Kashmir's Shak

By Industry Achieved

"For never anything can be amiss,   
When simpleness and duty tender it"

A Midsummer-Night’s Dream  (Act V, Scene I)

Being simple is the quality of all qualities. Simplicity defines us and our experiences. If it is not simple it means we don’t understand.

Being able to apply the concepts we preach and teach others is the ultimate test of any great idea. Einstein said as “simple as possible but not any simpler” till the point it becomes simplistic.

To make something as simple as possible is either a thoughtless inspiration that emerges from hours of meditation or it is sweat consuming work of art that has broken out of our patience.

The simplest question we have to face is this: "How I am going to go about living the day that is stretched out ahead of me?" This gift is mine, so what am I prepared to do with it? Repeat yeserday? Wait for instructions? Run it into the ground with busy-ness?

Once I am able to rise above an idea, I am free of it. When I know what I am talking about, a gentle ease washes over me. I am able separate myself from the act of ideation and presentation.

If I can’t get the idea across to another person, it means my ink well is dry. I have either not had enough sleep, exercise or just do not possess the experience to draw any valid or worthy conclusions.

Silence is the mother of simplicity. The courage to be quiet bears fruit of simplcity and meaning. Persistence of this belief and acting it out sets us free of noisy solutions, allows us to hear our own voice setting us free.

Sometimes it will come easy at other times it will evade any grasping, but it is all there, inside of us, if we trust it enough to rise out of the tender nothingness.

"I have consider’d well his loss of time,   
And how he cannot be a perfect man,   
Not being tried and tutor’d in the world:
Experience is by industry achiev’d   
And perfected by the swift course of time"

Two Gentlemen of Verona  (Act I, Scene III)

Twangling Instruments

"Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.   
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments   
Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices"

The Tempest (Act III, Scene II)

How do we find our own voice? Discover and live with our truth? One way that may help is to think of our voice as our music. The tone, manner and words we use are the soundtrack of our lives.

The mouth, vocal chords, lungs and all the things that create these sounds we make when we talk – is a complete musical instrument that our mind plays. Just as the

As with any musical instrument it requires both discipline and boring, long hours of practice. Anyone can grind an organ or play second fiddle to another persons opinion (repeat what we heard, to be as good as our last conversation).

What stirs us up – when music plays? What is the music in your voice? What do you stir in others when you open the organ of your mouth? What emotions do the notes and lyrics of your voice evoke? What song is left resident in the heads of the people you have touched yesterday, today and tomorrow?

When we find our own voice, there is no need for pretense or approval. There is enough space for other voices. The challenge is when we do not have our own voice, when we are an extension of everyone else’s motives and needs, consumed with what he said, she said, what they want, what they feel, what they do.

When we find our own voice, it is a beautiful sound, effortless. It is free of opinion and approval.  It is us, in all the glory our maker(s) put in here for us to be.

"In sweet music is such art,
Killing care and grief of heart"

King Henry VIII (Act III, Scene I)

Labouring Spider

"Faster than spring-time showers comes thought on thought,   
And not a thought but thinks on dignity.   
My brain, more busy than the labouring spider,
Weaves tedious snares to trap mine enemies.   
Well, nobles, well; ’tis politicly done,   
To send me packing with a host of men:   
I fear me you but warm the starved snake,
Who, cherish’d in your breasts, will sting your hearts.   
’Twas men I lack’d, and you will give them me:   
I take it kindly; yet be well assur’d   
You put sharp weapons in a madman’s hands"

Henry VI (Act III, Scene I)

One of the most prevalent and also least obvious hobbies is thinking ill of and bad mouthing other people. It is a spider that we carry around on our backs.

It is amusing. Playful. It weaves its self consumed web to and fro across in our mortal eyes.  We take it so lightly that we sit and watch as it binds and blocks our ability to be true to ourselves or anyone around us.

The spider of selfishness hangs quietly in our minds eye, so tiny and yet consuming so much attention and time that we are not longer able to distinguish good from evil, right from wrong, when to expect and what to accept.

