Three things I‘ve learned whilst travelling in India for one month

Mother and her child going up the mountain to find a new shelter in Srinagar. 

I‘ve been travelling around India for one month. Some would say that 30 days is a lot. I would say it‘s not enough. Encountering disgusting poverty and unexplainable beauty of nature, being two feet away from death and one step closer to peace did change the way I see the world. It sounds incredibly cheesy, but I can’t really do anything about it.

Here are three main things I’ve realised after 29 days of being constantly photographed by Indian people, meditating in front of Himalayas and eating nerve-breaking spicy masalas.

With no epiphany and no great realisations achieved through nirvana. Just three simple things we have somehow managed to stay ignorant about, despite their ridiculous obviousness.

*MATERIALISM

Girl begging for money in Delhi

We live in this consumer-driven society, where having more means being happy. We claim ourselves to be contented and successful if we have a remunerative job, fashionable clothes, a new iPhone and a couple of luxurious cars.

But wait… Does that stuff actually make us happy or have we simply stopped noticing our broken plastic nurture? Do THINGS actually make us appreciate life more? We become obsessed with material stuff money can buy hence we are not able to find joy in little things.

Think about it. We have everything we need. We have home, we have enough of food, we have people we love around us and we have clothes to keep us warm. Most of us are able to get a perfect cup of Starbucks coffee every Sunday.

We have enough.

And yet we don’t appreciate that on a daily basis. Instead, we live with no smile on our faces, eyes pointed to our smartphones, minds engrossed in the paraphernalia of contemporary social media. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat; whatever we’re into.

Indian people are slightly different. A lot of them live in pathetic huts made of garbage. They have to pray for food on a daily basis. In the end of the day, however, they smile all the time. They are happy with what they have. They were lucky enough to be born and see this world as it is.

So give yourself a minute and think whether you actually NEED more.

This brings me to the second thing I’ve discovered when climbing the Himalayan mountains and drinking Kashmiri tea thousands of feet above the sea level.

*HAPPINESS

The happiest man on earth. Monkey Temple, Jaipur.

We can only be happy if we really want to. Smiling to the world, enjoying every single moment is what this life is all about.

One morning I was meditating on a rooftop of our guest house in Leh. It was some sort of a Buddhist celebration in the city, so one monastery would play beautiful mantras out of speakers all day long. I was sitting there covered in Indian sunlight, surrounded by amazing mountains, listening to those songs in complete peace.  I suddenly realised that all the problems I’ve got… they are all in my head. My worries I create are the most insignificant things in the universe, so why on earth do I waste my time thinking about them?

Enjoy the sun, enjoy the rain, notice the beauty that surrounds you and look at all the gorgeous people you spend your precious time with. You were given one chance to exist within this body. It’s totally up to you what you want to do: sit in front of the screen, travel, go trainspotting or cook quality food.

We call today ‘present’ for a reason. Today is a gift. Use it; because one day you will not wake up. One day life will stop giving you gifts.

*DEATH

Tibetan Buddhist monk begging for money in Dharamshala.

Death is inevitable. We will die eventually and it’s one of not many things every single person on this earth has in common. You might die in 2 minutes. You might as well live 100 years more. And… hey, going back to the first thing I’ve learned – you can’t BUY life.

We were again up in Himalayas, on a breath gripping and yet extremely dangerous road from Leh to Manali. As far as I remember it took us 17 hours to get there, however, we wasted some time being stuck in a middle of nowhere, high above any proper civilisation, surrounded by miles and miles of snow. We were going to Manali down these tiny mountain roads, less than one metre away from a dreadful abyss. It wasn’t too bad at first. Until I woke up at 1am, looked through the car window and realised that the whole mountain is covered by a thick fog. And… hey, we were still moving down the mountain with a big ,big NOTHING being maybe 5 centimetres away from the car.

