Bye Tense

The person you marry can sometimes feel like a stranger once the “honeymoon phase” settles and daily life takes over.

Pre-marital counseling isn’t about finding flaws; it’s about removing the filters so you can fall in love with the real person, not just the idea of them.

Because marriage is one such decision that can change your life, drastically.

Embracing Imperfection

In our fast-paced, digitally obsessed world, we often chase unattainable beauty, success, and happiness ideals. We are surged with images of intelligent investors, flawless celebrities, airbrushed models, and curated Instagram feeds.

But let me tell you, real life is not filtered, edited, or photoshopped. Real life is beautifully messy and wonderfully imperfect.

I have learned that embracing our imperfections requires courage and the willingness to confront our vulnerabilities. Through these challenges, we develop resilience and discover our inner strength.

'Kintsugi,' an ancient Japanese practice that beautifies broken pottery, celebrates Imperfection, transience, and the beauty of the imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.

Kintsugi means 'to join with gold.' In Zen aesthetics, the broken pieces of a ceramic pot need to be carefully picked up, reassembled, and then glued together with lacquer inflected with gold powder.

The Japanese believe the golden cracks make the pieces even more valuable. It embraces the breakage as part of the object's history instead of something to be hidden or thrown away.

It is beautiful to think of kintsugi as a metaphor for life and to see the complex, broken, or painful parts of you as radiating light, gold, and beauty.

It teaches that your broken places make you stronger and better than ever before. They make you antifragile and are the opposite of what we are taught throughout life – that we are supposed to be perfect and must hide imperfections.

Kintsugi is the perfect metaphor for finding healing in our lives that sometimes get cracked and broken apart.

It teaches us to appreciate the cracks in the pottery, the wrinkles on our faces, and the impermanence of everything. It reminds us that life's beauty lies in its imperfections.

Embracing Imperfection improves our relationship not only with ourselves but also with others.

You learn to accept people as they are, flaws and all, and in turn, they get you in your imperfect glory. It enriches our lives with meaningful connections and more profound, genuine relationships.

Embracing Imperfection doesn't mean settling for mediocrity or complacency. It means striving for excellence while acknowledging that mistakes and setbacks are a natural part of the journey.

May we all continue to learn, grow, and celebrate the imperfect masterpiece that is life itself and stay blessed forever.

'Light The Lamp'

I read a beautiful couplet from Sant Kabir this morning, which reads –

जब मैं था तब हरी नहीं, अब हरी है मैं नाही,
सब अँधियारा मिट गया, दीपक देखा माही |

Translated, it means that when immersed in my ego and arrogance, I could not see God (the supreme power). But when I illuminated the lamp of knowledge within myself, all darkness of ignorance vanished, my ego disappeared, and I found God in the light of knowledge.

At this Choti Diwali, if there is anything we can wish for today, this is it.

Let's illuminate within ourselves – and around us – the lamp of knowledge so that the darkness of ignorance vanishes, ego and arrogance go away, and we find God and his wisdom in that light of knowledge. Only then can we dispel the darkness of our ignorance, which this festival of lights truly signifies.

Let the light shine upon us. Light the lamp within this Diwali, and stay blessed forever.🪔