Category: The World

The Problem of Perspective

It was one of those clear, cloudless days. The temperature was just right, when we stepped out of the house. A lazy dragonfly and a helicopter flying overhead got young minds and old talking about the similarities between them, and of course biomimicry-based inspiration between them.

Even as ubiquitous as air travel has become, that sense of aerial adventure still kindles something special and adventurous in us. I remember telling my friends the other while reading When Women Were Dragons book by Kelly Barnhill that I hoped to become a dragon – if not for anything, but for the soaring power of flight, and the perspective such an act affords us.

Seeing the world around us in different perspectives is an endless fascination is it not? It is why the artist painstakingly sketches that wart on the nose, or that dimpled chin, or that shadow of the leaf with so much love and attention. Perspective.

Perspectives in Art

So what is it about our day-to-day lives that we can apply the same principle to? We have been trained or naturally possess the ability to view a problem from another person’s perspective, in order to see their perspective. It all helps of course -it is what makes us human.

That morning as we watched the dragonfly flit and the helicopter fly lazily overhead – probably on a routine patrol, I felt the urge to see things from both their perspectives. What would they see? A young boy and a lady out on a walk, certainly, but what else? The helicopter certainly would not have seen the dragonfly, but could the dragonfly have seen or sensed the helicopter? I think so.

Watching the skies is endless fascinating especially if you live near fairly busy airport zones. A few hours later, I sat on the porch with a toddler, and peered up again – the child had spotted an aircraft and wanted to know whether it was a plane. “It is a 747!” piped a voice – older and wiser than the toddler, and he looked with awe at the plane overhead.

With my neck craned at the sky above, I felt a rush of gratitude for being able to relish these everyday joys with young minds. How often we don’t notice the planes, helicopters, and dragonflies overhead? How often we miss the perspective from above when solving the problems of our lives? If only, we could take our minds for a whirl of perspective, how marvelous that would be?

What is April to you?

April is many things to the poetic brain, to the romantic at heart. It even somehow manages to give a tinge of optimism to the incorrigible pessimists amongst us.

It is the month of gorgeous signs of spring in the bay area. Hillsides filled with green grasses and wildflowers in hues of yellows, pinks, purples & oranges everywhere. It is difficult to not be buoyed up in spirits when spring gets going like this around us. The butterflies flit, bees buzz, woodpeckers peck (drill?), tulips push up through the soil, flowers burst forth from buds, barren trees cloak themselves in new leaves. 

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Life, it seems, wants to be up and about.

April is not just when Spring is in its glory:

📜 It is the month of poetry – I picked up a bunch of poetry books from the library the other day, and have yet to get to them. It is the thought that counts.

🌎It is the month for our dear planet Earth – well Earth Day, but I really think we should dedicate a month in which we consume more conscientiously, make choices that help our only home and all that.

📚It is the month that has a day dedicated to Books – World Book Day. I found my pace of reading especially slow this month given everything, but I still clutched them inhaling the scent of my dearly beloveds that night – too tired to read, but too stubborn to put it away and fall asleep. Someone must’ve rescued them, for I saw them in a tottering pile on my bedside table in the morning, and smiled.

🧬April 25 is also World DNA day.

This month, I found myself wandering the planet, wondering where the time went, and watching in awe as the goslings hatched, and the bird parents showed us good parenting. I found myself being inspired by humans achieving remarkable things, finding time to do the things they love, pondering on what is inherent via DNA and what can be changed via nurture, being taken aback by what we are capable of doing to one and another, and so much more. 

I did not even feel my usual sense of helplessness as my to-do list remained stubbornly long. It is a list and has a right to exist, I told myself. Spring cleaning can wait, to-do lists can wait (maybe it is why we have World Workers Day on May 1st – to remind us to get back to that list) 

What is April to you?

😇 Even AI Knows 😈

A Guild of Authors

A friend and I were returning from a meeting in which authors from different genres were presenting their works. We fell to discussing the books that appealed to us, and what worked in the format, and what didn’t. I, for one, felt that giving folks a platform to present their books, while noteworthy, could just as well have been done via a YouTube short, but what would have been harder to achieve would have been moderating a discussion about the overlapping topics between the authors. That was something I would have loved to see.

A Company of Authors – Stanford Guild

The sections were grouped together by genre, and topic, so it would have been a good panel to have discussions around. 

Even AI Knows!