Guess what, everyone is just like us. They have spider’s of their own, wrapping their eyes with the same comfortably foolishness. Their behaviours justify our own.

Our friendly neighborhood hood spiders (friends and enemies alike) teach our personal pet spider to build that protective self justification, create a shield to save us from the pain of self examination.

The truth is that the light of god resides in every soul. That is not our choice. This light is more deeply buried in some than others, but it is in there, somewhere.

How do we know? Here is a measure. Have you ever noticed how the tempo and nature of the judgment alters when an individual dies?

Suddenly their deep and unforgivable flaws lose their luster. We are humbled by the reminder of our own mortality. We are reminded of the futility of our fear, frustration and anger at others. The cloak of negativity slips off for a brief moment of sanity. We leave the spider of self pre-occupation at the door of the funeral home. At least some do.

What happens if we switch our focus to the 90% of things that are going right? I find that it give me access to the very wisdom and energy that I need to address the 10% of flaws that I cant’ face. Positivism is not a duvet to smother our intelligence. We need to learn how to be positive about our apparent weaknesses as much as our hidden strengths.

That is all and good, but why can’t a I take a positive view of my flaws? And what does it mean if I ignore these flaws? And what if you ignore your flaws? Where does that leave me? Where does it leave us?

Hiding from reality will only keep me weak. Why should I give my enemies the pleasure of watching me tend to this spider on my back? I have the right to put it down. Don’t I?

"Even in these honest mean habiliments.
Our purses shall be proud, our garments poor:   
For ’tis the mind that makes the body rich;   
And as the sun breaks through the darkest clouds,   
So honour peereth in the meanest habit"

Taming of the Shrew (Act IV. Scene III)

An Idol Show

Everyone likes to be appreciated and loved, but there is something more than both of these that people seem to hanker after.

What is the one thing that people want more than being thanked and loved? It is feeling heard and being "needed". Mark Twain once said "I can live on a compliment for a month".

Being needed has nothing to do with being loved. If we love someone it is for their sake. When we need someone, it is for our sake.

Why is this? Do we have such a hole in our heart that we can never be fulfilled?

The need to be needed is the most prevailing illnesses in our society that we have no name for. Being needy causes hardship beyond belief. Spending our lives propping up our own false sense of certainty in a life that consists of two noble truths - we are imperfect and we are impermanent, is wasting precious time that we can ill afford to spill.

Paying attention to and expecting compliments is the opposite of love. Feedling off compliments is a selfishness borne out of an shallow sense of who we are, an ignorance of the beauty that resides in our lives and all around us. We should not take our selves so seriously.

Waiting for others to acknoweldge what we should already know is no more than worshiping our own idle vanity. Embracing truth involves facing our limitations and accepting our nobility for what it is, without shame or blame.

Our strengths and weaknesses reside within us side by side, we are big enough to embrace both, we do not need to justify or be justified.

Let not my love be call’d idolatry   
Nor my beloved as an idol show,   
Since all alike my songs and praises be   
To one, of one, still such, and ever so.   
Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,
Still constant in a wondrous excellence;   
Therefore my verse, to constancy confin’d,   
One thing expressing, leaves out difference.

Sonnet CV (105)

Melancholy Bait

“Fish not, with this melancholy bait
For this fool-gudgeon, this opinion”
The Merchant of Venice (Act I, Scene I)

Everywhere, whether we sneak into blogs to take a peak or open up the broad sheets of newspapers and broad cast of radio and television, everywhere we are surrounded by opnion.

Some opnions are well researched, emotionally neutral, carved carefully away from the fat of self justification. Other opinions are soiled in self, so buried and mired in an individuals view of themselves and their world that even they may be contradicting it if it came from another human being.

The term ‘opinion’ derives from the Latin term “optare” which means to ‘desire or choose”.

Our opinions are the choices we make out of all the options laid out in front of us. When a researcher, investigator, reporter, editor, producer or presenter of so called 'facts' makes their choice. Whether it is an educated choice or an emotional outburst, what we hear from ourselves and others is founded on a choice based on options in front of us.

