The Curse of the Optimists.

I'm one of those people who tend to see only the good in people. Is there a word for it? People optimist something? Yeah i have no clue. But well i tend to do that. I've been friends with a lot of people since i was a kid who other people tended to cast of as being "bad". I wasn't really cast of as bad though. People who i was also friends with often told me that i shouldn't associate with them and i always failed to understand why! I mean sure they might have some bad habits but still they were pretty great to me and no one really ever forced me to do the "bad" stuff with them so i mean i never saw it as a problem.
You must be thinking now what's the curse of the optimist then? Well its not exactly of optimists but more like the curse of the 'people optimist somethings' if you know what i'm saying :P
So the thing with us is that we always see the good in everyone. Now i as a person accept that people are grey. No one is either JUST good or JUST bad. We're all a mix of both. Some people might be "greyer" than others but there's always a good side and the curse with us people is that no matter what we can ONLY see the good side. And it tends to work out fine. Yes, people have a good and a bad side but you don't really use both sides with everyone. With some people you are only bad and that's what the problem is we can't not believe in these people because we only see the good side and we tend to hope that they'll come around. Which they never do. I mean its never happened with me at least. 

And this doesn't mean that i'm blaming them! They aren't bad people. (See how this curse works?!)
I feel like its a problem of upbringing not their's but rather my own. As a kid you remember having those moral value classes? What did they always teach us? Most of the morals were taken up from Gandhian ideals. If someone slaps you be a lil' bitch and offer them your other cheek and they out of a sudden kindness of heart will feel guilty and apologize to you. Yeah doesn't that sound like bullshit?! It does not work like that! You offer someone to take advantage of you and they sure as hell will! Be honest. I mean i guess i would. 

I never realised how tightly molded my thinking is until very recently. I tend to accept people no matter how they are and i always thought that i'm pretty open minded. Then a few days back i read this article on female-on-male rape and no matter how hard i tried i just could not justify that he had been actually raped! Not that that's in any way related to this but this is when i realised how molded my thinking is because of how i've been taught as a kid. What's right and what's wrong. How men are and how women are. How people are. Men want sex. Women don't. Hence men rape and women don't. Simple as that. Molded. Doesn't work that way! It really is not that black and white. It took me days to understand and to break this mold.  

I think we'd have been better off if someone taught us in those moral classes that people are grey. And how it's alright to sometimes see that they can be bad too and especially if they are being bad to you and how you aren't obliged to stick around no matter what. I think it would've been better if someone told me it's okay to walk away even if you see some goodness in another person if you don't benefit from it in any way. I would've been better off if someone told me that i don't owe it to anyone to give them a second chance because hell i tend to give like 7 or 8 till i realise I'm stupid and even then not really! And i guess that's the advice i would give to anyone, its okay to see the bad in people. 

That Dating Thing

First things first, if you're looking for conventional dating tips on how to make him/her like you trust me this is the last article you should be reading!

Hi. My name is Ananya and i do not understand dating.

I come across scores of articles on how to make your crush like you back and all that stuff and most of the advice given involves playing some or the other form of mind games or they tell you vague signs that may show that someone likes you.
I honestly don't understand any of this. I am what most people term as brutally honest. It translates roughly to someone with a big mouth who can't be politically correct. So naturally i don't agree with any of the advice these people have to give.
Dating has been so over-hyped honestly and so is the notion of love. No really! The life goal of most people is to find someone to spend their life with! I don't judge people (I do but i don't) usually so well whatever your goal is you go for it! What I really don't understand is the need for people to play games or pretend or just some sort of trickery to make someone like you. First of all, doesn't it bother people that the whole basis of the relationship is based on a lie? and how long can something like this last? is this why the divorce rates are so high?
Why can't we just keep things simple? Why can't you just walk up to someone you like and ask them out for a coffee or a movie or whatever!? Why do you have to go through all those mind games and stuff to make sure that they like you and then ask? Is the thought of rejection so bad? I agree it is bad. No one likes rejection! But what's the point of tricking someone into liking you! Or worse still lying to them to make them like you!
So many people get into relationships and after a year or so complain about how people have changed. True everyone changes but the change can't be so drastic right? I guess it happens because people pretend to be someone they aren't to make someone like them and i, well, i just CANNOT.
For the most part i guess i'm single because i am unapologetically myself. I don't pretend to be someone i'm not around someone i like to make them like me. What's the point of being with someone who can't like the real you?
Let's critically analyse how bullshit these dating tips can be. I've chosen one random website which gave the following tips.

