:) :(

Chuck Lorre's Vanity Card #400

I've been told that if you change your mind, you change the world - or at least the way you experience it. Let's take a moment to examine that. The presumption is, if you thought the world was a hostile, ugly place filled with awful people doing awful things, that is what you'd see. Your mind would naturally seek out confirmation for its preconceived ideas (e.g., if you're intent on buying a red car, as you go about your day you'll see lots of red cars). If, however, you were able to sincerely change your mind and see that we are all God in drag, that we are the conscious aspects of a perfect universe which had to create us so we could bear witness and stand in awe before its loving magnificence, then that is the soul-shaking reality you'd be greeted with each and every moment of each and every day. In other words, it is entirely our choice as to what kind of world we live in. With a simple decision, we can suffer in the darkness or play in the light. We can be angry, frightened and enslaved, or loving, joyous and free.

I know. It's a toughie.

Cake Encounter

My Gran and I used to walk every evening. It was something I had looked forward to, every day. Armed with a shopping bag, awaiting the stories that she'd tell me about her life in foreign lands, I'd set out with her down the tree-lined avenue, and trace the same route we'd taken every day since this routine began. We'd stop at the vegetable vendor first, take our pick and then head for the shop selling old books and magazines. The last stop would be the bakery, where she would buy me the sponge cake I fancied, before buying something savoury for my grandfather and for herself, to have alongside evening tea.

There was nothing special about that sponge cake - in appearance at least. It looked plain and unassuming, very much like a loaf of bread, albeit of softer colour and finer crumb. The shopkeeper would slide it out from the glass display, place it on the counter, and slice it deftly, the way he sliced the bread. But it tasted phenomenal. Mildly sweet, with the subtle flavour of vanilla, and soft as a cloud. Quite simply, it was the taste of joy.

The sponge cake became a prominent feature of my stay with my grandparents, until the bakery shut down and was replaced by an uninteresting pharmacy. I had to leave the city soon after too, but those evenings with my grandmother remained unforgettable.

It's been over a decade now, and I haven't found a cake shop that makes sponge cake quite like that one - until yesterday! It was a small bakery, and it bore the identical, typically South-Indian name too! Coincidence? I don't know. But I do know that it had the same, familiar hunk of sponge cake that has been on my mind for years, neatly stacked and showcased between fruit cake and gaudy cream cakes.

So I brought home some, carefully wrapped in plastic, its sweet, subtle aroma awakening a montage of old remembrances. Like the distinct smells of the old bakery, the delicate vanilla flavour of the sponge cake, and the long, happy walks with my Gran, much before the days she was ill and confined to a hospital bed.

It takes me back to a different time, a different life, to the special person who made it so wonderful. And it makes me grateful for the gifts my grandmother left me...memories of long conversations, of genuine caring, of steaming cups of tea on balmy evenings, and neatly cut slices of delicious sponge cake.

Forever

It's Valentine's Day, and suddenly there's an overabundance of pink fluff and red roses and declarations of love in the air. It's slightly unnerving and more than slightly nauseating, but stop to take a closer look, and you'll find that it all makes sense, really. In some weird, twisted way maybe, but make sense, it does. Because in our heart of hearts, we'd like to believe that love is forever. And it is, too. But every once in a while, it needs the occasional reminder...of its presence, its magic, and its power to take your breath away.

This day reminds us, each year, that some things are worth remembering, worth celebrating. That some things are worth fighting for. Because love tends to get trapped and lie forgotten under layers of everyday life...under duties and responsibilities and personal ambitions. If not tended to in time, it might find itself smothered under the weight of it all, and threaten to give up or give out.

So every now and then, maybe on a day like today, stop what you're doing and look around. This is life, and it's happening now. And it's so much better if you have someone holding your hand, sharing it with you. So make time, say the things you need to say, take that step, and take that chance. Because tomorrow, it might be too late.  

But then again, for everything wonderful that Valentine's Day has come to mean, it's also the ultimate set-up engineered to make us, fallible mortals, make all the wrong choices, for all the wrong reasons. And that's only because we're intoxicated by the idea of love, more so than love itself. So if you haven't found it already, today might be a good day to ask yourself what you're really looking for, because the answer could mean the difference between happiness and disappointment, between love and illusion.

____________________________________________________________

For today, a love song that's incomparable. Eric Clapton's Layla.