Everything we utter and hear whether it is in our heads or from the mouths of those around us, it is an opinion.

We are masters of our opinions or they become masters of us. These are the polarities within within which we get to know ourselves and everyone around us. The breadth of our opinions is the canvas upon which we draw out our lives.

In a day and age of increasingly polarized news reports, an age of citizen reporters, blogs and podcasts, we need to pay a little more attention to the source of our own opinions and how we deal with the opinions around us.

Humour and humility are two keys that unlock our ability to surf the noise be it the waves that flow through our own heads or in the air and through the cables and sattelites all around.

“I must have liberty   
Withal, as large a charter as the wind,
To blow on whom I please; for so fools have”
As You Like It (Act II, Scene VII)

Angels With Dirty Faces

"Scorn at first makes after-love the more.   
If she do frown, ’tis not in hate of you,   
But rather to beget more love in you;
If she do chide, ’tis not to have you gone;   
For why the fools are mad if left alone.   
Take no repulse, whatever she doth say;   
For, ‘get you gone,’ she doth not mean, ‘away!’
Flatter and praise, commend, extol their graces; 
Though ne’er so black, say they have angels faces"   
The Two Gentlemen of Verona (Act III, Scene I)

When someone contradicts me they help me reveal myself to me.

If I am myself, that is, if I can still my mind and reach beyond the vain need to protect the facade called personality, then there, beyond the distraction is a the trusted space where I can learn and grow.

When I am criticized, it is an opening for an awakening. A brief glimpse of what I might be, not what I am condemned to be. It allows me to search my motives, to determine what sour cause I may have given to another person for them to respond in this manner?

The more I tear into this cloth, the more naked I become, beyond the fear of losing the self that clings to my mast, beyond this is an ocean of discovery. I relish being contradicted. It is an invitation to wisdom.

My response to any feedback I get reveals my mood (self confidence) and motives (degree of trust - of myself and the other person) to me and anyone who bothers to pay attention.

A single word can singe a relationship for years. An honest word, a pool of cold water, it stings at the entry point but our bodies become accustomed to the fresh new temperature in good time.

Even if the feedback is a personal attack, coming from the vilest place the other person can find, even then it is an opportunity to open up the fear from whence it came, to allow the other person to discover something about their own moods and motives.

When I open my core, air my vulnerability, I am free to lift the grit of daily habitual face saving.

If the other person is pouring out genuine love in sharp words and bitter tones, it is my foolishnes to dis-honour them with self justifiations and veneer it with blame.

If the other person is pouring out their own poison, the least I can do is allow them to be rid of such deadly toxins.

When I am consumed with defensive reasoning, when I am entangled in my own logical response, then rationality rattles in my skull, confounds me, makes me small to the point of not mattering at all.

It hurts to wrestle with our own stupidity. It hurts to wrestle with other people's version of the same game. These two things are variations on the same theme, there is nothing good or ill about it, it is what it is, it is the human condition.

"I am press’d down with conceit
Conceit, my comfort and my injury"
The Comedy of Errors (Act IV, Scene II)

Making Odds All Even

"Be absolute for death; either death or life   

Shall thereby be the sweeter. Reason thus with life:

If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing   

That none but fools would keep: a breath thou art,   

Servile to all the skyey influences,   

That dost this habitation, where thou keep’st,

Hourly afflict. Merely, thou art death’s fool;   

For him thou labour’st by thy flight to shun,   

And yet run’st toward him still. Thou art not noble:   

For all th’ accommodations that thou bear’st

Are nurs’d by baseness. Thou art by no means valiant;   

For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork   

Of a poor worm. Thy best of rest is sleep,   

And that thou oft provok’st; yet grossly fear’st

Thy death, which is no more. Thou art not thyself;   

For thou exist’st on many a thousand grains   

That issue out of dust. Happy thou art not;   

For what thou hast not, still thou striv’st to get,

And what thou hast, forget’st. Thou art not certain;   

For thy complexion shifts to strange effects,   

After the moon. If thou art rich, thou’rt poor;   

For, like an ass whose back with ingots bows,

Thou bear’st thy heavy riches but a journey,   

And death unloads thee.