That was the moment I realised that we were all going to die. Inevitably. All we could do was trust our driver, who did not look too fussed about what was happening around the car. I was hoping he can feel the road with his magical Hindu 8^th sense or something like that. Our lives were in the hands of a random Indian chap and we had to accept the fact that after we fall asleep again, we might never wake up.

And to be honest, I had tears in my eyes and I was holding the handle of our car door. But the voice deep inside my head was gently whispering: “Hey, you fucktard, listen, if you die, you die in India.”

And then I’ve realised that I could not do anything about it, indeed. I just had to let it go. Death can come any moment. And the sooner we realise it, the easier it will be for us to go.

Evening enlightenment somewhere in Dharamshala.

These realisations of mine are pretty obvious. Most of you might say, that you have realised everything I’ve just said the day you were born. Some of you might not agree with anything I just wrote at all. But hey, when you stop KNOWING these things and start implementing them into your life philosophy, you will become happy. Or not. At least I guess I did.

So fuck whatever you’re doing. Go and be happy.

Happiness is within us

‘Transform Your Life’ – something new to read in bed before going to sleep

Sometimes sun does not shine within me. Sometimes it feels like I am carrying an infinite solar eclipse everywhere I go. Sometimes it feels like I AM a solar eclipse myself. You know, there are days like this. When everything goes wrong. When all we see is chaos, and when we forget about peace, which chaos is followed by all the time.

Occasionally I have to live through mornings when all I can think about is my ridiculous life and what an utopianly absurd my motto is: ‘Dream until your dreams come true.’ The fact that my source of inspiration to dream big was created by the most prodigious druggie in the USA makes me feel even worse. And it takes me only 2 seconds to say FML out loud after thinking about all these emails I’ve sent to various magazines asking for some work experience, and remembering all these replies I haven’t received.

However, does pondering about these negative things make me happier, more peaceful and grateful for everything I’ve got here and now? I wouldn’t say so. What should I do then? Relaxing, getting rid of all these negative emotions, saying f**k it and moving on would help, I reckon. Because… Well, my life isn’t that bad. By contraries, it’s actually pretty amazing. All these things I moan about… They are in my head. Delusions, which my mind is full of, are created by no one else but me. And I am the only person who can get rid of this distorted version of reality, where I could be happier, stronger, more sophisticated and better looking.

So today’s moral is….

We all carry some kind of a source of light within us. It only takes some willingness to see it. In other words (or in words of Agnes Repplier, to be particular), “It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.” So you’d better start looking for it today!

Changing the world – is it possible?

 Sometime in my fav. Bristol park 2014

“Knowing it started from unremarkable circumstances should be a comfort to us all. Because it proves that you don’t need much to change the entire world for the better. You can start with the most ordinary ingredients. YOU can start with the world you’ve got.” Here you go – on a silver plate do I present a brilliant quote from a life changing film ‘Pay it Forward’.

It brings us to the idea which is strongly intertwined with a numerous amount of theories, conspiracies and hypothesis questioned by an average human being of the 21^st century. I can guarantee that each one of you has thought about changing the world at least once in your life. Not necessarily in an utterly utopian way. I am sure that you have dreamed of leaving a footprint in the history, reaching the stars with your own palms and being a part of the mechanism that leads the mankind towards the concept of a 100 per cent sustainable society. And even though we see people who actually made it on a daily basis, some of us have a considerable number of inner barriers. We question ourselves. What if we are not made of a change maker material? WHAT IF we are not as good as those who already made it to the top of the mountain Shangri-la and created a positive revolution in the others’ lives?

We were programmed to make things complicated. We were created with a black spot in our subconsciousness which denies the simplicity of being the changer. Some might say you have to be rich and powerful to be entrepreneur. However, it is not true. “You can start with the world you’ve got.”

