Identity

Long ago my brother asked me a simple question, "Who are you?"
I said, "I am Abhay Shukla."
"Yeah, but...who are you?"
"I am the son of M.P. Shukla"
"I am not asking who you are son of or who your father is. Am asking, who are you?"
"I am the resident of the country India. i live in rewa, m.p., and my name is abhay shukla"
"But that is not the answer to the question i have asked"
I got confused, "Am a human being!"
"Everyone's a human being, so how does that describe you?"

I realized that this question is much much deeper than what i could have thought then as a ninth grade student.

I gave probably a hundred more replies but every time i was answering back, i was growing more sure that this is not what the answer is supposed to be. And every other reply was like an introspection; finding out something that could distinguish you from every other entity around you. Finding out that very element and essence which makes you unique.

I realised that an identity has to be something which is there even when all the connections have lost, something which is glowing when you are put in a swarm of billion strangers, something which could not be erased in time.

Seven years have passed since but still am puzzled by the profundity of the question. It still gets me teetering and shaky. Although i believe that now i know myself a lot better than i ever did but when it comes to self realization and self identification i am still on the wander road...sometimes it feels am a stranger to myself!

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Self-Discovery

Sometimes life goes stagnant like the car stuck in the jam of busy Monday evening. You can’t move forward, you can’t move backwards but just be there and wait for the signal to go green for you. While many of us see the signal and move, there are others who find themselves in long queues and before they could move it goes red again, and then there are others who can’t even notice the signal.

Eventually everyone gets stuck at some point of time, somewhere in dimensions of life they choose for themselves. For few of us this would mean exploring a new route where we could find the vastness of an alternative world we were not familiar with, for many of us it would mean struggling as far and as long as we can, and for most of us it would mean the ultimate failure of self and a devastating experience rendering us to bitterness of life. But what we forget and fail to understand is that the car is stuck not because of us but the consequences of this stagnation are all because of us. We may choose to reach the inherent inbuilt in us and explore the capabilities, we may choose to struggle through the time or we might just ignore everything and let things happen. But the one who is ready to risk with the will and courage to see dreams and has the guts to do it eventually leads oneself to a far better reason. And it’s not about giving up everything and heading to Himalayas wishing to find some meaning there, it’s not about the ranks that system associates with us that we start believing to be as true as our identity, it’s not about being alone on the path we see and it’s not about fear, it’s about a free choice of what we want to be; just a choice.

If you think of a happy meaningful life, it always comes down to very simple things. The experiences that are otherwise ordinary will astonish you with their elegance. Adventure and bliss is not only in the bosom of nature but it’s also in the depth of our thoughts and the way we perceive what we observe. No human mind is ordinary in the sense we think of ordinary. It’s an irony that we can not see through ourselves what we truly are. Borrowing eyes is not the best thing to do when you want to know something that is connected with you. And when you start to see it from your eyes, it’s all simple and apparently clear. As soon as you get into this path of free thought and independence from influences that affect your mind, you will know what gets you out of the jam; you will make a sudden change and embark your own journey!

Life lies in the grassroots of reality and understanding this reality makes us a better person everyday. The more you dig the more you know ‘the who’ you are and easier it becomes to be ‘the who’ you are. And once you have reached the landscape where nothing is fake or affected by them and those, you see yourself naked as you are born, as you are and as you want to be. A pure self image gives you the ultimate freedom and power to make choices for your life. This is the freedom and power everyone yearns for all their lives but without diving into their pools, it can never come. And this is the freedom and the power to reason that makes every stagnation a new turn in this wonderful journey that is you!

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Posted by Abhay Shukla 6 comments

Sometimes i step back from my daily routine, work and paradigms that i live in for a while and think, is that really me?
Sometimes life appears very unreal. Everyone is moving with the mob not knowing what exactly they are doing, not knowing where they are heading to and somehow this system makes us believe that everything will work out fine. I am not sure whether it actually happens and i am not sure whether this is the right thing to do.
When i knew a little less about the world it was always essential for me to know where this road would lead me to. However i admit that the dreams and ambitions at this phase of life were very simple but as a kid it was as important as anything else. Now i have grown big and have learned to not know every time what the roads will end up with. But sometimes am confused and wonder is it the right thing to do?

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Posted by Abhay Shukla 2 comments

The Past

This space is a sacred place. This space has so much of depth that you can go in and may never be able to come out. This silence is ever widening and stronger than anything else.
Its amazing to know how the same silence can convey different things, emotions, arguments, messages at the same or different point of time.
There is no end to it because you can never know where it begun. It may appear that you hold an end of it but you don't. Our hands were not made to keep everything. Somethings just slip away like the sand, the more you try to hold it, the more you are losing the hold of it.
Past is like a dream that you have actually lived. Past is the action you did which has left the foot prints to teach you ever what you did; right or wrong. Past is a rememberance of the times that would eventually flash back to remind you what could have been but wasn't perfect.

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