Y - Yearning

What do we generally yearn for? More money? Success? Acceptance from society? Appreciation? Acknowledgement of our efforts? Some words of encouragement? During a workshop I attended a few months ago, something remained in my mind. That we always look for acceptance and appreciation from the people that surround us. What we choose to do is mostly(80% of the times) driven by how the society would perceive us, would people appreciate it and will they encourage us. I had never thought about it before but I realized this may be true. In our sub-conscious minds, we always yearn for some kind of acknowledgement of our efforts. Everyone has this underlying need to be appreciated by a sect of people they think are important to them.Whatever be the ultimate goal, these are the little important things along the way that keep us going.

But when it is our turn, how many times do we actually appreciate people? How many times have we eyed her pretty new shoes or said 'he plays so well' in our heads but never directly to that person? How many times we felt inspired by someone we know, but never let them know? How many times someone touched you and helped you unwittingly, either with their writing or casual words or their actions, but you never thanked them? When I think about myself, I am guilty of not doing it often. I hold myself back for some reason. I read so many beautiful blogs, am in awe of so many women out there who write exceptionally well, have amazing imagination and humor, but I never used to leave a comment for them. I don't know the reason, it has more to do with me feeling worthless about myself. My thinking is usually on the lines of 'yeah she writes amazingly well and she sure does know it. How will my saying anything change anything? And I will look dumb if I don't say something clever'. So I stop myself. Not just in the writing sphere. I remember never having told Meena how she inspires me and helped me in being what I am today. I never thanked my bosses for giving me the opportunities they did, supporting me at every step, and for letting me be honest about my interests and shortcomings. I never told the Zumba teacher I raved about so much in two of my posts how much I like her energy. Why is it so hard to form words from my feelings?

Not anymore. I realized how beautiful saying it out is during my A-Z challenge. I got encouragement from unexpected people. There were so many people who pinged me over chat or personally told me how some of my posts were close to their hearts, or how they were looking forward to my next lettered posts! That left me feeling good about myself and motivated me like nothing else. I was more driven and wanted to do better. I felt so good about them too, for having come all the way out to be vocal about their thoughts. I realized it is such a wonderful gesture. A big thank you to you! I am here, at 'Y' only because of what you did.

I am being more vocal now. For the first time, I wrote out a long email to a person I have never met or talked to. Shailaja, the owner of her blog Shailajav.in. Her imagination is amazing, you should read her last year's AtoZ posts. She is a great inspiration and comes across as a very down to earth person. I also dropped an email to PeeVee of Cookiecrumbsinc.com and told her I start my day by reading her blog. And I am going to ping Christina and tell her I absolutely loved her Zumba classes!

From now on, I am going to say it out loud to people instead of saying it in my heart.



PS : There is a catch here. You don't have to appreciate or praise at the drop of a hat. It has to be genuine. People will know when you are saying for the heck of it and when you really mean it. Appreciate something or someone when you genuinely feel touched or amazed.