Why I Started this Blog? (The Concept of Omens)

The Alchemist (a book) wrote that a man's life is marked by omens.
These are sign posts, clues, coincidences or enlightened situations that point us to the right direction.

I assume they come in many forms.
Yours may be different.
Mine mostly come in three guises:
a TV episode, a film or some form of printed material that I encountered serendipitously.

When I was in college, I fell in love with a classmate quasi-friend, the set-up of which doomed it from the start. For someone as stoic, overly ambitious and cold as I am, the dissolution of that friendship crushed me. And a TV series called Dawson's Creek helped me understand that, like the lead character Dawson, bad things can happen to good people.

And bad things happen to good people because...

Well, eight years had to pass before that question was answered.
An HBO show called Six Feet Under solved it indirectly.

In a commercial promoting the show's reruns on the Bravo Channel, a female character in despair asked:
"Why do people die?"

A consoling male character replied:
"To make life important."

I agree.

I consider falling in love my Achilles heel.
Because love requires being loved for who you are.
I often find myself repeating the same pattern of sanitizing myself, in an effort to appear more stable to my partner.

So in my mid-20's, I botched up a potential relationship again.
In a new country this time.

It is a relationship I continue to regret until now.
Because as I replay it in my head, there was one situation where being Who I Really Am could have saved the relationship.

I buried the hurt so deep that no amount of talking about it, reading about it or forced attempts to cry about it and let it go worked.

The healing had to wait for the film, Garden State, to come out.

Not only did Zach Braff look like my ex, his character, at the same time, captured the essence of who I am perfectly. Introverted, quietly cool, eccentric and an immense depth betrayed by a very boyish appearance.

So when his character finally cried,
I found myself doing the same thing.
And noticed that the hollow part in my chest, where a broken heart was stored, finally fulfilled its real function and felt painful.

Several touching movies followed:
The Fountain, The Queen and more recently, Perfume.

I watched all of them at a certain point in my life when I was struggling with a life Question.
And each film answered it.

I am grateful that whenever I feel lost, Life finds a way to nudge me back.
Asking me to pick myself up and go on.

This blog is about that.
Omens from my life.
Wisdom emerging from stories of everyday life, just like parables.

Many people ask me for advice or seek my comfort.
I neither have the energy to help all of them nor a desire to even do so.

I am not the best teacher.
Life is.