2 days to go to the Texas book festival.. find me at the Writers League of Texas booth!!
Tag: meetingnewpeople
Attitudes
Attitude, I thought is the general behavior one shows towards another person. It is one of the parameters that defines a person. From an attitude perspective there are only three kinds of people – the good ones, the bad ones and the in-between ones.
The good ones always have a good attitude towards you. They maybe going through enormous struggles in their own life, yet they smile at you, say a few words. They probably don’t want to smile, yet their persona refuses to be bogged down by their inner turmoil.
If the good ones are your friends and they let you into their inner circle, then you have made a friend for life.
The bad ones are horrible. They simply don’t care about anyone except themselves. Whether they are having a good day or a bad one, they will make your day rotten. They wake up to mess up their day and someone else’s day. They like being alone, and are often not good to be friends with. They probably need their own selfish kind.
The third one are those in-between. Today they smile, good. Tomorrow they may not even recognize you, bad. It is extremely difficult to understand this group of people and to have any kind of relationship with them. When it goes bad you think, but the other day we smiled, we joked, had fun. You can never understand easily if today is good it bad. Most times you are thinking what you did wrong. It could be nothing you’ve done or it could be. Another state of bipolar. Will tomorrow be a good one, you have no freaking idea! These people confuse you to no end.
The bad and the in between ones can cause you depression if you are banking on that relationship. It all leads to enriching oneself in order to handle people and relationships.
Reunion
Small talks
Little laughters
Shot size bantering
Is all there is
Is all there will be
Crossing paths
Like two cars passing by
Short-lived acquaintances
They come and go
And there are plenty
Starting with small talks
Ending with small talks
These are loose threads
From another lifetime
This I am sure if
For
Each life
Is a reunion
Of the souls..
New waters
Not very often life presents you with a completely new set of choices. It retains the long and important relationships but everything else gets a reboot. The place you live in changes overnight. The building you call home changes to new walls, paint and furniture. Suddenly there are a whole set of people you meet to form new relationships. People you have never seen before, people you never knew existed until today. Your life mingles and meshes with theirs, even for a day, a few months and sometime years.
You tread new paths, intersections, turns. You are wading in new waters, swimming to new shores. All this happens just when you think that yes, now I can sit back and relax.
The most curious and aaha moment for me in this whole ordeal is meeting new people. After a few days you feel did you already know them, in another life maybe.. As you get to know people you hear their stories and are indirectly connected to a lot of people in their lives.
Change is inevitable, is a basic characteristic of life, and comes at a time when you are unprepared. But in each change when we are able to see it’s beauty, essence and it’s fitment in our life, the whole diversion makes sense.
In new waters.. I wade..
Day 5 : Life lessons – God provides
Like the past few weeks, today evening again I got an invite from a good friend of mine to attend bible study at her house. She was kind enough to call me again today, in spite of the fact that I declined a few of her earlier invitations, because I had something else to do. This was the first time I was attending bible study and I asked my kids just before heading out of the door, if we needed to carry the Bible. My younger one promptly said, “Amma, God provides!” As I thought about what he had said, I realized that his timely statement had such greater and deeper meaning. God was going to show it to me in more ways than one later during the day.
At the bible study I met a couple of other families. Honestly, it felt so good interacting with people who were not from my company or from my state or from my country. The four families gathered in that house, or whom God brought together were from four different countries. It was amazing to see how people could gather from different spectrums, different lives to talk about God. It was a group of people who genuinely wanted to be nice to each other. Only if this message could be passed to the whole world.
Anyways, so I met a young woman, single, mother of four children, who had recently relocated to Bentonville. She was working towards establishing her own housekeeping services company by starting out small and was in need of more clients. I told her about the Nextdoor app, which was new to her and how it could help her. I got her visiting card and put out recommendations in Nextdoor and the Indian community on FB. I don’t know if this will help her or not, but it was a channel that God provided to her to help her. And as I thought back to what my son has said before we left home, “God provides”, I realized how soon He teaches us.
As we progressed through the Bible study which was about quick listening, slow anger, doing (James Chapter 1:19-27) I was thinking about how God has provided for me. As I grew up, my parents lived from paycheck to debt to paycheck to debt. Most of my school and engineering fees was loans given by kind-hearted people. God didn’t provide us with a spacious house, a car, bank balance, jewelry, fine clothes, and all the materialistic things that money could buy, but He provided my parents with ideas to keep the money flowing just enough to educate their children. God provided my brother and I with enough intelligence to do well at studies. He provided my brother and I the wisdom to understand the meagerness of resources and use it well. He provided my brother and I the will to overcome, to study, to get further in life, to provide for our parents in their old age. All gifts don’t come wrapped in packages. The most valuable ones come as blessings, when God provides!
Truly, truly blessed!
indupatikkal 