We and Inspirations…

In this life, walking down the road, things make us sad and they make us happy. But there are days when you are feeling really low and feel as if there is no way to turn, no path to take and no road to travel. Sitting aimlessly, feeling useless and distressed, you start overflowing! Needing someone to come to you, calm you down and make you feel you are not a useless speck of dust, you let it all vent. You realize there’s no one and you are all on your own; no friends, no parents and no siblings. Eventually, you get over all of it and come to face what you should have understood and found out long ago: no one cares!

As you go along, however, you fail to notice something, the most significant part of it, that is, you have to move on. ALONE!! There come times, worst, when you’d have to go against the will of the most beloved people of your life, your parents and friends, but you cannot go without doing that because no one cares about whatever is going on within you. No one realizes what kind of storms you’ve been facing within yourself! No one is going to come to you to take out of your miseries, you’re the one who are going to fight this and no one is free enough to come and listen to your problems.

We, being human beings, are meant to make mistakes and so do we! While we are going through all of it, we end up believing this is how we are to live, aimlessly and uselessly. We, the human beings, believe that we don’t have to do anything because no one cares! We make no ambitions, just keep on going with the life the way it is, suppressing our visions and goals and things we want to achieve in life. What an awesome strategy! We don’t have to do anything in life. It makes our life so much easier; we sleep whenever we want to, we waste our times, we regret over our options, we curse our lives and luck, and make justifications to ourselves!! Yes! We justify things to ourselves because subconsciously, we are aware of something being wrong and we are just trying to ignore that, hindering our gut feeling, fooling our very own selves!

Then one day, running through the times, something happens. We come across something or someone and our view about life changes. The arguments, whether we read them, listen to them or experience them, are so personal to us and give us a sense of belonging so strongly that they start making sense. The way they are put together makes us feel that someone has given words to our feelings and after that, we are told that we were so wrong to even feel or think like that. We are told that WE are Human Beings! Our feelings matter, not to others but to ourselves. It should be we that should be contented with ourselves and not others. The others were right to not have cared because they were not meant to! We were to make our decisions and were to impact others to have gotten all the care and not having expected anything in return. We are made to feel that we are here for some purpose and we are supposed to fulfill that.

Again a very big mistake that we may make is start blaming ourselves for all the wrong we have done. That implies we still are unable to understand the message, for a person who understands would have realized the importance and took it seriously to find something out for him rather than regretting over what is gone. Since everything is so natural and so deeply related to us, we don’t need to go into the details to comprehend what is being told to us and it just seeps into us. Whatever the motivator may be, the moment we happen to grasp the message meant for us, we reflect it in our beings. We become the manifestation of our savior, our goal, our passion and our ambition, for we start living it.

Everyone, at some point of time comes across something that has the potential to change his fate, to change his destination, to wake him up and make him live the purpose of life. The ‘potential’, if realized, has the ‘potential’ to revolutionize the world and bring the nations at peace with themselves, only if we get inspiration…

Related articles

• INSPIRATION: What does this mean to YOU? (vibrantskin.wordpress.com)

Be Expressive; Be Free

Expressions, feelings and emotions-abstract and intangible-are, perhaps, hardest things to explain. Sometimes, dictionary may not serve the purpose, for the words are unable to express your feelings. As Francesco Guicciardini has quoted, “To give vent now and then to his feelings, whether of pleasure or discontent, is a great ease to a man’s heart.” What if we can’t give words to our emotions? Well, creative people were and are fully aware of the answer and that was how and where expressionism found its roots.

Expressionism was an art movement started after World War I in Germany. It is defined as a theory or practice in art of seeking to depict the subjective emotions and responses that objects and events arouse in the artist. The movement was started to express the inner feelings of oneself through art. Artists used canvas to pour themselves out while some others began to paint for the sake of catharsis. A new era started in the history of painting and a new branch emerged out which unbounded the artists from the limitations of reality into a realm of spirituality and inner self. Surfacial art like scenery and real images was overcome by subjects such as existence and purpose.

Emotions keep varying with the atmosphere or more precisely, it’s your inner feeling that gives colors to atmosphere around you. At some times, emotions are intense while at others, they are mild and expressionists used colors and brush strokes to indicate the intensity of their feelings. When they depicted intense emotions, the colors used in the art were bright and brush strokes were bold. These characteristics gave their paintings a unique quality of being vivid

as well as abstract. They were vivid due to intensity of artist’s emotions and abstract because they reflected thoughts and revealed inner self.

