It’s really not that I do not want to write. Or that I no longer have anything to say. It’s just that before I know it, it’s been a month since I have last written. It always surprises me how quickly time is passing, because I keep thinking that it’s been just a week or two that I last posted here. We keep thinking that once we settle down life will become calmer and slower, because you know, the words “settle down” kind of implies that. But it’s such a lie. It doesn’t get calmer, but it doesn’t necessarily get crazier either. It gets blurrier. Before you know it, you don’t really know where your days go. They just go somewhere.

I should keep track now. Of the sips of coffee I take in the mornings, and the cookies I bake in the evenings and the flowers I water in the afternoons and the trails I hike on Saturdays and the books I manage to finish in a month (which, sadly, is a very low number). I must keep track or I will have nothing that’ll flash before my eyes when it all ends. I must remember the letter I wrote sitting at dining table this afternoon, and the lemon scented candle I lit this evening, and the friend I spoke to after ages, and the squirrels that came to the patio, and the little sparrows that crowded the street this afternoon eating god knows what on the ground (they even stopped traffic).

If there is anything I am learning, it’s this: If we don’t make conscious efforts to make our lives matter to ourselves, it won’t. It won’t matter to us and it wont matter to anyone else. We must hold on to moments we have, grasp on to life’s little joys while we can. Because if we don’t, we wont even know when a month has passed by, and then another, and then another until there are no more months left.

Sigh. I hope you are with me dear readers. Because I do hope that I write, and I do hope that I come back before the month is over.

I never know what to tell someone who is grieving from the loss of a loved one. How do you make someone feel better when someone they love has died.

No words seem appropriate, no words seem to do the trick. It is almost hopeless at that time. I just don't know what to say... except that I know how it feels, because I lost someone to death as well, heck, I almost lost myself to it once. But that doesn't make the pain any less.

Death is the eternal break up. We fight and we argue and we quarrel and we are bitter, and we hold grudges for years and years, and then suddenly it's all over. And there is nothing we can do about it. Death doesn't consider if someone loves you and they don't want you to go. It doesn't care if you have a million things to do before you are ready. It just takes, until nothing is left. That's probably the most helpless we can be in this world.

But what's amazing is that how easy it is to forget. How easy it is to completely dismiss the idea that any one of the people we hold so dear to us could be gone in the next second. How we can so quickly and eternally lose someone to something so trivial as a heart attack, a traffic accident, a senseless shooting, or even a suicide. To breathe, and not know it is your last.

Many read this book growing up. The rest has seen the movie. [If you haven't, please go read it, then watch it.]  Some are swaying to its soundtrack these days. I did all of these.

The beauty of the character Jay Gatsby is that he can be interpreted in many ways. Yet, most of us choose to marvel at the intensity of Gatsby's love for Daisy. He dedicated his whole life, his whole existence to the quest of finding her love - to attaining her. He knew on some level that she did not love him, but he did not want to believe it. If only she would leave her husband, if only they could go back to the past, everything would be just okay. He would be happy again. He would be with Daisy.

We like to live in the past.  If only we could change a few details from our past, we could fix everything. We could be happy again.  But the sad truth is, you can't be happy by yearning for the past because you are yearning for something that does not exist. It's foolishness. It becomes an obsession. Gatsby was border-lined obsessed with the idea of being with Daisy.  He turned his whole life into such a perfect fraud that he even fooled himself. He forgot about love. He forgot about his real  life, or what he could have gotten out of it for the sake of attaining an idea from the past that ceased to exist. Perhaps it never even existed then. If it did, Daisy would have waited for him when she could.

I cannot possibly have respect for anyone like that. No obsessed man ever loved. No obsessed man ever attained his obsession and was happy, and I think that is precisely what Fitzgerald wanted to convey through Gatsby. He wants us to remember the fine line between love and obsession, and the consequences of crossing over.  The "Great" in The Great Gatsby is so ironic.

I want to think of him as a great person, but the more I think about it, the more I can't. He is not great. Fitzgerald's character is great, the way it is written. But if Jay Gatsby was a person, he would not be great.

In a world which is increasingly becoming lonely and miserable, we don't need more Gatsbys. Please don't be a Gatsby. There is no nobility in obsessing over something that does not exist. Desire leaves us heartbroken, it wears us out. Desires can wreck your life.  You deserve to be happy. You deserve a better life than Gatsby's.

The question is not if you can do something  with someone. Sure, you can almost always find something to do with anyone but the question is if you can do nothing  with someone.

All our lives, we try to fill our time and mind with meaningless some things. We believe that if we could fill that void with something, we will be happier. But its not about the something. True happiness comes when you can sit with someone and do absolutely nothing, and not feel like you have to. Happiness is when you don't feel awkward about it, when you don’t have to continuously please someone to get their attention or get their affection because they are already pleased just because you are in the room. Happiness is when you don’t have to plan every single evening. Happiness is when you can be spontaneous, and you can only be spontaneous when you don't fear that you're going to be judged for being silly or downright crazy.

Happiness is simple. Its not what they make it out to be. Happiness is not in expensive gifts and restaurants and crazy amounts of work. Happiness is in holding hands and knowing that you can hold that hand. Happiness is sitting in a hot-dog joint and wiping mustard off of each others collars. Happiness is  when someone kisses your hands - if you haven't tried it, try it. You'll know what I mean.

Some people don’t get it, but happiness really is simple.