Have you been strong yet?

From 2nd July 2012- When I was in final year of college. This was when, I began to accept the truth and settle in my own skin.  I had already rejected a software job and declared I was going to be a writer , talked about it to the fellow passenger in the train to Mumbai where my dad was. Months later, this entry won an Online competition and someone I knew reached out to me offering a job-to write. 

Many such magical moments strengthened my faith in following my inner voice- If you believe, do as you will- paths will open.

“Be a man!” they say. Be strong. To be a man, thus takes strength.

Strength is not to beat the weak, but to be able to respect the power with which the weak fight.

Strength is to appreciate the beauty of ‘so called’ ugliness-in all its grandeur. Strength is what it takes to see wrinkles, scars and blemishes on your skin and smile with joy and pride, as each one has a story to tell. You brought them to you. You wanted them there-and now, they tell the story of a unique, you. The day you got them was beautiful. What you were experiencing, what you did and what you didn’t do, that lead to their imprint, is, but a beautiful memory. And when you see a person with the like, you know that person has been strong, you know he is beautiful. When you recognize and respect the fact that this ugly person could have been exquisite, yet, he chose to be otherwise-that is when you prove to be strong.

To be able to earnestly admire an unsightly appearance of an object, a person, a truth or a situation, simply because you see its mystique uniqueness; and because you know nothing else can be like it -takes strength.

And no, strength is not what it takes to wittily escape from hideous circumstances. It is not what it takes to cheat your own self, believing that things are fine, when they are not. It is not what it takes to hallucinate that you like what you see, feel, or do. It’s in fact the will to stay and wait patiently; to take pleasure in being torn apart; to see what it has to teach; to be open to change; and to understand that all you had once learned and knew to be right, need not necessarily be so anymore. Even as a situation drowns you, suffocates you, drains out the air in your lungs, when  you can still breathe with all the emptiness that shrouds your senses  until there’s nothing left to lose but vacuum, that’s when you let out a shriek- not of pain, but of immense joy and realization-a foundation to start from the scratch, to undo the ignorance and to be filled with new definitions ( yet knowing, they would be replaced again, and again).It thus requires great strength to change, to let go and say - “Hee-Haw! It’s my rebirth!”

And so a strong man does indeed die-not just once when he gives up all his strength, but each and every time he is on the verge of becoming stronger; each and every time he transforms. Through death, he conquers life. Have you, at least once?