As conversations usually go, we meandered, and I said something to the effect of the housework and the truth of an Indian woman having its effect on writerly ambitions etc, to which he mentioned a joke he’d chanced upon, and I guffawed at the truth of it.

“With AI, I thought, it would take over monotonous tasks such as dishwashing and house cleaning, so I could take up Poetry & Art. Instead AI has taken up what little I had of Poetry and Art and left me to do the dishwashing and cleaning!”

Even AI knows to steer clear of household tasks, while humans (women still bear the brunt of the housework) are in charge of these mundane tasks. Who says the universe doesn’t have a sense of humor?

“Really! Of all the things I wanted help with – it was Art that was the least. Give us one tough thing to spend our lives mastering and perfecting!” I said. “Help me with robots – one for the chores, one for help to care for the aged, another with companionship for the lonely etc. Why art, literature and poetry?”

“I do think there are startups for every one of these in the off-ing somewhere.” said he – sanguine as ever and optimistic in the ways of the world’s future.

He was right of course.

Intuition & Instinct?

It did help us loop back to a book that was discussed in which the author spoke about intuition/instinct being a precursor to our conscious thinking, and whether AI would be able to simulate that level of prescience. Which made me wonder, whether that was what made us human, but plenty of us have learnt to ignore these things over time (after all, we don’t need to know when a tiger is lying in the bushes). But would it help us identify dangers in our life?

https://open.substack.com/pub/managingeditor/p/surfin-mia?r=2e6vr0&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

More importantly, if that too can be modeled, what does that leave us with to claim our humanity? Messy emotions and imperfect decisions maybe?

Which brings me to the most important question: What would you like AI to help with, and what would you prefer AI kept is nose out of?

Analyzing Love

The niece & I were discussing the what-ifs, what-abouts, and why-nots of life. A vibrant character, she is also blossoming into a lovely young lady, and I told her so. She laughed.

“So do you believe in soul-mates?” she asked reminding me intensely of the sort of things the daughter would throw my way in terms of conversation.

“Yes!” I said without hesitation. I hope all of us have had that tug of friendship or love where we do not know why exactly we love a person, but we do. People name it different things: wavelength match, soul mates etc.

She tried narrowing it down though, to whether there is a soul-mate, whether destiny plays a role in determining our love lives and so on.

After a chatty session in which I got to enjoy the perspectives of the younger generation , I finally threw up my hands and said, “I don’t think we should analyze love too much. Just be glad that we can give and receive love.” 

She was kind enough to not roll her eyes at that, but I knew what it must’ve cost her to do so. “That is love!”, I said, and this time she did roll her eyes. 

All the talk about love and destinies and soul-mates and what not got me thinking on what a messy business life and love is. 

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Love in Literature

In the book, Forest of Enchantments, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni talks about all the different things love makes us do. This is a retelling of the epic saga, Ramayana, from Lord Rama’s wife and consort, Sita’s point of view.  

“My first lesson on nature of love was that in a moment it could fulfill the cravings of a lifetime, like a light that someone might shine into a cavern that has been dark for a million years.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Forest of Enchantments

It is true:

Love anchors us, and unhinges us at the same time

It refines, and sometimes defines us

Love is predictable 

It also makes us do unimaginable things

Love keeps us rational

It also makes us behave irrationally

As quixotic and frustrating as it all is

Love is our only hope

I thought of all the heartbreak and hurt feelings that Love leaves in its wake,  of all the great stories of love that play out in our lives. Every single person around us has been affected by love or the lack thereof. We only need ask, and they only need tell.

It is my fervent hope that we all feel the positive and nourishing powers of love – whether from a friend, parent, uncle, aunt, teacher, guide, maid –  at some point or the other. Every loving interaction has contributed to who we are, and why we are the way we are. 

As Jane Austen says,

“There are as many forms of love as there are moments in time.”

-Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

Even the love we feel for each person is defined by moments in time.  So how can we rationalize, predict, counteract, and otherwise analyze this marvelous force? There is only one thing for it – be grateful.

It is why most of our literature, songs, ballads, and poems all need either love or war to make it enduring, as the daughter so eloquently put it, a few weeks ago.

War & Peace, Love & Power

Vibrance of Variety

Flight journeys to exotic lands across the planet are tedious. Grateful as I am for flights, and the miracle of hot food, good air, and the view from above. It can get to be a trifle monotonous after the first 10 hours, By 12 hours, it is painful, by 14 excruciating. You get the picture.