1. If you want a boy to love you, then you have to look like a fun person to be around. Whenever he sees you, you should have a big smile on your face, do something silly, and be giggling or laughing with a group of friends. 
So any one of you who is an introvert, end of story for you sister! Nobody wants to date someone who DOESN'T have a retarded smile plastered on her face all the time! okay? So you better start pretending to be an extrovert.
2. Act a bit coy by talking softly, not interrupting when the guy talks, and avoiding overly vulgar language. To seem a bit innocent, don't act like you know too much about the more unseemly elements of life, and try blushing if an inappropriate topic comes up.
So cuteness is the key to finding true love. Be demure. Be shy. Be the damsel in distress. Nobody wants an independent woman who actually has an opinion about things. I might as well give this up and get 99 cats already then.

I honestly cannot go through more of these! If someone is going to want to be with me i'd want them to accept that i am fully capable of having a mental breakdown if there's veggies in my pizza (that legitimately happened once), that i am a mess most of the times, that i piss people off because of my political incorrectness and i'd want them to see through all that and find something they find worth loving. Love would be when someone knows all those things about you and in their twisted mind they find all these habits adorable! So that five years down the line i don't have to hear how they did not get together with me expecting this! Isn't that what you'd want? So my advice would be just be yourself. As fucked up and goofy or shy or stupid or whatever it is that you are! That's the only way you'll know if someone really likes you or not. Sure it'll take you a lot of time to find someone this way and sure that cute guy or girl you like might not like you for being you but honestly is that so bad? Is someone who doesn't even like the real you worth dating? You be the judge. 

Brain vs Heart

I've been in this situation for the past few weeks which has taken over my mind COMPLETELY. Like i don't think about anything else nowadays besides the dilemma that i am in. The reason for this dilemma is that my heart wants one thing and my brain wants another.
 Now based on past experiences i really want to go with what my brain tells me to do. In the past i've listened to my heart and ended up in pretty bad situations. Now everybody says that listen to your heart and you'll never go wrong. Umm...i beg to differ. Hearts are stupid. Yes, they are loving but they are emotional fools. They are irrational and incapable of making sound decisions. Also isn't our heart just a muscle? Like technically it's job is to pump blood to our body and i agree that it is a VERY important job but really who gave heart the right to rule?! It's like giving a monkey a laptop. The brain on the other hand has been assigned the job to think and decide and yet everyone out there is like "Just listen to your heart."
Well hearts pump blood they don't have the extraordinary talent of being able to think. So when anyone is telling you to listen to your heart what they really mean is do what your emotions are telling you to do.
 Now let me give you a very important piece of advice coming from a lot of experience. You will ALWAYS make the WRONG decision when you are emotional. The thing is when you are emotional you tend to think and create things whih may not actually exist. For example, i read this one article where a kid kept arguing that santa claus was real because his teacher told him so and that his sister was lying.
 What i feel is that the reason the kid wanted to believe that santa exists was because the idea that a fat, cuddly man who gives you presents exists sounds much better than the idea that he doesn't. You get what i'm trying to put through?
 Sorry to pop your bubble but both the thoughts are coming from your brain. The whole eternal battle of heart vs brain is really just brain vs brain. Its the battle of what your emotions are telling you to do and what the rational, logical part of your head is telling you to do. And to anyone with a sound brain, the better idea is to listen to the rational, logical side.

