I met Shobana in seventh grade, and something about her drew me instantly. Despite life’s challenges, she had this remarkable way of making everyone around her smile. Her energy was infectious – she could light up any room she entered.
She has this incredible gift for humor – it’s not just what she says, but how she says it. Her perfect timing, those deliberate pauses, the way she uses her expressions and gestures – she can make anyone burst into laughter. Even the simplest story becomes hilarious when she tells it.
She created her own style, wearing her father’s loose shirts with confidence, starting trends instead of following them. She was always surrounded by friends, both boys and girls, drawn to her natural warmth and authenticity.
Back then, my world felt heavy. Growing up in a home where anxiety and stress seemed to linger in the air, I struggled with low confidence and craved love and attention. While I found it hard to make friends, with Shobana, friendship came easily. We spent hours in mindless chatter and laughter. Those were simpler times – I would just hop on my bicycle and ride to her apartment whenever I wanted to see her.
Being an only child, she turned her whole apartment complex into a family. She had this gift of making instant connections with strangers, calling them brother or sister, making them feel like family or old friends. People who had never met her before would find themselves comfortable in her presence within minutes.
I admired everything about her. Sometimes I felt silently possessive of our friendship, but I never showed it – perhaps because I understood that trying to contain her joy would only diminish it. Looking back, that might have been my first lesson in unconditional love.
We remain best friends to this day, and I still feel the same wonder and gratitude about our friendship. Through her, I learned some of life’s most valuable lessons – how to keep things light, how to greet strangers with warmth, and most importantly, how to choose happiness despite life’s challenges. She was a blessing in my young life, and continues to be one, silently guiding me toward joy just by being who she is.
Our friendship taught me that true beauty lies in how we make others feel, and what a blessing it is to have someone in your life who can still make you laugh like you’re in seventh grade.
Simply by being herself, she showed me something precious – that keeping things light and finding reasons to laugh felt so much better than carrying the weight of worry and sadness. She taught me that having a sense of humor isn’t just about making jokes – it’s a way of moving through life, of finding lightness in ordinary moments, of transforming everyday situations into occasions for joy. This gift of seeing life through a lens of humor continues to remind me that there’s always room for laughter, always a way to lighten the heart, always a moment worth celebrating with a smile.
Tag: life
A Lesson About Truth
Sometimes wisdom finds us in the most ordinary moments. There I was, just scrolling through Facebook one afternoon, when I saw it – a picture of Gandhi with his words about truth. It stopped me in my tracks and made me think about all the times I’ve struggled with speaking my truth.
You know how it goes – those moments when you need to say something important to someone you care about, something that might hurt a little but needs to be said. For years, my pattern was so predictable. I’d share my truth, see the hurt in their eyes, and immediately say “Sorry.” It felt like the right thing to do at the time, this little word that was supposed to soften the blow.
But oh, how that backfired. Instead of focusing on what really mattered, the conversation would shift: “There you go again, saying hurtful things and then just saying sorry.” My attempt to be kind was actually undermining the important things I needed to say.
It’s funny how a simple quote can suddenly make everything so clear, showing you a better way forward. I guess that’s how wisdom works – it waits patiently until we’re ready to receive it, until we’re in exactly the right place to understand.
I’m holding this lesson close to my heart now, accepting it with gratitude. Do I know if I’ll get it right every time? Probably not. This is more of a journey than a destination, I think. But I’m making a promise to myself – to practice this new way of being, to learn how to speak truth with both courage and love.
And when it feels too hard (because sometimes it will), I’m learning to surrender it to God, asking for help to find that sweet spot where truth meets kindness. To be strong enough to stand in my truth, gentle enough to deliver it with love, and wise enough to know the difference.
It’s a practice, this dance of speaking truth. Sometimes we’ll step on toes, sometimes we’ll float gracefully through. But maybe that’s okay – maybe that’s exactly how we learn to be both honest and kind.
Learning to Let Go
I’ve been thinking about an old story from the Mahabharata lately, one that keeps coming back to me. It’s about Karna and Duryodhana, two friends bound by loyalty. Karna, given away as a baby, grew up facing endless whispers about his birth. In Duryodhana, he found more than just protection – he found validation, someone who made him feel seen and worthy when others looked away. This validation created such deep gratitude in Karna that he stayed, even as Duryodhana walked a darker path.
Sitting with this story, I began to see something in myself. We all have our own version of Duryodhana, but it’s not another person – it’s a voice inside us. I’ve come to know this voice well. It validates every hurt, justifies every reaction, makes every emotion feel right and true. Just like Duryodhana did for Karna, this voice makes us feel understood, making it harder to see how it slowly leads us into darkness.
At first, it feels like comfort. Like having a friend who always takes your side, who has an explanation for every emotion, a reason for every reaction. But lately, I’ve noticed something about this inner voice – it never lets me move forward. Instead, it keeps me centered in my own story, making everything about me, my hurts, my reactions. When I listen to it, I sink deeper into darkness, into fear and anger that feel impossible to escape.
The strange thing is, even when I realized this wasn’t helping me grow, I found myself so deeply entangled with this voice that I couldn’t tell where it ended and I began. It had become such a part of my identity that the thought of letting it go felt like losing a piece of myself. I was stuck, not because the voice was helping me, but because I had forgotten how to exist without its constant validation.
But here’s what I’m learning – letting go doesn’t have to be a battle. Just like a plant withers without water, this part of ourselves grows quiet when we stop feeding it our energy. We don’t need to fight it. We just need to gently turn away, to say, “I understand you were trying to protect me, but I don’t need this protection anymore.”
Sometimes I still hear that voice. But now I know I have a choice. I can either get tangled in its story of hurt, or I can simply return to this moment, where life is actually happening. It’s like stepping out of a dark room into sunlight – suddenly everything is clearer, more alive.
In these moments of clarity, I feel closer to something bigger than myself. Not lost in yesterday’s pain or tomorrow’s fears, but here – where peace lives, where love flows, where I can finally be who I’m meant to be.
I’m discovering that true freedom isn’t just about breaking free from that voice – it’s about releasing ourselves from all these stories we’ve wrapped so tightly around ourselves. When we stop making everything about us, stop needing that constant validation, something shifts. We find ourselves able to move more freely, to see beyond our own small world of hurts and reactions.
And when that old familiar voice comes back? I remind myself: I don’t need to push it away. I don’t need to feel stuck in its grip. I just need to let it be, while choosing to stay here, in this moment, where life is actually happening.
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