This year is about doing all the little things that make me come closer to my dreams. It's about taking baby steps so I can fill myself with the hope and beauty of it all. It's not about actually making them all come true but giving them a real chance of materialising...seeing a glimpse of them in this world rather than the dream world. And someone's told me I tend to live in my dreams more than reality anyway! ;-)
So...lets see, I'm travelling a lot more this year...gotta see the world before I'm too old you see. It's been amazing so far; from witnessing the pristine beauty of the ice capped Fjords in Oslo, feeling the benign bliss of feeding war disabled elephants in Sri Lanka, walking the royal chambers in Windsor to my most anticipated trip to Berlin in a couple of weeks! Travelling teaches you life's best lessons...that man is simply a pack animal no matter what culture he comes from, desperately in need of friendship and love. It forces you to philosophise, admire nature and beauty, accommodate and appreciate foreign tastes and smells and most importantly it shows you how much you love home and coming back to it! It teaches you to be responsible in a odd way because it exposes you to more life and the different ways in which people live it. It makes you respect what you have, aspire for better and learn to be happy with the resources at your disposal. Most importantly it's teaching me to smile...just randomly smile.
Cooking...yes I've started cooking a lot more and shhhh here's a secret, friends have told me am not as bad as I'd like to think. Sigh...damn! Now I can't even hide behind the 'I suck so you should do it' mantra, I'm going to have to pitch in! :-( But the bigger secret is that though I'm extremely lazy, I've somehow begun to enjoy making new dishes...get new ingredients, get it right, see that it actually tastes good. It gives you an odd sense of pride and I feel like I have my very own chem lab! I've begun to think I might not be that bad a mom someday...I mean I don't think my kids are going to die of food poisoning and I might just be able to tantalise my soulmate with some soul food once in a while! ;-) Contentment...
I joined acting school. This one was out of pure twisted logic. I couldn't write anymore you see. Forget the words, the thoughts were refusing to pour out. I figured if I go to acting school I could hear and see various scripts and make believe situations come to life. But the classes are doing so much more...they've breathed a new life into my existence! They're sapping the fear and uncertainty from my system. Everytime I have to stand in front of my group and perform I feel a little less nervous about being exposed...it's scary and liberating at the same time! You stand in front of this group of people and get into a character...actually feel the character, feel the pain, the laughter, the fears and triumphs....you then stand in front a group of complete strangers and share these most personal feelings of yours...you share them so completely that you convince them that they are real. It's wonderful...acting isn't about doing the make believe...it's about putting yourself in the fantasy and making it real...exposing your innermost feelings rather than donning some superficial mask. It's helped me open this blog and start writing...it's helped me share my feelings with you without fear of being ridiculed, without wondering if my thoughts are worth a penny...it's just shown me the importance of sharing. It's a long road yet...but I'm going to make the best of the journey!
We all dream of being superheroes or at the least extremely cool like the X-men or Superwoman or some awesome secret FBI agent! Well yeah so I have some of these banal fantasies too. So this year I decided to do a few things that might actually be a bit cool...if not to the rest of the world, at least to me! :P I joined a first aid course. I'm now a qualified UK first aid professional and am obliged by the law to help if someone near me is ill, wounded or dying! The course was brilliant. It ran through every situation from accidents, fires, drowning, excessive bleeding, heart attacks...the works. It was both energising and a bit creepy while going through the practical aspects of mouth to mouth, wound dressing, bone setting etc. When walking out of the course with a certificate in my hands I had tumultuous emotions from the heady 'how cool is this' to the unsure 'will I really be able to do something when the time comes'? And the beauty of having the skills and this power is that while my sense of responsibility might be tested one day, I don't really know what I will do. My uncle had a terrible car accident last week and is still immobile and I don't know if I could have been of any help had I been in that car. I don't know if I'd have come out the cool superhero or a crying scared niece. And suddenly i don't want to find out...
Life is beautiful...with each sense of achievement comes it's own set of responsibilities. I don't know how well I'll take them on but something tells me it's a mark of being an adult. A good adult. Have I passed the test? have you?