Wow. Doesn't that sound easy?! When did life get this easy?!
 Oh wait. It didn't.
 *POP* Another bubble burst.
 Listening to your brain doesn't mean that it's going to be all rosy and good. The thing is when you don't do what your emotions want you to do, you aren't very happy either. Since i had decided to listen to my brain and put it to practice too, i've been a little miserable. Not as miserable as i would be had i listened to my emotions but miserable nonetheless. Its like when you want to have chocolate cake but you are doing the whole healthy living thing and you don't eat cake and instead go for the god damned celery stick and it tastes bad but you know you did the right thing but you're still not happy. You would've felt guilty about eating the chocolate cake but celery makes you miserable! But you also know that its the right thing to do.

So what is the final deal then? Emotions or logic?

 I DON'T KNOW.

The thing is you can only be at peace when your emotions and logic want the same thing. Sometimes in life you come at such a path where both the roads lead to a little bit of misery. One may lead to a little more misery. My mom always tells me that in life when you have to choose between two paths and one looks easier than the other, always choose the difficult path. I apply that here too. Even though chocolate cake would make me really happy right now in the long term it's going to make me miserable and even though celery tastes horrible, i know it'll be worth it.
 Btw, i'm not dieting or anything. The celery and chocolate thing is just an example. So i guess for me, for now, it's going to be listening to the logical and rational part of my head for probably the first time in my life and we'll see how that goes. :)

Faith, Trust and Pixie Dust.

So this Ernest Hemingway guy said that the best way to find out if you can trust someone is to trust them. Fancy guys and their fancy quotes i tell you! If you're anything like me it takes A LOT for you to trust someone. At this point in my life i'd say i trust two people. Three at max. And here is this fancy guy telling me to just trust people blindly! Like whaaaaat?! 
The problems i have with that is well first of all i really am scared of trusting people so much so that if someone shows some SLIGHT sign which makes me doubt whether i can trust them or not i drop them like a hot potato (not really). And then you all asked why i'm still single!
Honest confession, i really do have issues trusting people. I take one step towards trusting someone and then take five steps back and it took me a lot of time to understand that i do this. But there's a very simple way to find out if you do the same thing, just count the number of people you trust with your life (not including family members) and if you can count them on your fingers, WELCOME TO THE CLUB! :D *throws confetti* *shoots random people* 
And i asked people you trust. Not the number of friends you have. (Yeah there's a difference)

If you've been reading pretty much all my blogs you know the pattern by now. In case you don't, the pattern is i state something effed up i do and then i tell you how i'm trying to change it. So well. Change. Trust.
What word did i forget? Oh yeah. Faith.

Sometimes, in any sort of a relationship, people make a mistake (or a few) but the torturous part is we feel the mistake was our's. We made the mistake of trusting somebody who then went on and did what we were scared about since the start.
When it comes to relationships i'm sort of a pessimist. I am literally biting my nails waiting for the inevitable. Some might say that people like me wish it to life but what if we don't? What if that really is the fate of every relationship?
Another fancy guy said to be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved and do i agree with this guy! As hard as it may sound to sometimes you just have to have a little faith in people. Some day someone might come along and give you every reason to trust them even when you keep looking for that one reason not to and if you are anything like me you'll be looking every minute just for that one reason however tiny it may be, thinking "What's the catch?" and this is wrong. You have to stop doing this to yourself. I've come up with a sort of a "plan" or this little thing i do when i doubt somebody, firstly if you are really anxious calm yourself down and do this only when you are sure that you are calm. Close your eyes and just feel the faith. Don't think or do anything. It's sort of hard to put into words but think of faith like a garden and think that you've closed your eyes and are just feeling the roses or flowers brush through your hands and if a cactus pricks you then you have your answer but if it didn't believe what you felt. Believe the faith you have in this person.
For some people this may be a relatively easy thing to do but for some of us trusting a person is a very big thing.

“Everyone suffers at least one bad betrayal in their lifetime. It’s what unites us. The trick is not to let it destroy your trust in others when that happens. Don’t let them take that from you.”  - Invincible 

Everyone wants to be catched.