There were two groups which played a vital role in the early development of expressionism: die brucke and der blaue reiter also known as the bridge and the blue riders respectively. They led the movement and it flourished by the exhibitions they held for the acknowledgement of their work and people started appreciating this art. Emotions and deep feelings which were hidden until then began to materialize on paper in the form of art. It became a way to disclose one’s response, opinion and deep secrets one kept to oneself for so long, for the diction was limited to express one’s unlimited feelings. Georgia O’Keeffe acknowledged the fact by saying, “I found I could say things with colors and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way – things I had no words for”.

The bridge started off their journey in 1905 with a theme to reform the society. Their art portrayed the discrimination between the rich and the poor, the city and the country in the society and the chaos prevailing in it. They exhibited their art in violent colors, with turbulent emotions and in chaotic manners. That was the bridge’s way of expressing its views about the society at that time.

In contrast to the matters of physical world, the blue riders adopted spirituality as its theme. It initiated its work in 1911 and its paintings dealt with subjects such as philosophy, spirituality and metaphysics. Its art was thus abstract and vague rather than obvious. Moreover, every artist painted his own ideas and quests in whatever way he imagined or felt them to be. Since, these ideas were beyond the scope of reality and human intellect, they didn’t have a specific description and so the trend was heavily in favor of ambiguous and obscure art in that era.

Expressionism deeply impacted society at the time when it was prevalent and dominating other forms of art. That is, after World War I, there was chaos in the society and massacre was commonplace. Expressionists came up with such paintings that gave a new insight to people about what was going on around them. Art has always been used to motivate public and so was expressionism, and it did what it was intended to do; the society moved towards betterment and prosperity.

Apart from the social factors, expressionists reinstated the spirit of spirituality in the general masses. They urged people to give due attention to the matters of soul and self by virtue of their work. They put in much effort to help people value morality and escape the trap of materialism.

In effect, the movement of expressionism achieved its intended goals. It succeeded in extracting the deep lying emotions out of people and gave words of colors and paints to their feelings, so that they were better able to express themselves. Furthermore, it served the purpose of rejuvenating the underlying spiritual and moral values. Expressionism brought improvements in social behavior of people, economic conditions of society and political setup of the country.

Jonathan Livingston – The Seagull (I)

Jonathan Livingston (Photo credit: jumpinjimmyjava)

All of us have two eyes, a nose, and two ears but we are different. What make us different are our attitudes, our thoughts, our decisions, and our responses to different situations around us. Some of us are indomitable to our ideas, some are not, and the extent of fortitude varies with the person. If we stick to our ideas persistently, we can go beyond the realm of possibility where impossible is a norm. That is what Robert Bach portrays in the first part of his novel, Jonathan Livingston- the Seagull, published first in 1970 (Bach).

The excerpt refers to Jonathan Livingston, a seagull, who perceives life and its meaning in a unique way than that of his flock. Flying to him is a purpose of life in contrast with his community that flies just for the sake of food. He strives harder and harder with perseverance and determination and ultimately masters himself in the skills and tactics of flight at a speed never attained before by any seagull, the terminal velocity. He succeeds in his attempts overcoming all the barriers coming in his way, combating the agony of failure at one time and facing resistance to the idea of flight by his parents at others. Despite being extricated from the flock for breaking all the traditions and aiming at achieving something unique to his community, Jon is very proud and honored for what he has learnt. He is no more an ordinary seagull. He has found a reason to live and he is not sorry for the price he has paid.

Bach, himself had been an air force pilot and his profession and appeal for flight has greatly influenced his writings. He portrays different facts by means of flight and motivates people to be determined in whatever they do (Richard Bach: Biography). In this specific text, the writer reveals different feelings of living beings when they meet success and failure, by elucidating them with a seagull that is actually resolute to make its mark.

The seagull is depicted as a symbol of determination, which has no boundaries or limits to which it can go to fulfill its dream. The dream to fly high at a speed which no seagull has ever achieved. The opening enlightens its journey to achieve the terminal speed and throws light on the opposition it has to face by its flock. The imagery that the writer has used in the text keeps the reader bound until the end as he moves forward to describe the experimentation of the seagull with its wings and the extent of its determination, which has no boundaries.

The feelings of living beings illustrated in the excerpt are so natural that the reader feels a reflection of his own self i.e. achievement giving it satisfaction and contentment at one time and failure rendering it half-hearted at the other. However, Bach employs the strategy of self-sympathy when he says that:

“I’m a seagull. I am limited by my nature. If I were meant to learn so much about flying, I’d have charts for brains. If I were meant to fly at speed, I’d have a falcon’s short wings, and live on mice instead of fish.” (Bach)

Though it reveals the natural technique one uses to alleviate the wound of failure, it goes against the writer’s theme of determination and firmness, limiting the broad span of possibility.

The author substantiates what he has said by appealing to the emotions of the reader, with the help of intuitive facts. The breaking of all the vows to accept the ordinary when one has touched excellence, and closing of eyes to overcome the fear of being collided with the other seagulls and ultimately die, depict the very humanly nature.