This time, we got to chase the sun rising over the Arctic Tundra. I peeked out into the orange horizon, and gasped. The sun rising over the clouds and us watching from above can give us quite the divine feeling. A feeling that only travelers in the past hundred years have had the blessing to experience. Sailors may have experienced this divinity while out in the oceans, hikers and mountaineers have been trying to experience this phenomenon from up above.

I did not get good pictures from up above this time, but some older pictures are always worth seeing again. 

I was trying my best to stretch, glide and keep the body supple as I walked up and down the flight, waving my little hellos to the babies who had all decided that sleeping was not something to do when surrounded by this many people. What an adventure this was! Why would anyone waste it sleeping?

I looked at the poor parents, and they stood bleary eyed, teary eyed, weary all rolled into one. I remembered with a shudder the travels and travails of traveling with babies.

Never awaken a sleeping tiger cub…

One baby was friendly and smiled. He grinned and was the highlight of my flight. He reminded me of the daughter all those years ago when I haunted the flight corridors with her.

“You have a bassinet, my dear! Why would you not sleep? Lie down – stretch those little arms and legs and just sleep!” I coo-ed and he giggled.

“I wish we had bassinets!” I said to the frazzled mother, and she agreed heartily.

Walking up and down the flight and out in the airports, I couldn’t help noticing the number of different personalities in the world. Were there really infinite possibilities of personalities in this world? The combinatorial explosion is hard enough to contend with. Then, over and above, nature, is nurture. Each one, whose circumstances helped shaped them in drastic or subtle ways.

I had been reading a rather large family saga over the past few days, and realized that no matter how many personalities we encounter in this world, we will still be surprised by humankind.

The baby cooed and asked to be shown the panel wall behind me, and I obliged.  We smiled yet again and took a peek at the sun rise, then a few hours later, we left the blazing day behind and kept flying into the night. The babies cooed and cried, laughed, and danced. Each personality budding and developing into their own personalities to add to the vibrant variety we already have on this planet.

“So, how old are your children now?” the mother asked with a yearning look as I tried to shake sleep.  I assured her that time would fly past and she can  soon dream of sleep on long flights!

Wind💨, Rain 🌧️ & Boats ⛵️

In what was a beautiful wind-whipped whirl one morning, the on-a-spring-break son and I went on a walk. Power & Internet were down, which meant we could both twirl off on our adventures while these things were being restored. 

A few minutes in, we were confronted with a huge water pipe that gushed out in great spades. The county’s water department was already there looking into the problem, while we stood watching in awe as the water spooled off into the drain. Clean water. 

“Hmm…everything decided to go nuts huh?!” the son said, as we stopped to marvel at the swift waters.

“Do you think we’ll have time to head back and bring back papers to make boats?” he asked, after a few seconds of awed water watching. I saw the determined faces of the county workers’ faces gleam with triumph – they had fixed the problem no doubt, which meant our time was short. Luckily, it was also garbage day, and the windy day had scattered a couple of pamphlets in the wind as the garbage truck tipped the contents over. So, off we went chasing after these pamphlets to make into paper boats. 

If the maestros of productivity were to observe us that morning, there would be a lot of tutting, and note-taking on ways-to-improve, but we felt amazing. 

Our boats, Mitillandimus Tittilandumas, and Mixter Baxter Junior fared the best. The remaining capsized before starting. For those interested, our boat christening was inspired by Gerald Durrell’s boat, Bootle Bumtrinket, in the book, My Family and Other Animals.

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There does not seem to be a word to capture the sense of adventure, contentment and joy watching your paper boats take off on adventures, but we both highly recommend the experience.

What kind of life is it always to plan
and do, to promise and finish, to wish
for the near and the safe? Yes, by the
heavens, if I wanted a boat I would want
a boat I couldn’t steer.
                    ~   Mary Oliver, Book: Blue Horses

Just as the last of our boats disappeared with the rivulets, the wind picked up, and we tried keeping ourselves upright as we continued on. It was no use. Within minutes, the winds were accompanied by plump raindrops, and we scuttled back home. 

It had been a useful outing, and we came back refreshed and grateful that the rains started lashing down a few minutes after we reached. Back home, the power gods had restored electricity but not the internet. So, we settled ourselves down to a cup of tea and cocoa. We sipped in silence while the rain pattered all around us.

“Wonder what happened to our boats!” the son said finishing his hot cocoa, and we smiled together. They were not in safe harbor, and it was an exhilarating thought.

raindrops

🌸🌸🌸 Oubaitori in Spring Time 🌸🌸🌸

Spring is here, and with it, the delightful uncertainties of the weather. 

