Mark a milestone and chase for it. While some don’t work with milestones, many have milestones set even for the most minuscule of our targets.

Reading a book, writing an article, watching a TV series and even buying grocery and many small things like these are milestones. Needless to mention business ventures, starting up a firm, writing a novel, completing a degree, learning a language and many more.

All these milestones that we set for ourselves are things we want to do, in a certain time period and we mark dates on them. To keep ourselves motivated we make these milestones.

With each target you make through, you feel more energetic and happy that you are now another step closer to what you want. Slowly you make through another milestone and then another and another.

And when it is finally done, you are happy and overjoyed and that is the best feeling ever. Especially, if it was a tough thing to do then your happiness sees no bounds, but what after that?

What do you do after you are done with it? You have got what you wanted, what seemed to be the purpose of your life from many many months, now that you have it, what next? While your whole life roamed around a thing for a few months and sometimes even years and decades, and it took up a major portion of your life. Now that you have it, what it next?

When it is all over? When there is nothing left?

Why are all of us always uptight? Wearing crisp clean shirts, full pants or knee-length skirts with high heel shoes.

Why are we always trying to look presentable, what is wrong with being who you really are? What is up with sounding professional more than sounding like a friend.

Why do we run from situations that look a little adverse? Why can’t we just stay and tell the people around us that we are battling with something and we would prefer our privacy instead of saying that you are fine? Or why not just tell them exactly what you are feeling right now?

Why do we run away from conversation but never run away from fights? We would quarrel and yell at the one in front of us, but we would never sit calmly and talk our problems through?

Why do we react when it is already a bit too late to be reacting? Why do we react when it is actually time to let go? Why?

Can’t we just stay put, put our guards down and be more open, instead of trying to maintain the high we created for our own selves?

Can you love twice?

Let’s take something that is the story of the day. Everyone has the same story, falling and falling out of relationships all year long, falling in and out of love.

You were in love with someone long long ago, and you were together for years before you fell out of that relationship. It was immature, you both were open to each other and did what you wanted to do. It was childish but it was fun while it lasted. You had no pretenses and there were no social media likes on your relationships, but people talked about your relationship. Both of you boosted the other. Your love made people jealous.

You loved them with all you have in you, and they loved you with all they have in them, but you had different ways of love and that made you split. A few months after you just fell out of a relationship with them, you got in another relationship.

You loved your new relationship. It offered a lot more, it was mature and an understanding relationship, where both of you cared for each other, or just that the other one showed they cared and you never understood the pretenses, you expected it to unconditional like the one before. You were in love, again? Your life started revolving around that new someone and you forgot about all your dreams. You stopped chasing everything and just chased that new someone.

And when the spark of the new relationship died out for them, they fell out while you were still discovering. You were still loving the spark while it had died out for them months ago.

So, did you actually fall in love again? No, you didn’t. You were just loving the high. Did you actually fall in love the first time? Maybe, no one knows except you.

It happens.

It happens to the best of us. But at the end, it all boils down to whether your tried or not. Whether you went on and fought for your love, or you just sat there waiting, until it was too late. When you realize, what love actually was, is or will be for you, and if you think you have found the one then fight for it, before it is too late and you see it slipping again. Slipping away into them thinking they have found “true love” in worldly attraction.

Love might not be easy to define, you might not have reasons to love, but it is easy to identify.

Love doesn’t scar, it heals. Love doesn’t ask, it gives. Love is not one-sided, it is shared. Love doesn’t run, it waits. Love doesn’t expire with months, spark does. Love doesn’t age, relationships do.  Love doesn’t have reasons, deals do. Love is not jealous or possessive, bonds are. And love doesn’t lose, lusts and attractions do.

Love wins, always.

What defines a traveller? Someone who roams around the world? Maybe? But isn’t that something a tourist does too, roam around the world?

Go to all the places of beauty, get rooms in expensive hotels, eat expensive meals at luxurious restaurants, pack suitcases well in advance, have your whole tour planned, take pictures at famous spots, and have tickets booked well in advance? Isn’t that a tourist?

What makes a traveller different? What makes their ideas sound so crazy to people? What do they do differently that people call them travellers and not tourist?

Wanderlust?

Well, not the Instagram caption or Snapchat story captioned wanderlust, but probably someone who doesn’t care about where they are headed next. Someone who cannot stay at once place. Someone who just leaves on the very next flight to somewhere no one knows and goes there to meet the local people and stay at the cheapest motel they can find.

Someone who doesn’t know the tourist spots of the country they are in, someone who doesn’t travel with luxury, someone who doesn’t eat at expensive restaurants but eats with the locals, someone who doesn’t care about the tourist spots or about carrying a camera with them, even if they do it is not to click their own pictures, it is just to get lost in the crowd.

Someone who loves to eat the local food, someone who mixes up with the locals or maybe even shares a room with them. Someone who doesn’t book tourist vehicles or doesn’t take a cab but rents a bike, a motorcycle or a car and roams around the entire city, state, and country without stopping and without getting tired.

