Wednesday, November 30, 2011

The Drying River of Thought

No river flows perpetually with the same momentum and volume. Not even the river of thought. The longer the summers, the speedier is the process of drying up. And the flooding too, is as dangerous as the barrenness. The seasons of aridity do come in life. There are times when you would hate yourself for sitting idle but you would still resist breaking the monotony. Idleness may sometimes be necessary to recuperate us, while at the other times; it may just scorch the thought processes up.
Every one of us waits for a period of lull after the heavy down pouring of intensive work activities. Many a times our work demands solutions to intricate problems requiring deep analysis and application of principles from diverse fields of knowledge. In spite of all that, there is always a feeling that something is still to be accomplished, and that probably, is the desire to engross ourselves in something that is free from evaluation; something that doesn’t seek approval nor is affected by the feedback.
There are a few lucky people whose profession is an exact match of their passions. But somehow, finally, all of us end up doing what we had always wanted to do. Because sooner or later, we realize that ‘this’ is what we are born for. That may indeed be done without compromising with the professional success. I see so many people who are always up against any kind of moral degeneration; so many of them who would always invest resources to sponsor a poor child’s education or so many of them who would find time to plan a trip to travel to distant places. The point is, we must identify our core constructs, that which quintessentially make us who we are.
We must always keep flowing, and that, which keeps us in motion is something that prevents the river of thought from drying up. It may be unique for everybody but it leads us to the same destination!

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Holding it Right

We, human beings, are energy systems. We accumulate lots from the world and hold them right into our conscious (or sub/un conscious, as Freud would say). The resultant vector of all these positive, negative and neutral accruals tends to propel us in a particular direction. Aren’t we the product of our socialization patterns!? At the same time, there exist various mechanisms of releasing the negative energies or putting the positive ones to good use (may be even vice-versa). In any case, the equilibrium needs to be maintained. The equilibrium that we seek to achieve, again, depends on the socialization we have been subjected to. Every action followed by the other is concatenated, making a chain of events called the life. The outcome of each act reinforces or fades our beliefs and prejudices and defines our living patterns.
The crux of the matter is that there needs to be a constant inflow and outflow of energies from our living system. Suppression and repression should never be the way of life. These two processes in particular, stuff us with unnecessary trash that rots inside us and starts getting manifested in our attitude towards life. There is always a dignified way of expressing anger, wrath, disgust, affection, love and expectations. Neglect may also be a way of repression. Every event in life should reach its logical end. We live life in phases, don’t we!? The unhappiest of them bear the deepest imprint on our psyche. After having gained experiences with life and having borrowed some wisdom along with it, we must certainly try to give ourselves some relief through a self driven mechanism of releasing the pent up feelings.
Most of the people in this world respect honesty. On the other hand, nobody is inherently inclined to bear grudges. The two factors when combined together, lead us to a conclusion, though not a definitive one, that, it is not difficult to find the ways of ‘peaceful co-existence’. There is enough room in the world to accommodate you and your feelings. Let the river flow charting out its own course.
How long and how well one holds and releases one’s summated energies is a clear reflection of one’s learning from life. I guess, recollection and reminiscence plays a vital role in the process. Lets experiment with life..while holding it right.

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Finding Expression

Stay still. Motionless. If you ever try taking a refuge in the core of your essence and constructing an open field around yourself, help emotions effuse out to fill the ‘void’. Since the field is yours, you would never have to worry about your loss of control over yourself. Spreading yourself is one of the ways of accumulating more. And this accumulation works well in discerning the relative importance of different objects that happen to occupy various parts of the field in your imagination. And surprisingly, the entire process is so effortless that after getting back to consciousness, you would feel you always knew it. Sometimes, its difficult to comprehend the real world but you find yourself better placed in your environment in some altered state of consciousness.
Just happened to discuss with an enlightened soul about how mind reigns in over the heart and vice versa in the situations of life. But the point is should we really consider both in either-or category! Isn’t your mind a product of what you carry in your heart and your heart a creation of the thoughts in your mind? Are they really separable? Well sometimes they are.. between practicality and subjectivity, there is certainly a  separation! But since both constitute a part of ourselves, both work together to help us adjust better in our milieu.
Today we talk about emotional intelligence. Well, its all about managing your emotions so that they facilitate the decision making in different circumstances. But no one would disagree that it doesn’t come simply. And there can be no control until you know how the element in itself feels and what can be the consequences. I would say, that when one devolves oneself in every diminutive situation in life and loves to be transported with the feeling right from early life, the later years pass easily through because one gains enough maturity with time. The taste of life should come when you are most prepared to live it. Control should come when you start getting penalized for losing it.
Emotions are meant to be expressed, provided it is done at the right time and in the right manner. Never lend yourself to the one who is incapable of holding you and never feel for the one who is incapable of indulging as intensely as you do. Other than that, the world is yours…go, feel it!

