Solitary Soul

  ADVERSITY : Putting the problem in perspective  Mario D’Couto              Adversity! What is it that comes to your mind when you come across this word? While the  world seems to be limping back to normalcy from the pandemic, we cannot say for certain what would come next and in as much as life can be or is challenging, the consequences can be ever more hard to digest or deal with when they come to us unexpectedly rather than when we foresee it. The solution to this? Resilience!        On the outset, I must say that resilience is something that I struggle with because life can be pretty depressing or discouraging despite your best efforts and yet we become stronger only by exposing ourselves to the difficult situations in our lives just as lifting weights in the gym makes our muscles stronger and so having gone through such experiences (which I suppose you may have too), here are a few things that have helped ...

  ONE LIFE TO LIVE – PART 2 Mario D’Couto             If you have read the article/post ‘One life to live’   (in case you have not read it, here is the link to it ,   https://insightsfromacommonman.blogspot.com/2021/06/one-life-to-live.html ) , you can say that this is like a follow up to it. I had not planned or intended to write a second part to the previous post but what you are about to read is something like a sudden insight which came to me like a flash of lightning while listening to a podcast that I felt that I had to share it.             Every time I sit down to write, it’s like as though I am writing to myself because I know I am still a work in progress and the irony of life is such that the more I know, the more I don’t know. If this statement has tickled your brain, let that thought simmer for a while. It will become clearer as you read ah...

  ONE LIFE TO LIVE Mario D’Couto             After having lost two people who were very close to me, my grandma and my dad, it’s been a very trying time for me and perhaps, you may be able to relate with it too. This situation that we have all be caught up in, this pandemic, has thrown everything upside down and while I have been reflecting over it, I think I will share that in a later post but for now, the focus of this blogpost/reflection is going to be on the phenomenon of death.             Irrespective of our social status, where we come from, whatever our personalities may be and so on, two things that unite the entire human family are birth and death. When we are born, we come with nothing and when we die, we go with nothing. Yet we spend our time pursuing things that in the long term may not bring us lasting fulfilment that we all long for. Sometimes even after achieving our goal...

  STANDING ALONE Mario D’Couto             Eric Fromm once said, “Paradoxically, the ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love”. Sometimes there is the misconception that the words ‘alone’ and ‘lonely’ are to be understood synonymously but the truth is that they are actually two different phenomenon. Being alone means being by one’s self (solitary) while being or feeling lonely could imply feeling unhappy because of feeling isolated from contact with other people (desolate). The former is positive while the latter is negative. We celebrated Valentine’s Day about two weeks ago and while some of you reading this, may or may not be in a relationship, the focus of this blogpost/article/reflection is about what it takes to be ourselves before getting into a relationship.          Speaking about relationships, the common perception that comes to mind at prima – facie is some...