Would it be a cold, bright, cloudless day, or a cold, cloudy day, or a warm sunny day? The possibilities are endless. Sometimes, I feel like a lamb in spring-time ready for a spot of prancing and rollicking in the hills, other times, like a caterpillar not yet ready to shed the cocoon.

Springtime is a fantastic excuse to wear a silly hat and chase after unicorns, wouldn’t you agree?

– Uncle Fred in the Spring Time – By P G Wodehouse

With the increasing length of our days, it is a beautiful feeling to step out into the sunset at the end of the day, The golden hour seems more radiant, and seems to even linger more, though that just may be due to the fact that the body has had the time to sip a cup of tea at the end of the day before sunset. 

One evening, I stopped to savor a fat plop of a raindrop on my face, and saw that the cherry trees had leaves on them. The flowers had all but gone. They were there two days ago. I peered at another tree not far away, still resplendent in its floral beauty, and another one that had a good smattering of brown leaves along with their pinkish blossoms. Once again, that longing to capture the blooming and blossoming in slow-motion came over me. How lovely it would be to sit and watch for the leaves to come in? 

Ah! What little things give us pause?! 

I read about a beautiful Japanese concept, Oubaitori

The ancient Japanese idiom, Oubaitori, comes from the kanji for the four trees that bloom in spring: cherry blossoms, plum, peach, and apricot. Each flower blooms in its own time, and the meaning behind the idiom is that we all grow and bloom at our own pace.

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A few days later, I went on another walk, this time peering up at a clear blue sky, and no jacket, only to notice the young gingko trees in the neighborhood beginning to sprout their light green leaves of beauty. I remembered the large gingko tree we’d long admired. That large tree, over a century old, fell in the winter storms this year, and I felt a pang. The patch on which it stood was overgrown with fresh grass, and a meadow full of yellow flowers. Nature’s lessons and epiphanies are rarely novel, but always welcome. 

Making a mental note to go for a short hike in the beautiful green hills nearby, I reluctantly headed home. 

Spring time is nature’s way of saying, ‘Let’s Party’!

– Uncle Fred in the Spring Time – By P G Wodehouse

Maybe it is time for a spot of springtime laughter with the maestro, P G Wodehouse himself.

War & Peace, Love & Power

“You need to have either love or war; those are the only ones that can sustain a long running saga!” the daughter said as an off-hand comment one day when we were discussing the art and craft of world building, and she was convincing me to read another series – one with a female protagonist. I was hesitant to start reading a series that not only had 7 books but all seemed to be progressively bigger in size too. She guffawed at this and said,  “You’ll enjoy it, so what’s the problem?”

The problem with wars is that nothing makes sense as time goes on. Even if there is justification in the original act of going to war, the long-running losses and frustrations often eclipse the original intent. It becomes a cascading pile of losses that fuel more losses.

I was reading Haruki Murakami’s book, Novelist as a Vocation. There was one particular section when with the book still open in my hand, the mind started to meander, trying to make sense of what was said, and trying to piece things together as they might have been.

He writes about the time he witnessed civil unrest as a student in college long before he decided to become a writer. Coming from a stable family, and not having endured any significant challenges or wars in his lifetime, he writes about the period in his life when he witnessed strife. He confesses that he felt drawn to the cause originally, but gradually could see cracks beginning to appear. Slowly, he saw how words lost their integrity, and he felt he could not identify with any of it anymore.

“As time passed,.., and internecine warfare between the student factions grew more and more violent and senseless – an apolitical student was murdered in the classroom we often used, for example-many of us became disenchanted. Something criminally wrong had wormed its way into the movement. The positive power of imagination had been lost. I felt this strongly. ….Uplifting slogans and beautiful messages might stir the soul, but if they were not accompanied by moral power they amounted to no more than a litany of empty words…..Words have power. Yet that power must be rooted in truth and justice.”

I felt a heavy sadness settle over me as I finished reading that section of the passage again. Thus it has always been. With war, with power, with long-running angst. It sometimes seems to me that human beings are remarkable for still allowing light to seep through – to be hopeful, happy, joyous, friendly, loyal, trusting, loving and giving. But I am glad of this tug-of-war too, for without one, we may never learn to fully appreciate the other. 

