I am blessed

My mind is a storm!

There was a period in my life when knowing too much made me run towards solitude. Sometimes I really think ignorance is bliss.

Today, I still know too much. I still think too much. My mind still runs in directions I sometimes wish it wouldn’t but can only wish.

But somewhere along the way, I trained my mind to look at my blessings.

And when I do that, I genuinely feel like, I am one of the most blessed person in the world and I mean it.

Why?

There was this particularly tiring day. I had spent almost the whole day on calls, and by the time I finished work, I was completely drained.

Every single day, when I walk out of my office room, I go and sit in my library for fifteen minutes.

Just fifteen minutes.

That’s my time to unwind.

My time to gather myself.

My time to let whatever happened at work slowly drain out of me.

These days, it is also where I try to switch off that constant thought in my head. How do I step away from something I love doing and walk towards something new?

Not necessarily something bigger.

Just… new.

What an absolute blessing to have own little huddle  with my books and unwind.

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Then there was another morning.

It was 5 AM. I was at the gym, trying to hit a personal best on my incline dumbbell press.

My phone lit up.

A message from a friend who was once very close to me, but with whom I had barely been in touch for years.

It simply said,

“I love you machi. I just thought about you.”

It was 5 AM here. Midnight in India.

I sat there looking at the message.

What have I ever done for you? Why, after all these years, did you think of me at midnight?

And then another thought came.

When I have people like this in my life, do I seriously have the time to worry about all the silly negative things around me?

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I have always connected with kids.

When I was a young boy, my aunties would happily leave their babies with me. Somehow, I could keep them entertained for hours.

Even today, little kids make me happy.

I want to sit with them. Make up ridiculous stories. Listen to things from them that make absolutely no sense and respond as though we are discussing the most important matter in the world.

And somehow, all my life, kids have accepted me into their little world.

What an absolute blessing it is to be considered a friend by those tiny toes.

When life gives me that kind of innocent love, what more I can ask out of my existence?

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I miss my friends.

I just don’t tell them.

When my friends drink, sometimes they call me.

We sing together. We laugh. We dance. And eventually, as it always happens, the conversation becomes deeper.

Life comes out.

And sometimes they cry.

I never did.

Not because I don’t feel things. In reality, I feel them more deeply than I admit. I feel them more emotionally than I show.

But somewhere inside me was this stupid wiring that said tears shouldn’t roll out of a man’s eyes.

Absolute male arrogance and I carried “I don’t cry” almost like a badge all these years.

Until one night.

I went to a movie alone. On the way back, around 2 AM, I picked up a kebab and sat quietly in my car with music playing.

Nothing dramatic happened.

I was just sitting there.

I don’t even know when it started.

Tears began rolling down my face.

For a few moments, I didn’t even realise I was crying.

But I was.

And that night, I cried.

It wasn’t because of the movie.

It was something else entirely and I don’t know what it is. I didn’t feel shame but I felt blessed for crying.

What a blessing it is to have friends who can cry for you.

And what an absolute blessing it is to have friends I can cry for.

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When I was younger and had just started working, photography was a huge part of my life.

I did it for years.

Then something happened in 2023. One of those life experiences that quietly changes your relationship with things you once loved.

I put my photography aside. My camera was in corner untouched.

But , one of my school friend refused to accept that.

Every now and then, she would message me about photography. She would rightfully order me to pick up the camera again.

Last December, she was going through one of the most difficult periods of her own life.

She called me and said she wanted us to do photography together because she needed something to take her mind away from all the stress.

So we did.

For almost four months.

Only later I realised something.

She hadn’t really asked me to do it for her.

She had done it to make me pick up my camera again.

Someone carrying their own pain still had enough space in their heart to notice something missing in mine.

What an absolute blessing to have a friend who cares about you even while they themselves are going through a hard phase of life.

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Writing is different for me.

I don’t write to show what I know.

I write to discover myself.

It is an inner journey.

One day, I published a story about an autistic girl whom the protagonist meets on a train.

Later, a message landed in my inbox from someone on the other side of the world.

It simply said,

“I failed to see my own girl with the eyes you saw.”

I sat with that message for a long time.

Someone I had never met.

Someone I probably never will.

Yet somehow, a few words I had written had travelled across the world and touched something inside them.

What an absolute blessing.

That was the day I decided to shake off my shyness and write my heart out. 

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There are still days when I ask myself.

What am I doing here?

Where am I running?

For what?

For whom?

What even is success?

And sometimes,

Why can’t I just disappear somewhere where there are no people at all?

All sounds like existential crisis questions but it is not.

Not with some grand philosophy.

With people.

A friend.

A stranger.

Family.

The tiny fingers of my babies wrapped around mine.

That beautiful girl who first scolds me for forgetting to bring the bin back into home, but still makes sure I have eaten properly before I go to the gym.

A message arriving at 5 AM.

A friend crying on the phone.

A camera I thought I had forgotten.

A stranger on the other side of the world telling me that something I wrote changed the way they looked at someone they loved.

Tiny moments.

Ordinary moments.

Absolutely beautiful moments.

They bring me back to life.

And perhaps that is why, these days, negativity doesn’t stay with me for very long.

Someone makes a racist comment on the train.

Someone honks at me.

Someone at work throws unnecessary attitude.

Someone misunderstands me.

Fine.

I move on.

Because I simply don’t have enough room in my life for all of it.

There is already too much love occupying that space.

I have spent enough years allowing my mind to count everything that was wrong.

Now, I want it to count what is right.

And there is so much that is right.

So much love.

So many people.

So many little moments I could easily have missed.

I don’t know what I did to deserve all of them.

But I know enough now to recognise them.

And when life becomes noisy again because it will and these are the things I want to remember.

These are the things I will lean on.

And if you are reading this, if you have spent a few minutes of your life sitting with my words, then somehow, you are part of it too.

You are one of my blessings.

My mind may still be a storm.

But my life?

My life is full of blessings.

An Indian philosophy says, ‘I am god!’ and I truly believe in it. The godliness is not religious, it’s spiritual. I started seeing inner divineness only when I started counted my blessings and love around me.

I am truly blessed.