The Other Side of the Lake

کبھی کبھی اپنا آپ سفر لگتا ہے . زیرو، جسکی کوئی جگہ نہیں. بلکل بےکار. لیکن سفر کی ضرورت تو ہر عدد کو ہوتی ہے. کچھ بننے کے لئے سفر جس عدد کے ساتھ لگے اسکی قدرو قیمت کئی گنا بڑھا دیتا ہے. تو اگر تم اپنے آپ کو سفر سمجھتے ہو، تب بھی قیمتی ہو. تب بھی تم بےکار نہیں. تب بھی تم ہر گنتی سے پہلے آؤ گے. ہر گنتی کا آغاز تمہی سے ہو گا. اور ہر ٩ عدد کے بعد ١ دفع تمہاری ضرورت پڑھے گی. اگلے مور پر جانے کے لئے تبدیلی جب بھی آے گی  تم سے آے گی. سفر سے آے گی.   Durr-e-Shahwar

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares. Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Road to Daybreak: A Spiritual Journey

Making Mistakes The German philosopher F. Nietzsche once said that it is no use living arguing about everything; it is part of human nature to make a mistake now and again. Yet we all know people who absolutely insist that they are right even down to the smallest details. We ourselves are often included in this category: we don’t allow ourselves to make mistakes. All that we achieve with such an attitude is the fear of moving forward – because certain steps call for new decisions whose results are unknown to us. The fear of making a mistake is the door that locks us up in the castle of mediocrity: if we manage to overcome this fear, we are taking an important step towards our freedom. Love Your Enemy. But Never Forget... The warriors of light always keep their hearts clean of feelings of hatred. When they go to fight, they always remember the words: 'Love your enemies'. But they know that the act of forgiving foes does not force them to accept everything. Warrior...

Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless in facing them. Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but for the heart to conquer it. Let me not look for allies in life’s battlefield, but to my own strength. Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved, but hope for the patience to win my freedom. Grant that I may not be a coward, feeling Your mercy in my success alone; But let me find the grasp of Your hand in my failure. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

When you are encountered by a suffering, it is not the physical pain that comes with the unexpected loss that, but the mental agony caused by the injustice and the unreasonableness of it all. It is then, that one needs to understand the reality of life, which is that life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning . Even in the gravest situations, the greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her life.  They say that there can be three possible sources for meaning: at work, when you are doing something significant, in love when you care for another person, and in courage during difficult times.  Suffering in and of itself is meaningless; we give our suffering meaning by the way in which we respond to it. At one point, a person may remain brave, dignified and unselfish, or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and...

Find a guy who calls you beautiful instead of hot, who calls you back when you hang up on him, who will lie under the stars and listen to your heartbeat, or will stay awake just to watch you sleep... wait for the boy who kisses your forehead, who wants to show you off to the world when you are in sweats, who holds your hand in front of his friends, who thinks you're just as pretty without makeup on. One who is constantly reminding you of how much he cares and how lucky his is to have you.... The one who turns to his friends and says, 'That's Her!'

And each man kills the thing he loves, By all let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word, The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword. [Quoting Oscar Wilde in The Valkyries...]

It is not the critic who counts; Not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, Whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; Who strives valiantly; Who errs and comes short again and again; Who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; Who spends himself in a worthy cause; Who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, And who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, So that his place shall never be with those timid souls who know neither victory or defeat. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Be the kind o f woman that when your feet hit the floor each morning, the devil says, 'Oh Crap, She's up!' Life is too short to wake up with regrets . So love the pe ople who treat you right, love the one's who don't just because you can. Believe everything h appens for a reason. If you get a second chance, grab it with both hands. If it changes your life, let it. God never said life would be easy. He just promised it would be worth it. Courtesy, Sarah K

Life never gives, it only lends. No matter how much you want your life to change, it does not change unless it has to. We might think that we are trying too much, or not trying hard enough; but the truth is - it seems that its all been written in the books... for better, for worse, sickness, health... everything. It does not matter if you want roses, or you prefer diamonds, life only gives what it can lend by the books. Is there anything we can do about it? Yes there is. The only thing we can do is learn to live with what we have and pretend to make the most of it. And when things are not the way we want them to be, we need to keep the game face on so that we can pretend that every thing is fine and secretly keep telling ourselves that its going to be okay. Because remember, the upside for every tragedy is that life never gives, it only lends [for a while]. Isbah Z