Sometimes you know that people around you love you but you also know that it doesn't necessarily mean that they understand you. All those fancy books on building good relationships would tell you that no one can read your mind! You have to communicate what you need the other person to know, I'm not all that fancy and what i, as a "nonfancy" person want is for people who love me to sometimes understand what i am going through without having to tell them what i am going through in words.

Don't you wish sometimes that someone looked you in the eye and saw through that facade and just knew what's troubling you. Sometimes you don't want to or just cannot express what you are going through, not in words at least. We don't have the strength to unburden ourselves from what troubles us the most by saying it out loud. Maybe we don't have the strength to, maybe it makes us feel exposed and vulnerable or maybe we just don't want someone to feel pity on us. 
Some people think we hide our weakness' deep inside us but what i feel is that we wear them like an armor. As something with which we can shield what we truly feel on the inside from everyone around us. Maybe if we stopped looking on the inside then and just looked at another person without any preconceptions and just really looked at them and listened to what they say we could understand what's troubling them.
There's a very famous book and i'm sure a lot of you would've read it too, it's called "The Catcher in Rye".

So Holden (the guy in the book) is talking about how he pictures a field of rye and there's a cliff and there are children playing in the field and he just wants to catch them. After reading this the first thing that i thought was that isn't that exactly what we want? When you are running around doing stupid stuff someone to make sure you don't fall of the cliff. You just want to be catched. I know "catched" isn't a word but it expresses the essence of what i want to say so well yeah deal with it bro. Tough world.  

I'll love you 5ever baby

Coz 4ever isnt long nuff!!!! <3333333 :)))))))

Oh yes. Annoying couples.

So i was out today with a friend and we were discussing how annoying couples can get sometimes. We mostly had this discussion because we're both single and pretty much anti-relationships. I don't do relationships. I can't do relationships. More on that in some other post. For now - ANNOYING HABITS WHICH PEOPLE IN A RELATIONSHIP HAVE. You might want to skip this one if you're dating someone or if you are like really pro relationships and stuff. This isn't all in good humour. It's pretty damn honest to be honest. So let's get into it, shall we?

When a friend gets into a relationship they totally want you to meet their adorable "other-half" and you agree because you are really happy and excited for your friend! So you go to meet them and then they start telling you every tiny detail of how they proposed and how it all happened and shizz.
"...so then he like put his hand on my shoulder and i totally freaked out! And then he said i love you at exactly 3:05:07!" "Daaaaaaawww! You missed what millisecond it was?! Now that is just so sad!" :(
NOT.
This is like Ted Mosby sitting his kids down to tell them the sweet and short story of how he met their mother and then finishing it off in NINE effing seasons! I'm not up for it. And no it's not a good campfire story so stop repeating it. Please.
Yeah! I get it! You're really excited and in love but spare me what nail paint she had on and the angle his hair was falling on his forehead!

Then in the new relationship phase, they totally want to spend every minute with each other and well it's alright whatever makes them happy right? It becomes a problem only when they start dropping you for their "other-half". But it's totally not cool to drop your friend for your "other-half". Most of the times your friends won't even tell you and most of the times you might make "legit" excuses but come on! We all know what's going on. Drop the act pal. It's okay to do it maybe once but really not more than that! We know you're in love and busy and shizz but stick to the plans you make! Or else your friends are just going to stop including you in all the "non-coupley" fun stuff they do! Play it cool man! 

So since they are all attached-to-the-hip now, their "other-half" (yes i will keep saying "other-half") is automatically invited everywhere! Drinks with the girls or boys!? I'll just show up with my "other-half" Road trip?! OHMIGAAAAWD! My "other-half" should totally get his car and shizz!
And somehow you try to be okay with it but then comes the PDA. Dear lord. There are very very VERY few things i hate more in this world than PUBLIC DISPLAY OF AFFECTION. GET YOUR EFFING HANDS AND MOUTHS AND WHATEVER OFF EACH OTHER IN FRONT OF ME! FOR EFFS SAKE! GAAAAH. 
Nuff said. Moving on.