Saturday, November 26, 2011

The Bleeding Truth

If there is one thing that remains young forever and sticks with you for lifetime, it’s the ‘truth’. It lives and breathes new life into your existence once you accept it. It is that which accompanies you in the journey of your life and continues to tell the world that you once existed on this planet, even long after you have gone. 

Indian philosophy talks about soul and metaphysical aspects of life. Every person starts developing into a distinguishable form right from the prenatal period. There is a lot that differentiates us from each other. But there is one thing that remains indistinguishable forever and that is- your soul. Its same for everybody at all the times. Its remains as it was thousand years ago and as it will be thousand years from now. And it is this soul that contains our truth in itself. The more we distance ourselves from the truth, the more soulless we become. Corruption, for e.g., has its root in soullessness. 

No matter how hard we try, we cannot escape it. Our love, hatred, disgust, affection, fear and insecurity; all is lodged as truth in our soul. We may disguise them from the world but we can’t cloak ourselves with any façade to screen ourselves from these aspects of life. In fact, our discontentment with life is a direct outcome of our effort in trying to dodge these bullets pointing right towards the centre of our consciousness or shall I say, emanating right from the centre of our consciousness.. 

What remains salient in us is this truth..the sooner we accept it the better we become. It is indestructible and it can never be manipulated. What we manipulate is our behavior and attitude. But this manipulation never really changes us from within.

Thursday, November 24, 2011

The Story of Silence

So much commotion around, so many hullabaloos: where and how do you hear the signal? I was told in my psychology classes that life is all about detecting the signals, however faint they may be, among the noises. Sometimes, it becomes difficult to reach to others. Sometimes distances too, become noises. Sometimes distances don’t just relate to the physical space between the two souls. Sometimes even two branches of the same tree fail to commune between each other..
Its tough to know when your time has arrived to speak up finally. The best that we can do is observe silently and wait for our moment, the right one, to come and touch us. In fact in the most overwhelming moments of our life, we had nothing to say. Some mystical warmth pervaded inside out and all we could do was to let the emotions flood us and drown us in their depth and momentum.
Many a times we try explaining things. Words hardly make a difference in such situations because no true relationship in life calls for explanations. The other times in fit of rage, we curse our own people and our own decisions. Words do make a difference then, they embitter the associations. The hardest thing to do in such times is to be silent and wait for the high tides to undergo a siesta. Its true that time heals; not only does it heal, it gives opportunities to comprehend the vacuum in you and know the people who can fill it.

Silence speaks a lot. In fact I believe, we must give silence a chance to speak for itself. The more it dominates the space between you and others, the more is the attraction and the more is the resistance to forgetfulness. Mind you, you never forget what you never said. And you never forget what you didn’t listen but you could hear clearly. Experience it and know how the intensity is directly proportional to the silence. Remember those moments of dejection when you sat in a dark corner and promised yourself something?! Or the time when a swiftly approaching force caught your attention and you knew that is what you always wanted to conquer and possess?! That is how your life changes..through the stories of silence!

The Music of Life

The most difficult thing in life is to search yourself and once you have found the person, its even more difficult to know what bringeth him on this planet. The essence of life is to do what makes you happy, but generally, we spend most of our lives trying to make ourselves happy with what we do. Chasing happiness consumes most of our childhood and youth and it is in stillness of the old age that we list the things that we had always wanted to do but never got the time and opportunity to pursue them.
Basically, career, money, relationships, love, faith-all become important because they seek to serve certain purposes in our lives. They are never the end as one assumes them to be, but just a means towards a higher end. And it is this higher end that brings peace, satisfaction and fulfillment in life.
Deep down in your thoughts, in the most unruffled hour of the night, if you close your eyes and imagine parking yourself on the ocean bed, with strikingly beautiful yet peaceful life forms surrounding you, you would feel that there is much more to us. The experience in the thought itself is so pleasing. Its more like a music, the music that nobody but only you can hear, the music of life. Happiness comes to be felt slowly thereafter.
Nobody can deny that if there is one thing that brings you closer to yourself and is the easiest way of self attainment, its music. When you listen, you know that there is something inside; desire, frustration, aggression, envy; that finds expression in your body language, especially when you groove to the rhythm. Dancing is one such medium that blends your soul perfectly into your body. Infact there comes a time, when the lyrics lose their meaning, and what remains is the rhythm and you. That is when you start feeling your real self. That is when you sway with the wind, smile with the lilies and fly with the eagles spreading your wings on top of the world. That is when every single drop of sweat slides down your body drenching you with the freedom of expression. That is when you find yourself. I hear that, so very often. Sitting in the porch, when a distant music tickles your ears, you feel like breaking free and devolving in the feeling itself. Its hard to let yourself go and not to let go, at the same time.
There are a thousand things that sever your wings and limit your flight to your ownself. The best that we can do is to give ourselves chances of exploring and realizing ourselves. Dancing is one medium that brings me happiness, there are many others and your heart knows what is right for you.. I remember having read somewhere that feelings become knowledge through thought. And that thought should come over soon in life lest its too late. Love yourself n live life, don’t just spend it..