Some of us indeed believe that people, who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do. Oh God, there are so many stereotypical examples of people who had decided to step out of their comfort zones and start doing something innovative, something that the world has not seen yet, something that will change us forever. Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press. He probably had no idea that his achievement will be a corner stone for one of the most powerful industries in the world. Wright brothers gave wings to the mankind by inventing the very first airplane. Alexander Fleming invented penicilin and saved thousands of lives.

“Dream until your dreams come true.” Even if your fantasy is to turn the world upside down, go for it. Because you can.

The irony of finding when losing.

Today I have discovered Gabriel Garcia Marquez once again. Most of you would probably know him from the classics, for instance, One Hundred Years of Solitude or Love in the Time of Cholera. He also is claimed to have written an inspirational masterpiece, a genuinely magnificent gift to the mankind – The Puppet.  Even though it is said that the real author of the poem is Johnny Welch, everyone gives credits to Marquez.

Every time I read this poem in any kind of Language – English, my native Lithuanian or original Spanish, every word of his blows my mind. It is immensely easy to overdose the genuineness of the writer’s artwork of mind.

Here are some lines you can think about before going to sleep. Read it slowly. Do not let anything distract you. Let every word permeate to your mind. Breathe in. Breathe out. Begin.

If for a moment God would forget that I am a rag doll and give me a scrap of life, possibly I would not say everything that I think, but I would definitely think everything that I say.

I would value things not for how much they are worth but rather for what they mean.

I would sleep little, dream more. I know that for each minute that we close our eyes we lose sixty seconds of light.

I would walk when the others loiter; I would awaken when the others sleep.

I would listen when the others speak, and how I would enjoy a good chocolate ice cream.

If God would bestow on me a scrap of life, I would dress simply, I would throw myself flat under the sun, exposing not only my body but also my soul.

My God, if I had a heart, I would write my hatred on ice and wait for the sun to come out. With a dream of Van Gogh I would paint on the stars a poem by Benedetti, and a song by Serrat would be my serenade to the moon.

With my tears I would water the roses, to feel the pain of their thorns and the incarnated kiss of their petals…My God, if I only had a scrap of life…

I wouldn’t let a single day go by without saying to people I love, that I love them.

I would convince each woman or man that they are my favourites and I would live in love with love.

I would prove to the men how mistaken they are in thinking that they no longer fall in love when they grow old–not knowing that they grow old when they stop falling in love. To a child I would give wings, but I would let him learn how to fly by himself. To the old I would teach that death comes not with old age but with forgetting. I have learned so much from you men….

I have learned that everybody wants to live at the top of the mountain without realizing that true happiness lies in the way we climb the slope.

I have learned that when a new-born first squeezes his father’s finger in his tiny fist, he has caught him forever.

I have learned that a man only has the right to look down on another man when it is to help him to stand up. I have learned so many things from you, but in the end most of it will be no use because when they put me inside that suitcase, unfortunately I will be dying.

Enjoy the little things. (Patrick watching his grandma pouring honey to the glass jars.) 2013

According to those who believe that Gabriel wrote this poem, the writing itself is a goodbye letter which was written to his closest acquaintances after feeling the suffocation of cancer. People say that you start valuing things only when you lose them. Sadly, it is 100 per cent truth. I have never cherished the gift of sight after the severe deterioration of my eyes. I have never realised the beauty of friendship until I lost some people who would make my micro cosmos a better place.

Why is it so hard to realise the charm of little things that surround us while having them nearby? Is it so difficult to stop complaining about the present and start finding the good in every detail? It is always the hardest to get out of the bed after the alarm clock rings. We suddenly find the sheets softer, more comfortable and inviting you to stay there for a bit longer. The magic of knowing that you will not be able to enjoy the comfort after putting your feet on the cold floor makes you fall in love with every moment you are in bed. You are here and now; loving the very second of your being.

I have to admit it – I read this letter every once in a while. Some read Bible. Being an agnostic I look for my prayers in this poem. You can find yours anywhere you want. I have discovered mine in the words of Marquez.

22,05,2014