishing you that one moment in your life when all your dreams come true.

Warm Regards