News of war and conflict have always plagued humanity, and exactly a century ago, the whole world reeled from wars back to back that sent the world careening into madness. The insanity of it, the dreariness of it, we hoped would be deterrent enough for at least a few centuries – but I doubt it. For just as ubiquitous as love seems to be conflict. 

In centuries of warfare, there have been gains and losses. All things fragile to begin with (egos, lives, trust, careers), they all seem to shatter in the eternal quest for what? Seldom in war do people win. Maybe countries do, armies do, but never the individual. And yet without collective action, where would we be?

In our very contradictions lies our greatness. 

I eyed the book series on war & love the daughter had given me, and wondered whether to start another saga.

It seems so simple to say: All we need to do is figure out a way to value Peace over War, and Love over Power. Oh well! That is the saga of the human life, isn’t it?

Chance Encounters For a Magical Journey

🐕‍🦺🪷🦌🍀🐺❄️🐀🍁 The Deer Families 🐕‍🦺🪷🦌🍀🐺❄️🐀🍁

“Think we’ll see James and Lily today?”

“I don’t know! Hopefully. It has been raining, so the poor things may have moved away, ” I said. We’ve christened the deer family near our homes. The mother and father are called Lily & James (I know!). Sometimes, there are several families – we call them all James & Lily. 

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We caught sight of them – much closer than they usually are, that evening, and exchanged a look so close up, it was … revealing, deep? (hard to pin down in one word). It isn’t often one gets the chance to exchange a deep searching look with a deer. It is a marvelous experience – and one we wouldn’t forget soon. Those brown eyes seem endless, and so full, it somehow fills up your being too. When poets write of moments feeling like eternity etc, I suppose this is what they meant. It could not have been more than a few seconds, and yet, the eyes spoke a language of eyes. 

Whenever writers talk about pools of emotion showing in the eyes, and the shapes of their ghosts flitting through their characters’ eyes and all of that, I am never sure what to think of it. Sure, it sounds brilliant and poetic, but can we really show all of that in one glance? Looking into the deer’s eyes was oddly satiating, and it was definitely more than words can try. 

Clearly the son was moved too, for he said, as soon as it left, “Do you want to talk to animals sometimes?”

I nodded. “That would be nice.”, I said

“What do you think they’d talk about?”

🐕‍🦺🪷🦌🍀🐺❄️🐀🍁 Understanding Animals 🐕‍🦺🪷🦌🍀🐺❄️🐀🍁

“I suppose it depends on the animals. Elephants have different concerns than pangolins. Bees, squirrels and ants – being more community animals may have similar concerns. But I think I’d like to know the range of emotions they have. Do squirrels have greed? Do ants have jealousy? Pelicans have been known to sacrifice themselves for their pod. “

Are there some emotions or behaviors that are completely unknown to man that our creatures possess? We know many animals feel love, despair etc. 

If a wolf is kicked out of its pack, it never howls again. 

– From the book, Sad Animal Facts – by Brooke Barker

“For instance, and we all know whales have complex legends in song format that they pass down. With all the skills of navigation, survival, and protecting required, I am sure they all have different topics.”

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“I think I’d also like to see what kinds of things they keep in long term memory. I mean we know elephants have long-term memories, but what does that constitute? Just routes to water during times of drought or also towards betrayals etc. They must have some extraordinary lives and stories to tell then, isn’t it?”

He was nodding along. We talked about the size of their brains in proportion to their sizes. Brain ratio requires a separate post in itself, but there are so many fascinating things once you start looking into it.

For instance:

“An alligator’s brain weighs less than an oreo. “

– Quote from the book, Sad Animal Facts – By Brooke Barker

The alligator literally has the smallest brain to body ratio. Only 0.2 % of its body mass is the brain.

🐘 🐊 ⌘ Gajendra Moksha & Vishnu Sahasranamam 🐘 🐊 ⌘

This led to research on a few things about body to brain ratios, and curiously, the myth of the crocodile vs the elephant in Hindu mythology, Gajendra Moksha. It is curious how the myth pitted the lowest brain ratio animal against one of the wild animals with the highest ratios (the elephant). It is supposed to be a reminder to keep our egos in check. Gajendra finally relinquished his ego, and required the great god, Vishnu, to come in avatar form and save the elephant. 

