There are people we cross paths with who we will never truly know. The stranger sitting across from us on a train, lost in thought. The barista who remembers our coffee order but not our name. The person we smiled at in a moment of shared understanding, then never saw again. These brief encounters are small, almost forgettable, yet they shape the rhythm of our days. A kind gesture from a stranger can linger in our minds. A moment of unexpected warmth can soften an otherwise difficult afternoon. And though these people may never become part of our story, they still brush against it, leaving something behind. It is humbling to realize that we exist this way for others, too. That somewhere, we are the stranger someone else briefly noticed. That we have entered and exited lives without knowing the impact we left. That, in the background of someone’s memory, we may still be there, our voice, our laughter, a single sentence we once spoke. Most people we meet are passing moments. Fleeting presences. But that does not make them insignificant. Because sometimes, the smallest encounters leave the deepest marks, proof that even in the briefest connections, something meaningful can be exchanged.
I always appreciate minds that inspire with their vision, words, actions and life. In a noisy world, I look forward to such minds that permeate a good adulation of positivity and and an uplift and desire to improve internally. This is one such of a vibe.
Uplift | The Border Of a Mind
I happened to hear a beautiful conversation by H.E, Reem Al Hashimi, UAE’s Minister of State. She’s a very accomplished woman with lot of achievements and accolades in her life. Addressing a young crowd gathered, she had a very short speech, but what I liked is that she went through very profound aspects. I’m noting some details that I felt very inspiring:
Important impact that respect can have in our lives. Respecting ourselves, respecting the surrounding, respecting the country, respecting friendships & its importance in defining who we are.
Power and impact of families beyond our blood relations and fostering a family like relationship.
Rethinking who we want to be at all stages of our work & in making powerful strides whether it’s business, government, science or whichever field we are into.
She remembered a physics class with one of her teachers and it was at that time that Ayrton Senna passed away. Ayrton Senna was a very accomplished Brazilian Formula One driver. When he died, her teacher told that the “world has changed“, and she had thought that her teacher was crazy. Later she mentions that later on she realized that Ayrton Senna was not just a Formula One car driver, he achieved remarkable things. He exemplified the power of human spirit in achievement in sports, and that’s something that you respect. You respect somebody who worked so hard to show the full potential of the human spirit.
She spoke about making the most amazing thing with the least we could possibly have and to employ that approach to life.
She spoke of not being after titles in work and in general at life. Titles would come and go and it’s the way the world is. People are behind titles. It’s good to be ambitious in a way. Rather be more ambitious in the work we are delivering and in the service we provide. The value we are making, creating the impact we are leaving. Titles shouldn’t be the driving force. Become at the absolute pro at your work. It’s very hard to be good at something that we won’t like to do.
Tinkering edits with Pixlr. Not remembering where I photographed this from. Probably from Quilon, Kerala.
“Each day is born with a sunrise and ends in a sunset, the same way we open our eyes to see the light, and close them to hear the dark. You have no control over how your story begins or ends. But by now, you should know that all things have an ending. Every spark returns to darkness. Every sound returns to silence. And every flower returns to sleep with the earth. The journey of the sun and moon is predictable But yours, is your ultimate ART.”
I wrote about Jordyn’s films in an earlier blog post. She has put in another short film on “What isn’t being said” correlating several normal day visuals and touches upon the importance of valuing blessings and being grateful. Loved it!
This is a photograph that I took from a museum at Yerevan. The title of the post is based on the same notes from a French phrase.
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People in France have a phrase: “Spirit of the Stairway.” In French: Esprit de l’escalier. It means that moment when you find the answer, but it’s too late. Say you’re at a party and someone insults you. You have to say something. So under pressure, with everybody watching, you say something lame. But the moment you leave the party
As you start down the stairway, then — magic. You come up with the perfect thing you should’ve said. The perfect crippling put-down.
That’s the Spirit of the Stairway. The trouble is even the French don’t have a phrase for the stupid things you actually do say under pressure. Those stupid, desperate things you actually think or do. Some deeds are too low to even get a name. Too low to even get talked about.
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― Chuck Palahniuk, Guts
“Although I deeply love oceans, deserts, and other wild landscapes, it is only mountains that beckon me with that sort of painful magnetic pull to walk deeper and deeper into their beauty. They keep me continuously wanting to know more, feel more, see more.”
― Victoria Erickson
My colleague’s photograph that I captured when he was capturing the mountains, circa 2018 somewhere in Fujairah, an emirate of the UAE.
Dear friend AR recently teased with a glimpse of some of his exquisite aerial shots coming straight from the vast UAE deserts terrains. The creative tiger inside AR surprises us with such brilliant roars. I can’t wait for more to come from him. He’s an amazing photographer as well.
Recently I’ve have been grazing through the videos by Chinese blogger Li Ziqi, who became an internet sensation after her videos on handicrafts, traditional cooking, and DIY from the countryside of Mianyang in southwest China’s Sichuan Province grew in popularity and caught netizen’s attention worldwide. What attracted my attention is the inherent calmness and the passionate composure with which each theme is made. It is in stark contrast with the heavily commercialized video bombardments, often largely obliquely spurious that we see on every video platform. Each video I’ve seen so far is so genuine and brilliantly captured. From what I’ve read in magazines, Li lives with her grandmother in a Chinese rural province. Orphaned at a very young age, she moved to city to work. After her grandfather’s death, she returned to the village to take care of her grandmother who fell ill. All her food and handicraft videos are often crafted from scratch and are prepared using authentic basic ingredients and tools making the best use of Chinese traditional techniques.
She initially started posting videos on Mepai, which is a very famous social platform in China and garnered great attention. In 2017, she started posting videos on Youtube which grew in popularity ever since. Her grandfather was a cook in the village. She learned how to grow vegetables, fish, carpenter handiworks, traditional dishes, and bamboo crafts. The well-made videos with its passion and subtle nuances give a wonderful experience of Chinese traditions and culture and her positive spirit on self-reliance sent by her life expertise has attracted warm international reception.
Her videos are unfeigned, lucid and basics from scratch and mostly don’t use any sort of modern technology or even electricity in most cases. She does everything on her own from cutting goat and rabbit fur for the brush hairs to chopping small trees to make paper. In one of the videos that I saw, she built a coffee table and two sofas using bamboo in its entirety using carpentry skills inspired by her grandfather. In some other videos, lip colors are prepared from fresh flower petals and honey. You’d be amazed by how she delves to the roots. The honey shown is not from a supermarket, but from a beehive in the village. She prepares her own deserts, sweet potato jelly, and pancakes from the sweet farm potatoes which she harvested on her own. A lot of traditional ways of preparations are shown.
The authenticity and fervent equanimity keep these visuals apart from the rest of the crowd and has truly impressed me. As we touched upon in our note on compassionate prudence, true magic ensues when people put in their signature on every single thing they do and when everything is done with love. Stories like this truly inspire!. God bless!