Another annoying thing couples do is everything becomes a "we".
"We think that movie was totally awesome!" "Oh. My. God. ikr?! we totally hate that biacth!"
So it's like you're just not an individual anymore. There is no "I" to you and you better open your "i" (read eye) to that!

"Hey! you wanna grab some lunch?" "Yeah sure! Let me just ask my "other-half""
KILL ME.
It's like having two parents wasn't enough! Let me ask my "third parent" before i do anything! Great. Just fabulous. Good going pal! Grab yourself a binkie or something while you're at it.

And as if having their "other-half" around all the time wasn't enough when they aren't around (yeah like that small amount of time, which is nothing less than a mini miracle, when they stop continuously texting them while they "talk" to you) they seem to steer every conversation to something they did! or something their "other-half" did! It's annoying to say the least but since we've already established that you aren't an individual anymore and more of like in a symbiotic relationship we didn't really expect any better. I would love to have a conversation other than whether he looks better in shirts or tee-shirts and how it might not work out between of you two because he likes tee-shirts more. Staaaahp.

And what's with the whole setting up business?! Yes i know finding someone may seem like the biggest joy in your life and you really want me to be able to feel that since you love me but maybe just maaaaaaybe i don't need to be set up. Staaaaahp. Again. It's okay that you think some of your "other-half's" friend is really nice and i should think about it.
 Cool. I might.
BUT I NEED TO DATE HIS FRIEND SO WE CAN GO ON DOUBLE DATES! YAAAAAAAAAY!
No.

And well that's all i want to strain my brain right now. I might take a nap because of the amount i am annoyed right now. Quick hint to how heated and over-worked my brain is right now - It took me a minute to correctly spell because.  And that's all for today kids! No wise words for all you couples. Just figure shit out on your own and take a hint from here.
Kthenkbaaaaai.

 

Little Miss Perfect.

Ah! Perfection. It's an evil word. For people like me at least! Not because i am jealous of people who are "perfect" but lately i'v come to realise just how much we all push ourselves to be perfect including myself. Don't even ask how much i push myself to be "perfect". I've had times when i breakdown completely for the sole reason that i can't live up to my own notions of perfection! Le'ts accept it. We all want to be perfect in everything we do and all that we are. I see someone who is better at something than me and don't even ask how much i push myself and mentally harass my own self to be, if not more, then just as good at it.
As someone who has studied psychology at a very basic level i can tell you that from a lot of research some very intelligent people have established how we all have our own capabilities. There is no standard kind of a structure which says that this right here is perfection and this is your level, i am level 51 you are level 54 blah blah. But in spite of knowing all that we often look at people and think "Oh my god! She or he is perfect." And then we push ourselves to excel in something we not only have no aptitude in but also no interest in! And i do it effing a lot. Like A LOOOOOOOOT. All the effing time!
If you do that too then let me tell you why i am even worse off than you and give you a little bit of happiness. I have a problem, okay? I want to be perfect and at the same time i am one of those people who don't care one bit about what people have to say about them (this does not include certain people) So do you see how weird that is? The notion of perfection is set by the society and other people and i want to be perfect and yet i don't care what people think. So yes. I am a whole new level of weirdness and insanity.
But the point is, is there anything called perfection? No seriously! What on earth is perfect? Who is perfect? At this moment i can point at someone and say "THIS! THIS EFFING PERSON RIGHT HERE IS PERFECT" and then that person will point at another derp and say s/he is perfect and its a never ending chain! So maybe after all there is nothing like perfection! Either that or well everyone is perfect in their own little way and of course is blind to it. Until some amazing person walks up to you and honestly and out of no ulterior motive tells you just how amazing and perfect you are. This of course doesn't mean that everyone thinks that those same reasons make you amazing. Some people may hate you for the same reason someone loves you!
Of course we should push ourselves to do better but we shouldn't be so afraid of failure or the inability to do something. Maybe it's not for you! So try something new! Something different! And even if you think you aren't any good at it maybe just maybe there is someone sitting and watching you and thinking "God! How i wish i could be as perfect as him/her" :)