#LoveYourself: Monica Dogra On Making The ‘Write’ Choice

My flow.

Listening to someone else’s 4,000 song list on shuffle is the story of my life right now. I haven’t been home in a while, haven’t shifted my gear to “park”.

So, I’m floating.

I don’t really feel like I have a choice in where I go or what I do right now. I committed to seeing something through.

Art has a mind of its own. It cannot be conducted. You chase after it like a lover forlorn, and you wait for it to have its fill. Then your belly empties, and you go find new land to graze in.

Then you do it again. Then you do it again. Then you do it again. Forever.

A song plays in the background. I can’t understand it beyond that it’s Bossa.

A sleepy woman wearing a flowing red skirt dances in circles, hips swaying. She feels sexy. She looks it too.

She doesn’t care. No one can touch her but the cobblestones she dances on, and the wind that blows her skirt from here to there. A slow smile creeps from the side of her mouth.

She’s enraptured. She defies gravity.

I am her in my dreams.

 

 

Reading Osho occupies the time in between the times I’m being in love with life and its mysteries, and the times I spend executing my learnings.

He writes about Buddha’s first teaching: To LOVE YOURSELF.

And the second part, which is to WATCH.

I wonder if Buddha explains the teachings further?

I mean, I do love me. Most of the time. Like all people, I fall into episodes of, “Everything sucks. I suck. Life sucks. This food sucks. This traffic sucks. Why? Why? Why?”

Sometimes I don’t know how to love me the right way. I suppose I get lost in the giving and receiving of gifts that I feel I possess. That can’t be what it’s about, though. Gathering things, making sure that people are receiving MY THINGS.

Approval. Validation.

I dig deep into my gut and I know that the thing to do is cultivate stillness.

Does Buddha talk about a revealing stillness? Where there is no movement but the stillness of love?

I wonder: Can you watch nothing? Will it even be necessary to watch then? Probably.

So, I write. Non-linearly.

Kerouac also says that the greatest gift you can give yourself is the writing of your observations.

To revel in them later is gold. More precious than you know.

So I say… keep still.

So that the whispers reach your ears. Ok?

Love Yourself. Then WATCH. #SayWhatYouLike

 

We’re celebrating Love Yourself Month all of February on Hauterfly. Apart from a fun series on cool things to do and buy to show yourself some love, we’ll have some of our favourite #GirlBosses tell you a little something about loving yourself a little more. How’s that for self-love and self-expression? #LoveYourself