Measure for Measure (Act III, Scene I)

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We are born with soft fists closed, we die with stiff hands open.  Between the softness and stiffness, between the closed and open is this distraction we call a life. This moment - right now.

;.)

From the day we are born (and way before) we stiffen as we grow older. The rate of of emotional and physical repair decreases each passing year. As our knowledge deepens, our ability to acquire new ways of seeing and adapt to our environment deteriorates.

;.(

When we grow old, we still think young, but our options evaporate without any warning. These are the two ends of the journey, we spend most of our waking days oblivious to it all and every night free of the struggle.

Have you ever had that dream, you are in possession of the very thing that you most desire and then without warning, you awaken in the cold hard reality. After the vain attempts to crawl back into the comfortable futility you get out of bed and on with the routine of another day.

;

When we are born we bring every potential opportunity and dream like possibility. When we die, our hands are empty. There is nothing left - everything we possess, every person we know, ever worry and hope that contains us in its grip, opens up and sets us free. Gone. Forever.

'

If there is a heaven or an after-life, we have been given a hint of what it will feel like when we arrive. When we awaken in that new place, we will hanker back for the dream we have stepped out of. This life is a dream, we just too busy and self pre-occupied to realize it.

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If we take time to enjoy and appreciate what we are, what we have and accept our impermance gracefully, we are able to relax and trust the universe, see the potential in its flaws, the beauty in its imperfections. All this 'stuff' that we are so consumed with will be over - soon enough

:

We need to do no more than look at our hands. Close your fists right now. Hold them closed in a soft embrace of the brith that we experience every time we wake up. Hold on - to that thought for a minute.

:

Bring yourself back from the needless struggles with the future and the past.

Enjoy the moment. Experience your mind slowly let go of its pointless struggle.

Stretch out your arms and hands palm up, stiff and still but relaxed. Experience the release, the free of all that busy-ness, allowed to be hands for their own sake.

:

These are the self same hands that our loved ones will stare at one day, only able to feel their warmth through misty memories of that dream called a our life.

I know you will not do this every day, you will get embroiled in the ceaseless struggle, but it's good to know that we carry two constant reminders of the joy of life around with us wherever we go. Soft or stiff, they came with us and they will leave with us. Everything else is just excess baggage.

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"Friend hast thou none; For thine own bowels,

which do call thee sire, The mere effusion of thy proper loins,

Do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum,   

For ending thee no sooner. Thou hast nor youth nor age;   

But, as it were, an after-dinner’s sleep,   

Dreaming on both; for all thy blessed youth

Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms   

Of palsied eld; and when thou art old and rich,   

Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty,   

To make thy riches pleasant. What’s yet in this

That bears the name of life? Yet in this life   

Lie hid moe thousand deaths: yet death we fear,   

That makes these odds all even. "

Measure for Measure (Act III, Scene I)

This Noble Passion

"This noble passion,   

Child of integrity, hath from my soul

Wip’d the black scruples, reconcil’d my thoughts   

To thy good truth and honour. Devilish Macbeth   

By many of these trains hath sought to win me   

Into his power, and modest wisdom plucks me

From over-credulous haste; but God above   

Deal between thee and me! for even now   

I put myself to thy direction, and   

Unspeak mine own detraction, here abjure

The taints and blames I laid upon myself,   

For strangers to my nature".

Macbeth (Act IV, Scene III)

What is courage? Where does it come from?

Physical courage is the rage. We are all deeply rooted in a physique obsessed world, where botex, life consuming diets, sports heroes and actor defined the stature of mankind, a world where great breasts and ab's dictate whether we are 'acceptable' or not. Physical courage is the fashion.

