When a childhood friend gets married… Utmost happy and sad

Photo Ani Babayan

“As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent (Socrates).” In my case — it’s the second, in case of most of my friends — it’s the first, although they have found such good and caring better-halves that I doubt they will ever regret being “chained” by marriage.

How to achieve peace within?

Photo by Ani Babayan

I have been thinking over this for so long that I arrived at this.

A few years ago I used to think that peace can be attained and maintained through apathy and indifference. If you act indifferently toward something, then you will achieve peace, but now I am asking myself — can you act indifferently when you are not indifferent? Of course, no. So now I have realized this — the only way to achieve peace is to realize the temporariness of everything around us.

Thought/question of the day: We all are killers

Photo by Ani Babayan

A recent thought that has occurred to me is — if we don’t kill a person but kill another living being does it make us a less killer than the one who kills a human?

Who said that humans have more right to live than the animals, birds or insects? How many ants do we kill while walking? How much grass do we tread while running? How many trees do we cut a day? How many flowers die every day just to make a girl smile?

Boulevard of broken dreams

Recently I am often drawing comparisons between my past and present with almost no promising vision for future. But even more, I am drawing comparisons between my past and my pre-past. By pre-past I mean my life before three years and four months and by past (which is somehow linked to my present) — after it. Many things happened over this time and the “past” I am talking about has had quite negative impact on my inner world making me highly downbeat on this life.

Thought/question of the day

In general, such thoughts occur to me late at night when I cannot make myself take the paper and a pen or when I have the computer switched off. I bet I am not the first night owl who becomes the best philosopher of the 21st century, “a hidden philosophic pearl” (trust me this is not an attempt to overestimate me and people like me, I just know what type of thoughts roll into the mind of those unable to sleep at night),  which starts glowing during the night and whose “sparkle” fades away or takes its way to oblivion as the morning dawns. This one, however, is not from that series, but just a question that arose in my mind when watching Animal Planet. 

What if we could control our memory?

The truth is — to a certain extent we are our memories and very often our memories define our approach and attitude to things and people around us. Memories have powerful impact on our day and the more we have and the more we remember the more affected we are by them.

Photo by Ani Babayan

Memories are like a voice within — the bright ones are like a good word addressed to us that rejoice and make us smile, the dark ones are like a curse that spoil the mood and sometimes it takes longer than just a day to overcome them

Singing the soul’s lyrics: Elvis Presley

I have never been good at expressing myself in words. Every time I try to put my ideas into words that will form a sentence and make me understandable for the rest, my mind seems to be unable to perform that task and not being able to find the proper words from the large net of my mind I end up appearing a stupid and silly person in the eyes of people

Don’t raise children in “unhealthy families”

A small world in this big world — a world which two people create and where two people act as guards and guardians until their chickabiddies are old enough to open the gates of that world and start their own. That beautiful world is the family.

Time and again I have said that I am a most lucky person who has been raised in a wonderful family, which perhaps has not been able to provide every piece of the material aspect, meaning for example, a two-wheel bicycle (although I had a three-wheel one :)) or roller skates, mainly accounted by the hard times Armenia was going through after it gained independence, but they gave me the first and foremost thing I needed as a child — love. And as the wise know, where there is love, there are lots of other things as well, including care, respect, lots of games, smiles, etc.

Would I ever want to have another mom or another dad? Would I ever want to be raised in a different family

Vision for future or absence of it

I remember around a year ago we had a meeting with one of richest Armenians in the world. A short talk with him was enough to understand that this person has not only focused on making money but also on retaining and improving his human aspect.

Without any wish to cite his ideas that reflect pure wisdom, there is one thing that has stuck on my mind. He said that in our life we should focus on the long-term goals which might as well include short-term ones. What he recommended was having a clear idea of where we want to see us 15 years down the road

Purifying the soul

The coming two months will be quite challenging for me, a challenge I am undertaking quite consciously and with a strong wish driven from within. It will be a short period of self-exploration, of getting rid of ghosts around me, of facing my mistakes and correcting them, of confronting my fears and overcoming them, of forgiving myself for certain things and doing my best to forgive those who have ever hurt me, of forgetting the worst of nightmares and ignoring the artificially imposed