Notes to Self

I have always admired Alok Menon. I admire their sense of style and natural expression. They advocate the freedom of self-expression beyond any boundaries. Their way of words and expression is my inspiration. I hope to truly embody the sense of freedom and liberation that I have learned from them. 

They posted a series of New Year resolutions, through the years beginning from 2017. Being an ardent admirer of their articulated language, I decided to note those pointers that I can learn from. I also added some of my own to the list. 

• Nothing can 'legitimize' my feelings. These just are. My sense of allow-ness lets them be and express whatever they want to be. I don't need to define them. But I definitely learn to communicate with them.
• Recognize that others are living their own subjective reality. We all are distinct stars in the universe. Incomparable. You don't know others' internal lived or felt experience.
• Noticing when I operate from a place of conditioning and other times from a place of choice.
• Believing that everyone has an infinite capacity for transformation - including me!
• Honouring limitations and constraints. Many times circumstances cannot be explained - so just allow them to be. Make space for it.
• Honour the stillness in presence and pause.
• Finding immensity in the insignificance
• Rediscovering symphony in solitude.
• Insist of reciprocity. Leave when it is unrequited. (even when it hurts)
• The soul is infinite - your body is not. Recognizing this is a gift.
• Dream beyond binaries. Assert your multitudes!
• Need everyone harder. There are no strangers. Just potential friends.
• Recognize your worth and your pain beyond their ability to be aestheticized.
• Fight for the people that you are and the people that you love.
• Bear the consequences of your authenticity. You were afraid of this. See where the consequence takes you. Don't be afraid. Believe that you can take it! And you will. I believe in you, and I am with you.
• Their ugly is your beauty. Their messy is your magnificent. Their brokenness is your becoming. Notice what happens when you don't follow your need to define anything. You make space for these entities to be whatever they need to be with their own sense of expression.
• Grieve it all! Everything deserves a funeral.
• My bigness/ weirdness/ not okayness is THEIRS to deal with!!!!
• Ambition beyond recognition. Defy easily consumable narratives. Be gnarly and RUTHLESSLY INDIGESTIBLE!
• Conformity is not community. Be yourself even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts.
• You are a contradiction. It is the most human thing to be.
• Be as fluent in the language of injury as complicity: embrace simultaneity in everyone and everything.
• There are many ways to be as there are people in the world.
• Care, but do not mistake fixing other people as fixing yourself
• Don't confuse the way you have come to live as the only way to live. Remain open to the universe inviting you to shift.
• Run into the flames, never forget: we have been taught to fear the very things that have the potential to set us free.
• Remain porous through the pain. A broken heart is an invitation. There is space here.
• Your life is the greatest romance. So, speak roses. Every conversation is a ceremony.
• Amidst repair, harvest hope. wear it like an heirloom.
• become indelible - linger in everything that you touch.
• natural and reality are political aesthetics. birth new worlds. every pattern can be unwoven.
• language is bewitching. but do not mistake talking about the thing as doing the thing. don't talk about it, embody it.
• comparison is creativity's curse. genius is the ability to orbit elsewhere. imagine otherwise.
• surrender to your insignificance and find your magic there!
• there are far more worthy pursuits than being liked - like being.
• not all knots need to be untied. you are not for everyone. you are for you. how devastating. how gorgeous.
• their fear is not your own. (fear is a believed conditioning, an illusion)
• authenticity is an orientation. not a destination. live many lives - each as true as the last.
• love people for who they are - not what you think they should be.
• some words and worlds do not exist yet. Make them up.
• Design murals for all the miracles. Paint them in every conversation. Make hope contagious.
• Have the compassion to break your own heart. what you thought kept you safe - didn't.
• You are so much more than your pain. Reacquaint yourself with your pleasure. it gets to be easy.
• Self-neglect is not a virtue. Love is about becoming, not betraying yourself.
• Judgement is more about your armour than their actions. You cannot save people from themselves. You, however, get to be free!
• Trying is a synonym for living (not just for existing)
• Fear is inherited, and courage is inherent.
• GO ROGUE! Outgrow the story about yourself!
• What if you were someone worthy of being, not doing? Play pretend. See what happens!
• Cherish the belittled, the discarded, the deliberately suppressed, and the unremarkable. Know your worth beyond the collective ideals. 
• 'I am' and 'What Is'  are the most beautiful poems written ever. Live there. There is majesty in the mundane. 
• The soul exceeds the body. We is more than you and I. The sum is always greater than the parts.
• You cannot reason your way out of fear. That is why we have love. 
• Be an ambassador for compassion. 'Where are you from?' 'The Heart'.  
• Everything is constantly becoming. Including you. Have the might to admit that there's a possibility that you can change your mind. 
• Don't mistake rules for reality. Colour outside the lines. They do not exist. You do. 
• Contradiction is often an obstacle to truth. You can be both. 
• Become fluent in everything that makes you want to live. 
• Shame lives in should. Swap guilt with grace. 
• Explore your sense of wonder often. 
• The chasm between 'what if', and 'what is' is trying. Trying: a synonym for being human. 
• Heaven is a practice, not a promise. Why wait? Build it here, now.