There is however, a difference between physical courage and moral courage. What is moral courage? Is it thumping bibles and quoting the Koran? Is it voting for Bush? Or is it something deeper? To understand courage, we have to understand cowardice first. 

Moral cowardice is hiding behind an institution, allowing others to do our seeing and thinking for us. Moral cowardice is living a cartoon life, a lice of laziness feeding off the safe code that our moral masters our politicians, priests, educators, financiers, media moguls and shallow friends preach to us. Bowing to the courage of others does not make us courageous.

Moral cowardice is hiding behind alchol, drugs, fashion, wealth, age, connections, titles and positions. Moral cowardice is hiding behind the threat of physical violence, whether it is with a spouse or another nation. Moral cowardice is a leach that consumes and ultimately destroys it's host.

Moral courage is the sweetness of honey (the truth we create) with a sting hidden just below the surface. Moral courage is having the emotional strength and fortitude to know and defend what is right.

Speak up when others roll over in compliance. Listening to the truth without getting defensive or hiding behind excuses. Having the tough conversations. Being true to what and who we are.

Moral courage over rides physical courage every time. Moral courage resides deep in that place we call our heart.

When our heart dictates own actions, that is when we catch a glimpse of - courage.

Tongue Tied

"Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,
As, to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And guilded honour shamefully misplaced,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
And strength by limping sway disabled,
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly doctor-like controlling skill,
And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill:
Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,
Save that, to die, I leave my love alone."

Sonnet LXVI (66)

This world is full of lovely contradictions. This is what adds variety to our life.

Why is it foolish to be free of all fads or fashion?

How can I be right or wrong in a world that is constantly changing?

Why do some pursue what others persecute?

Why does half the world laughs when they see the other half cry?

Why does half the world cry when they see the other half cry?

why is it that the more absurd and abstracdt my beliefs, the firmer I hold onto them?

Why is it that the more we love the greater the suffering at the loss?

Why does freedom affords us the luxury of ignoring what we need to know? (the more freedom we have the greater our ignorance grows of what really matters).

Guru Nanak was invited to a maharaja's home to eat. When he refused to eat the host asked why. The Guru asked for a peasant to make him some food. He held up the roti's from these two households, and told the maharaja that blood poured out of his gift, whereas milk poured out of the gift from the peasant. He then asked, "what shall I eat?"

Such are the contradictions we live with today. Perhaps we need to slow down and take a closer look.

"I am not merry, but I do beguile   
The thing I am by seeming otherwise.   
If she be fair and wise, fairness and wit,
The one’s for use, the other useth it.   
If she be black, and thereto have a wit,   
She’ll find a white that shall her blackness fit.
She never yet was foolish that was fair,   
For even her folly help’d her to an heir.
There’s none so foul and foolish there-unto   
But does foul pranks which fair and wise ones do".
Othello (Act II, Scene I)

Joy For Our Escape

"How heavy do I journey on the way   
When what I seek, my weary travel’s end,   
Doth teach that ease and that repose to say,   
‘Thus far the miles are measur’d from thy friend!’   
The beast that bears me, tired with my woe,
Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me,   
As if by some instinct the wretch did know   
His rider lov’d not speed, being made from thee:   
The bloody spur cannot provoke him on   
That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide,
Which heavily he answers with a groan   
More sharp to me than spurring to his side;   
For that same groan doth put this in my mind:   
My grief lies onward, and my joy behind".   
Sonnet L (50).

REM's  "Losing My Religion" is one of those songs that always hits the spot. It is not about god, but about our weary journey, that moment when we lose all sense of direction, progress and hope. We dangle at the end of our rope.

Our mind (horse) comes to a perfect stop. We forgo common sense, lose faith in our convictions. We cannot fathom where our confidence has evaoporated to. We withdraw in to the darkness and wrap ourselves up tight in a blanket of stupidity.