One doesn’t love in order to do what is good or to help or to protect someone. If we act that way, we are perceiving the other as a simple object, and we seeing ourselves as wise and generous persons. This has nothing to do with love. To love is to be in communion with the other and to discover in that other the spark of God. You have to take risks. We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen. Every day, God gives us the sun – and also one moment in which we have the ability to change everything that makes us unhappy. Every day, we try to pretend that we haven’t perceived the moment, that it doesn’t exist – that today is the same as yesterday and will be the same as tomorrow. But if people really pay attention in their everyday lives, they will discover that magic moment. It may arrive in the instant when we are doing something mundane, like putting our front-door key in the lock; it may lie hidden in the quiet that follows the...

Along the Road I walked a mile with Pleasure She chattered all the way; But left me none the wiser For all she had to say. I walked a mile with Sorrow And ne'er a word said she; But oh, the things I learned from her When Sorrow walked with me.   ~ Robert Browning Hamilton  ----------------------------------------------- If you your lips would keep from slips, Five things observe with care; To whom you speak, of whom you speak, And how, and when, and where. ~ W.E. Norris  

I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer. They don't teach you how to know what's going on in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying.  They don't teach you anything worth knowing. ~ Neil Gaiman

A friend visited me once in Los Angeles. He wanted me to drive him out to see the Pacific Ocean, since he had never seen an ocean before. We got in my car and drove to a bluff overlooking the Pacific on a beautiful sunny day. My friend got out of the car, walked to the edge of the cliff, and stood in silence for a while - hands on his hips, just looking out at the vast expanse of gently rolling waves sparkling in the sunlight for hundreds and hundreds of miles. Finally, he turned and said to me, “John, it’s not as big as I expected.”  As we walked back to my car, I turned for a last look before we drove away. I may be wrong, but the Pacific Ocean seemed unfazed by its failure to meet my friend’s expectations. There is a little practical lesson here on how silly it is to live and die on the expectations of others. The next time you’ve worked hard, done your best, and still find that someone is unhappy with you, remember the Pacific Ocean. It too had failed to meet som...

All human beings are Different . And should do everything possible to continue to be so. Each human being has been granted two courses of action: that of Deed and that of Contemplation . Both lead to the same place. Each human being has been granted two qualities: Power and Gift . Power drives a person to meet his/her destiny, his gift obliges that person to share with others which is good in him/her. A human being must know when to use Power , and when to use Compassion . Each human being has been granted a virtue: the capacity to Choose . For he/she who does not use this virtue, it becomes a curse – and others will always choose for him/her. Each human being has the right to two blessings, which are: the blessing to do Right , and the blessing to Err . In the latter case, there is always a path of learning leading to the right way. Each human being has his own sexual profile, and should Exercise it without guilt – provided he does not oblige others to exercise it with him/...

Letting go is an art of living. More often than not, you may desperately want to relive a happy moment, go back to the blossoms last spring and enjoy that walk again, say goodbye just one last time... but the only thing you can do is to learn from your mistakes and move forward. Find a new place to enjoy, look for closure in new goodbyes, enjoy company of the friends you have right now and live the moments today, so that when you look back the next time, you can actually feel blessed to have a past that you can cherish for a lifetime.

The unreal is always more powerful than the real, because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. The only ideas, concepts, beliefs and fantasies that last are the ones that are in your head. Stones crumble. Wood rots. People, well, they die, but a beautiful unreal thought, a dream, a legend is what keeps you going on and on.

There are two dilemmas that rattle the human skull: How do you hang on to someone who won't stay? And how do you get rid of someone who won't go?  ~ Danny DeVito, The War of the Roses

If we deny love that is given to us, if we refuse to give love because we fear pain or loss, then our lives will be empty, our loss greater. ~ Source unknown

Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love. ~ Neil Gaiman