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

The Maladies of Relationships

If there is one thing that consumes most of our lives, it’s the bonds of relationships. When we are born, we are fortunate enough to be blessed with already defined beautiful, loving, unconditional relationships. The problem begins when we start choosing them. These webs of warmth and envy, love and despair encircle us for the rest of our lives and we just continue being woven; willfully, forcibly or unknowingly; into these intricate bonds.  The most crucial time is one when we are most vulnerable to our own emotions and we fall prey to our own desperations.. that is exactly when we start looking for our life partners. My experiences with life; and with people and friends in general have lend me certain teachings..
So, how does this story of ‘boy meets girl’ or vice versa continue and sustain itself? I think things would be better understood if we take a look at them specifically from the Indian perspective. Take, first, the case of girls. There is no doubt that we are progressing; and progressing at a fairly good pace, at least now. Times are changing and parents have started to accept even their daughters as assets. Today they are, more than ever, interested to invest in them. They realize their potentialities and know their capabilities. As a consequence, we see women competing with men in all the spheres of life. They are getting the best of education, attention and opportunities. The horizon of their thinking is expanding and women in our country have become better adjusted in the competitive environment. BUT, if there is one thing that is the stumbling block in the complete development of their personality and self-realization, it is their inner dissonance related to the contradictory incidences in their lives. While at one time, we commit to the cause of providing equal opportunities to womenfolk, the other part of ourselves fears from giving them complete freedom to explore themselves. In spite of having acquired all that is required to venture into difficult and new aspects of life, they find themselves restricted to the boundaries of time, space, nature and finances. Yes, they get opportunities..opportunities to learn; but their freedom to test these learnings in real life situations exists only as a wishful thinking. Their experiments with life begin and end mostly in the teachings of their parents. I have been lucky enough to be into many societies and bureaus at school and college levels, been into discussions in the company; many a times I see women giving up soon. No doubt, there are few of them who fight it out, but those few are not the topic of discussion today. I see that their ability to argue and stand for themselves is weaker than that for men because they have never been given the permission to make their own hypothesis every time and test them until they reach to the correct solution. The creativity in them never finds an expression and it builds up inside as a frustration. There were times when women in our country used to be so neglected and suppressed that they didn’t even realize that they deserved to be treated as equals to men. I would say, they were better off then. Today they know their potential but still find it difficult to give an expression to it. Their situation has certainly become worse. They are forced to lead two lives. The aggression in them never gets manifested in their behavior and they are more like goblets of fire from inside. It is this contradiction that is taken into relationships when they land into one.
What about the other sex? No denying they are always in demand in our society. Being devoid of certain biological and behavioral characteristics that women inherit, men undoubtedly get more chances of exploring the world around them. They eventually grow into more tactful human beings with a better capability to fight for themselves. Their self is relatively freer and they are more welcoming to people, relationships and changes. However, they too are crippled by the familial obligations to some extent. The patriarchal set up does try to put them into a rigid frame, but the things are changing for better now. Education, especially, has opened the floodgates of opportunities and diverse avenues are gaining ground and acceptability. They move out sooner and are expected to be the earners. The reputation of the family is built on the success or failure of their professional life. The pressure to excel is immense on them and the need to prove their worth is very high.
Its strange to see that two such different people get together and decide to hang out with each other. But somehow the relationships today easily get into the mode of degeneration. When a woman enters into one, she looks for a refuge, a sink where she would pour in her aggression and an open space where she would breathe freedom. When a man enters into one, he looks for a refuge where he can expect to experience the stillness, away from the fast running competitive and cruel world. The purposes of both the parties lie contrary to each other and things start falling apart soon because the capacity and intention of both to make compromises have gone down. Unlike in the past, now we do enter into relationships with a lot of expectations. And this is how we enter into cycle of relationships and breakups; and reach to a conclusion that all men and all women are alike. Yes they are, but the way they need to be taken care of, certainly depends on individual differences. My intention lies in giving a clear picture to the people in relationships so that they plan a better tomorrow and understand their partners better.