"My heart is heavy and mine age is weak;
Grief would have tears, and sorrow bids me speak"
Alls Well that Ends WEll (Act III, Scene IV)

"'O heart,' as the goodly saying is,
--O heart, heavy heart,
Why sigh'st thou without breaking?"
Troilus and Cressida (Act IV. Scene IV)

These groaning lapses can last minutes, days, weeks, even months or years at a time. One thing goes wrong, it is off putting, then three or four fateful decisions go against us, we lash out. Even thought we have known better in the past, now it sows deeper seeds for future discord, we have no power but to retire into our woe.

Then there is that classic "Up on the Roof" by the Drifters. The perfect antidote for REM's "Losing My Religion". Letting go. Get away from it all. Reconnecting with the earth and the open skies. We come up for air, regain our perspective.

The other day I read an interesting statement from his Holiness the Dalai Lama. He advises us to spend a part of each day alone. I was thinking about this on my way to a client's office. I wondered - does sitting in this traffic jam count as "alone time"? Then a crooked smile slipped out of the corner of my mouth as a silent voice tucked behind my eyes reminded me "you are in the middle of the rat race, you fool, this are not alone, this is lonely".  Thanks your Holiness!

I began to laugh. The guy in the car car next to me saw me and quickly turned away his head out of embarrassment. We are not meant to laugh when we are alone (or lonely). As I stepped through that instant thought, I was no longer lonely, I had risen into aloneness. I rose above the traffic, I had found my own roof where "no one could bother me".

I am lucky to be sitting here, writing up this blog, this is my daily opportunity to be alone, and still there is "room enough for two" - because I am alone with you. You do not exist, but there you are sitting way out in a future I could never possibly know. It is a strange comfort to know you are there, looking back with an unusual clarity, peering though my hopes and doubts, seeing me - find my religion.

"Beseech you, sir, be merry: you have cause,   
So have we all, of joy; for our escape
Is much beyond our loss. Our hint of woe   
Is common: every day some sailor’s wife,   
The masters of some merchant and the merchant,   
Have just our theme of woe; but for the miracle,
I mean our preservation, few in millions   
Can speak like us: then wisely, good sir, weigh   
Our sorrow with our comfort".
Tempest (Act II, Scene I)

Give Me Your Pardon

"Why, ’tis no great matter;
for a very little thief of occasion
will rob you of a great deal of patience:
give your dispositions the reins,
and be angry at your pleasures;
at the least, if you take it as a
pleasure to you in being so"
Coriolanus  (Act II, Scene I)

I wake up and without a second thought, I venture out into the busy world, looking for people to conquer. No sooner have I found them, I inject them with a lethal concoction of conceit and intolerance. I teach others how to hate me, so that I can have someone to blame.

Their anguish will fill my void, if they have not pain, I will fill them with fear, for feeling nothing! If I take away their right to be free, because taking away their freedom, give me back mine.

I will judge, distrust and wear out my faith on the dead weight of hopeless smiles. I will pour my curse into the hearts of the very people I need to curse. Unable to love my self, I will fulfill my lust to be loved.

I will hack through the forest of relationships that surround me. In my haste to escape I will rotate with rage around the pivot of my fears, cutting through the forest in ever decreasing circles. I will awaken occasionally when I hear of someones (anyones) death, or when I witness the same sore distraction that I suffer from in the others around me or when I find there is no one left to turn to. These glimpses of reality will only serve to bind my heart and deepen my emotional coma, in the warm grip of self righteous cynicism.

As I hack away, an emptiness emerges in the centre of the forest. I carve loneliness out of my sullen pride. I stand apart, consume by the cancer of of my pompous pride. Still clinging to the hacking knife of judgment, I curse the world for my arrogance. I am no closer to walking out of the forest of blame, instead I am sucked deeper in. I am stand supremely empty in the clearing of my foolish deeds. More lonely and vulnerable than I could ever be, not knowing what new demons are going to emerge from the depths of my ignorant plea.

