Ruins...Ruminations...

With a new innings in life comes new friends, new pressures, new expectations, new rules to help negotiate those expectations with least harm to oneself.....and old insecurities. The insecurity that you might be turning into someone you despised, that you might be inflicting the same wound on others that was once inflicted upon yourself, etc. You feel you're on the other side of the fence for once, being part of the 'inside' crowd instead of that-girl-who-sits-by-the-window, yet simultaneously fearing that your new friends will discover your inner monster (the one that alienated you from others once close to you) soon, very soon, and things will go back to the way they have been for you all these years. That the newness will be but a replica of the old sense of pain, rejection, loneliness, of putting up a brave face while writhing in confusion and self doubt, and the fear that what you are causing to happen for someone else (though for completely justified reasons) will come back soon to bite you in the ass, hard.

Does your sense of self-realization (and the confidence that arises out of it in that particular phase of your life) help you sail through this new chapter of your life, changing your recurrent destiny through your change in attitude, or do your insecurities come into play and upset the balance?

Is it these insecurities that colour your reactions and responses, giving them nuances that you never intended to convey to the people you want to build bridges with? Or leaving innocuous yet precarious cracks in your well-constructed exterior of the Strong, Indestructible Self you constantly try to project? Or is it just part of your basic nature to keep committing the same mistake over and over again, despite all your promises to yourselves to the contrary, despite all your cautiousness, your attempts to do things differently? Or is it that

these aren't mistakes at all, but a way to keep us true to your closest selves, so we don't turn into cold, asocial creatures desperate to feel no pain, and in the process lose out on the chance to feel warmth, affection and friendship too? Is it the universe's way to make up for all that it's taken from you? Or the preparation for a bigger lesson, a bigger gift? 

One will never know, I guess, even after it does happen. For, paraphrasing Dumbledore, the consequences of our actions are so varied and far-reaching that one can never trace it back to their real cause, which makes the karma theory rather a tough one to grapple with. For, how does one figure out if what one goes through is a punishment or a boon, a blessing in disguise, for a past action of kindness or rudeness or just one another thing to happen in your life, like many others, devoid of the simplistic dichotomy of good or bad and their associated connotations and consequences?