They don’t stop at tourist spots, they stop at places they would love to stop at, adore the beauty and then just hope to the next country. Never having a home to return to one. They are not people of a country or of a city, they are people of the world. They don’t have a home, the world is their home.

A tourist spends money for calming down, a traveller travels to calm the wanderlust.

A tourist tours, a traveller wanders.

Have you ever thought of how easy life would have been if you could just pack your bags up, switch off your phones, and just leave? No goodbyes, no phone calls, no notes left behind? Just a one-way ticket to somewhere in the world. You don’t know where you are headed, you don’t know where you are going next, you don’t know when will you return, if ever, what you are going to do, you just leave.

You just leave everything behind and walk away. There are people who are going to miss you for a few days and then never think about you again. There are going to be assignments that you were supposed to fulfill but you don’t care anymore.

You were about to get promoted, you were expecting good results, you were earning good money, you were probably at the apex of your career but you were done with it.

We talk about birds being lucky to fly anywhere they want. We talk about them being free from any responsibility and can make their nest wherever they want. Just stop for a moment and look around you, what is stopping you from being a bird?

The birds could make a nest anywhere they want, but once they make a nest, they return to it every single night, but the idea of freedom lures us to being a bird.

Trust me, you are a bird too, just break free of your nest and fly. Fly wherever you want and whenever you want. Never make a nest again, to never return. Just migrate with the seasons.

I did something wrong, something really really wrong. Something I never wanted to do, but then you have your breaking points, right? You can only stand it until a point, especially when you know you are not wrong.

But that doesn’t make what I did any correct, this is just an excuse, and now I might have to live with the stain forever. When everything was about to get right, when I expected life to take a full U-turn in the next few months, I messed up.

I had my priorities, I had my rules, I had my lines, and I broke them all to be something I used as a swear word. I became one of those that I hated, and because of them. But now, I’m one of them, and what’s the difference between them and me? Am I not what people hate? Were they not created by the like of them, just like me?

Now that I thought about its consequences, I think I might have gone too far, I think I might have done something I never wanted to do.

I don’t see a way out either, the only thing that I think I can do is apologize, and stop what I did immediately. Does that make sense?

Will the world forgive me for who I am? Will I forgive myself? Well maybe, well maybe not.

The only thing I know right now is that I need to stop.

It is not just a beverage, it is not just a something you need to get out of your sleep, it is not just another cup of milk or water with some chemical, it is an agent of souls.

Wherever you go, you’ll find different coffees. Someone likes it strong, someone likes it mild and someone is all about the aroma. But whatever coffee you have, there is always something special about it. Something special about the coffee, something special about the one making it and something special about the moment.

Coffees are not made without a reason, it is always an occasion if it isn’t the coffee makes it one. It is all in the moment.

The aroma, the taste, always takes you back in time. Takes you to the times when you had that coffee. It could be a trip up to the highest motorable road, where you had a cup by the road, with your biking gang. It could be a familiar taste in a different country, a taste that reminds you of home.

If could be a different aroma, something that doesn’t smell like coffee. But it could be the same cup, the same settings, and the same aroma you smelled, when you were here the last time, looking into her eyes. It could the last sip and it reminds of your hostel, where you ran out of milk and everyone got just one sip and worked the entire night.

A lot happens over coffee. People come together, people split apart, companies are formed, companies are taken over, deals are cracked, startups get investments, someone is missed and someone feels loved. It is not coffee, it is an agent of souls.

Dear Diary,

I haven’t seen you in a very long time, but I might just see you again really soon. There wasn’t much to write about, to be honest. I have written a lot lately, but there wasn’t much to write.

Nothing happened over the past few weeks, month, or years was it? I don’t even remember when I last saw you. I just know that I haven’t seen you in a while.

I wrote down a lot when you were away. Sometimes for me, sometimes for people around me, and sometimes for work, but there wasn’t anything to treasure. Something I would write today, and years later, look at it and smile.

There wasn’t anything worth troubling you. You are in your bed and stay there, in your deep slumber, because there still isn’t anything to write about, but I might write soon. I got this tingling feeling this afternoon that there is going to be some turn of events.

It was quiet for a very long time and nothing had gone wrong in the past few months and nothing great happened in the past few years. So, I believe it is time now, the silence before the storm needs to end. The storm is imminent, but there is still time, I can sense it but I cannot see it.

I will see you again, soon after the storm ends and if I survive it. I might see you again, soon, maybe.

Love.

Life is all about now. It is not a few hours or weeks ahead, it is not a few months or years ahead, it is now. It is in the moment.

Everything is now. There is nothing that is far ahead, there is no tomorrow. You can either battle now to get your dreams or you can just wait and see your time slip by.

We all know what we truly want. Something that we buried deep inside our hears, something we don’t tell anyone. Pen it down, understand what you really want and then run after it. Run until you don’t get it.

Listen to the calls of your heart and follow them because, in this world where everyone owes at least something to someone, the calls of your heart are the only thing that are truly yours. Something that belongs only to you.

Go, get out, live a life, you won’t regret it. When it comes to an end, the only thing that you are ever going to regret is not going after what you really wanted.

So don’t be a “normal”, be the story you always heard from people, be the story that you want to tell the world. Be you.