Moreover, throughout the text, Bach refers to the fact that whenever you try to achieve your goals, you cannot rule out the existence of obstacles. The society turns its back upon you, and people certainly oppose your ideas. It can be attributed to the simple fact that people are diverse in having priorities. For Jonathan, he had found a reason to live – to learn, to discover, to be free! (Bach) Nevertheless, the flock had different priorities.

“Life is unknown and the unknowable, except that we are put into this world to eat, to stay alive as long as possibly can.” (Bach)

The vivid expressions further refurbish the details as Bach goes on to explain the agony of failure by saying “climbed painfully to a hundred feet” and the excitement and  the triumph by “his pain, his resolutions, vanished” (Bach). Furthermore, the tiny details of the efforts of the seagull and the use of apt imagery to portray the movement of wings add to the interest, constructing a clear image in the screen of mind.

The character of Jonathan Livingston is very fascinating as it is both very apt for the situation and naïve as a whole. Jon, being a symbol of fortitude, is vitally important and goes to the extent of craziness to attain speed. It never gets tired of putting in effort to learn more. Learning is the objective of its life. Besides, the innocence that the character depicts facilitates the development of ideas and implies the author’s outlook about the society. Jon seeks honor after unearthing a new reason to live for the flock, oblivious of the impediments one has to face when one breaks the norms and the customs of a society. It envisions the flock to get wild with joy, but the flock turns the table by making it stand in the center for disgrace and humility rather than honoring it.

“Centered for shame? Impossible! The Breakthrough! They can’t understand! They are wrong, they are wrong!” (Bach) illustrates the point of weakness. The exact feeling one has when there is no one to stand along one and everything goes against anticipation, so the author employs immunity as a resort for Jonathan to counter the opposition and, thus, live on its own.

Finally, the text is written in a peerless tone as Bach uses pathos to appeal to the emotions of the reader and grabs the attention of the reader until the very end. It provides the audience with a thought to strive for its aims, for possibilities exist beyond the scope of possibility, and significantly moves it to be resolute and optimistic about things. However, the writer does not provide any evidence for the claims he’s making. It’s just the art of persuasion that has gathered a large amount audience for the best-selling novel of Robert Bach, Jonathan Livingston – the seagull. 

Let yourself a bit loose…

Let yourself a bit loose

Move along with the wind

Awaiting is a blessing ahead

Unfelt a feeling yet

A care unspoken of, longs to take along

Hah! A mask unworn; yet hides a lot

Time tells you all, so for now!

Let yourself a bit loose

And be in harmony with the wind

Everything blacks out, for it’s the fate

Momentary is this glow, an illusion

A light enveloping all in its grip

Vanishes; leaving alone in the dark that stays

For you to wander and traverse the path

A yearning heart makes you wonder

Should you let yourself loose?

Stop wondering the wandering soul!

Stop wondering and let yourself a bit loose…

LOST!!!

Facts there are, though fortunately concealed

Completely Lost; wish things never be revealed

 

Satisfactions these, all are in vain

At failure to liberate, of this incessant pain

 

Quietly, deeply, narrowly and slowly            

Taking hold, prevailing is the melancholy

 

Struggling hard; dissolving the bubble

Impossible it seems; solving the puzzle

 

A deception, beyond the realm of the senses

Time sympathizes, meaningless are pretenses

 

Self-contradictory these strings are sheer

Not on my mind; done with the tears

 

Quite often it dominates all other thoughts

Confessions – at times I’m completely lost!

Distress

Following the wrong path

Distracted I am!

I’m distorted deep down

The picture is quite fuzzy

Vision is too blurred

Dark and eternal.. an abyss!!

Take me away

Take me along

It’s too hard to scrutinize!

Too hard to visualize!

Bring me to light

Bring me to life

The life forever

The life of eternity

No breath for once

Or, the breath forever!!

I’m the winner and the loser is me!!

The words to my expressions

Where have gone those suggestions

Why am I more hollow

Why ain’t there anyone to follow

This loneliness is a rage

Feeling breathless in this cage

Still can hear in the vacuum

Sounds mocking my empty room

I’m just too weak to handle

To keep blowing that burning candle

The sounds are more of my own

How long would the light take to dawn

Whenever I’ll talk to thee

I’m the winner and the loser is me!!

Hope

Darkness prevailed, someone dismayed

Opened his eyes, faith betrayed

Abhorred distances, in the path laid

Hopeless he was, in failure’ shade

Tears slipped, traveled visage to palm

A drop shimmered, dropped at his arm

Reflected his face, shattered him apart

A beam glowed, he tried on his part

Conjured up courage, illuminated his path

He reached his destiny, hope changed his math.