There is only one way out of this jungle. I retreat to temple of all forgiveness - the shopping mall. This is my sanctuary, where empty lives can throng together, slopping around in a fools paradise. Buying things gives me a brief but bitter-sweet respite. I dig in another syringe of retail therapy! I drown in my daily fix, wash away my fears in that ever expanding universe of people - who are paid to make me feel loved. And... if they don't show me love, I will rip their head off, pour all the venom of my life upon their poor unsuspecting heads, and insist they be fired for their sins!

I am enraptured by their well oiled value propositions, dutifully follow my segmented patterns, lilt to the sales persons sincere script. I buy, buy, bye and bye, feeling high, running dry.

I pay the price, unable to count the cost. The minute my freshly dug up idols get home, they lose their allure. I wake up on the edge of the nothingness; exhausted, hooked on the need to be unique, I am just another doped up marketing junkie.

All this time, the real damage goes unseen. As I have been hacking away on the outside, the loneliness gnaws away on the inside. A natural hunger has erupted into a wrenching greed that feeds upon itself.

The stress of all this empty hurt, drains my immune system. My digestive system gives me back my blood by the bowl full. The mind grinds down into the rot of this vanity fair. My heavy heart collapses under its own dead weight of hate.

The harder I push, the lonelier the I become. If I listen patiently, I can discover the solitude and fortitude in the silence. If I listen deeply, I will realize that this curse is of my own faking, the passage out, in my own making.

Tomorrow I will wake up, I will take a second thought, to venture into the busy world, seek people to surrender to. I will not submit to their fancy or frailty, I will surrender to their love - so that perhaps - they can teach me how to love myself, again. Perhaps I'll give the mall a miss.

"Give me your pardon, sir; I’ve done you wrong;   
But pardon ’t, as you are a gentleman.   
This presence knows,
And you must needs have heard, how I am punish’d   
With sore distraction. What I have done,   
That might your nature, honour and exception   
Roughly awake, I here proclaim was madness.
Was’t Hamlet wrong’d Laertes? Never Hamlet:   
If Hamlet from himself be ta’en away,   
And when he’s not himself does wrong Laertes,   
Then Hamlet does it not; Hamlet denies it.
Who does it then? His madness. If ’t be so,   
Hamlet is of the faction that is wrong’d;   
His madness is poor Hamlet’s enemy"
Hamlet (Act V, Scene II)

Urging Helpless Patience

"Why, he is the prince’s jester: a very dull fool;
only his gift is in devising impossible slanders:
none but libertines delight in him;
and the commendation is not in his wit,
but in his villany; for he both pleases men
and angers them, and then they laugh at him
and beat him. I am sure he is in the fleet:
I would he had boarded me!"
Much Ado about Nothing (Act II, Scene I)

Happy April Fool's Day!

When it comes to dealing with fools, patience is our dearest friend. Impatience is worse than the fool him/herself. Impatience reduces us to the level of the fool. Once we are the fool the game is over. It is one thing to lose patience with another fool, but where do we end up once we lose patience with ourselves? Will we have sufficient wit to see our foolishness?

Sometimes, getting wound up is inevitable, but it is always pointless. A fool will not change because they don't know any better, and we have ruined a perfectly good day, because we couldn't act any better!

One minute we are juggling with projection of the fool, on the silk of our mind, the next he has torn through the screen and invaded the four corners of our mind.

We are all fools to at sometime or other, especially when our confidence is at a low ebb and/or we have stepped outside our own element. Even in a simple mishap, such as being distracted and making a dangerous maneuver on the road, we can receive an instant reminder of our own foolishness.   

If I am a fool, should I put up with myself? If so, why not extend that same courtesy of patience to my fellow fools? We are all fools, and it's only a matter of perspective in any case.

"Patience unmov’d! no marvel though she pause;   
They can be meek that have no other cause.   
A wretched soul, bruis’d with adversity,
We bid be quiet when we hear it cry;   
But were we burden’d with like weight of pain,   
As much, or more we should ourselves complain:   
So thou, that hast no unkind mate to grieve thee,
With urging helpless patience wouldst relieve me:   
But if thou live to see like right bereft."
The Comedy of Errors (Act II, Scene I)