Gajendra’s plea to Lord Vishnu is called the Gajendra Stuti and is the first stanza of the Vishnu Sahasranamam (the 1000 names of Vishnu) 

Please read: Post by Krishna2 on the Vishnu Sahasranamam  – this post helps us comprehend us the depths of Vishnu Sahasranamam

शुक्लांबरधरं विष्णुं शशि वर्णं चतुर्भुजं ।
प्रसन्न वदनं ध्यायेत् सर्व विघ्नोपशान्तये॥

śuklāṃbaradharaṃ viṣṇuṃ śaśi varṇaṃ caturbhujaṃ |
prasanna vadanaṃ dhyāyēt sarva vighnōpaśāntayē ||

We came home fascinated by all the different things we usually do not pay attention to – filled with wonder, and awe. Many of us have forgotten what it is like to have encounters with our fellow beings – sometimes, exchanging a glance with a deer is all it takes to take on this incredible journey. 

The multiplicity of forms! The hummingbird, the fox, the raven, the sparrow hawk, the otter, the dragonfly, the water lily! And on and on. It must be a great disappointment to God if we are not dazzled at least ten times a day.

–Good Morning – By Mary Oliver, Book: Blue Horses

References: 

The Power of our Emotions

Patience is a Virtue

“She can be hot-tempered!” my mother would say with a damning tone, which I thought was pretty rich coming from someone who had always been a bit of a live wire. 

“Patience is a virtue!” the father would say, and sing a terrible song in an even more terrible voice:

பொறுமை எனும் நகை அணிந்து

பெருமை கொள்ள வேண்டும் பெண்கள்

Meaning: Women should wear the jewels of patience, and feel pride in it.

And I would just lose it.

Again, coming from the pair that bickered their life through, it was a bit much.  

From a young age, I was led to believe that impatience, anger, and hot-headedness are vices. So, every time I felt this way, it bothered me – less over time, but bothered me nonetheless. While anger is better wielded when in control, there is a necessity for righteous anger, and even anger to defend oneself, or someone else. There is also a necessity to wield it as a protective shield – especially as a woman. So, why do we continue to tell women it isn’t okay to be angry? 

Is Patience a Virtue or a Vice?

Even as recent as last month, I was told that a friend of mine never lost her temper, in glowing terms. I had a cold, and was coughing and sputtering through a phone-call.  

“Did you try boiling the water using the kettle?” the mother said, not listening to what I was saying at all, but telling me what to do in a voice that did a thin job of veiling her true thoughts of my competence in the kitchen.

“No mother! I took three bricks, broke a branch, and tried scraping firestones together to light a fire on which to boil water.”

Hence the : patience is a virtue refrain. 👀I could try being endlessly patient like this friend, could I not?

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As though that was her most redeeming quality. It wasn’t – she was loving, kind, generous, and funny. She was also judgmental and stubborn (her patience actually helped her win her way in the long run, so far from it being a virtue, I saw it as sometimes being problematic), but there it was. 

Cranes are endlessly patient, brutally so, in their quest for what they want, aren’t they? Ask the fish what they think of that.

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“Maybe, Buddha should have been a Bodhini and taught us the way”, I snapped and put the phone down. 

I did feel a twinge afterward – the poor lady was only trying to help, but really! She hadn’t even listened to what I was trying to say, which was somewhat time-critical. Too wound up to speak, and the timezones not contributing to the late hour, the crux of the communique had to be sent as a cryptic message on WhatsApp instead. This, of course,  resulted in tedious messages of varying hilarity, and interruptions. 

Sigh!

Anger from When Women Were Dragons – By Kelly Barnhill

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A quote from When Women Were Dragons – By Kelly Barnhill swam to the forefront:

I am sorry. I said, I couldn't look at her face. “I .. I don’t get angry”. I shook my head. “I don’t usually get angry. But lately…”

Mrs Gyzinska gently cupped her hand against my cheek “Anger is a funny thing. And it does funny things to us if we keep it inside. I encourage you to consider a question. Who benefits, my dear, when you force yourself to not feel angry. Clearly not you.”

She glanced around the room. “Look at where you’re living. Think of what you’re being asked to do. You’re not angry? Hell. I’m angry on your behalf.”

I suppose, this is another of those things we need to stop telling our women. Instead stopping to think:

“Who benefits, my dear, when you force yourself to not feel angry?” – Kelly Barnhill, When Women Were Dragons

Just as much as we should stop telling our men to not cry, or feel vulnerable. 

Be A Man

Anger and vulnerability are human emotions capable of just as much as love and loyalty, so why do we deny ourselves the power of these emotions?

Happy Womens’ Day: May we allow ourselves to be angry for the right things in the right proportion at the right time, so that we may do the right thing!