Thought,word and deed

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Your thoughts are incredibly powerful. Have you noticed that often it is what you fear most that comes to be? Thinking of anything in fear actually fosters strong attachment to those thoughts. Those thoughts then become more powerful and create the reality you dread. And you start believing in that reality thus fuelling more fear-based thoughts. The cycle is endless and can only be broken if you consciously choose to do so. There lies the key word – choice – you must first be aware that you are creating most of the problems that annoy you and then choose to be free of it. This is no panacea for all ills. And yet, believe me, changing how you look at something goes a long way towards handling rather difficult situations. Some problems are here to stay of course but at least your ability to accept that they are there for life does help in lowering stress levels.

If your thoughts are powerful, what of the words that you speak or write? One word can destroy a relationship. One word can also heal a broken heart. Words are deceptive in their strength because we think we have control over what we say or write. Often times we speak without thinking. A few times we even write without thinking. This leads to irreparable harm unless you are willing to put in effort. Now if you aren’t willing to patch up the wounds in a relationship that are of your making, the relationship was definitely a dead one anyway. If you are willing to reach out, the right words can go a long way towards healing. So use your words very carefully. Second chances are hard to come by. Silence is a better option than slinging words about without knowing the consequences.

Actions are the result of your thoughts and words. All the positive thoughts in the world will not make an iota of difference unless you are willing to do something about it. Get off your behind and act. Don’t believe that you have been placed on this earth to pass time. A miracle such as life has not been given you just so you can exist. If you exist with true awareness, that is a different thing. If you exist only to figure out how to get from one moment to the next so that you don’t have time to think, its rather a waste. The spark inside each one of us needs energy to flare into flame.

I have not written all of the above because I seek to preach - I have not experience enough. I write merely because when one reaches a state in life where change is the only option, reflection brings about a certain awareness. Anyone who is looking to understand themselves better needs to  introspect. I know for a fact that for many years I have let my fears rule me. I also know that my lack of awareness about my strengths has led to some people using me with no respect whatsoever. I now feel the urge to act on matters I have let lie fallow. The time is now. Do what you have always wanted to do.

For 2015

Days go by fleetingly and not so fleetingly. Thoughts vanish and come back entwining themselves around each other tighter and tighter. People pass through your life like water through a sieve. Others care enough to hold your disparate selves together and create depth and fulfillment. Family is perhaps one’s strongest motivation to keep going. Friends too keep your spirit charged long after you thought you would not have the simple courage required to face the same challenge in its myriad forms day in and day out.

Last year and indeed every year so far has taught me lessons that I hope I internalize enough to grow wiser. This past year was both amazingly good and achingly tough. There were months when nothing seemed to go my way. There were also months when I could feel burdens lifting from my weary shoulders so that the relief was pure heaven. I finished writing my book. Of course I have yet to polish it. I am far too lazy to do that bit. And yet I did write the book I have been promising myself I would.

I also stood up for myself a lot more this past year. It was hard for someone more used to doubting herself to actually say “I am right. I won’t compromise.” There’s a simple lesson anyone would find useful – don’t let anyone make you feel small. If you work with all your heart, if you have given everything to a relationship, if you have invested time in anything – you are worthy of respect. Anyone who does not know how to treat another with respect, deserves none in return. There are many instances when those that disrespect you are from an older generation – the best you can do when that is the case is to ignore it and keep your distance. This goes for both your personal and professional life. Regardless of the engagement, respect is essential – everything else builds on it.

I found that silence is a friend and helps in dealing with so many different situations. There is a silence to deal with hurt, there is another sort to deal with deliberate efforts to put you down and there is a silence to deal with boorishness. People cannot use your words against you if you keep quiet. Always see if the recipient deserves the words that are yours alone to give. Weigh what you say and stay away from those who belittle your words.

Another lesson I learnt was the power of words to lift another from a really bad place, to paint the other in the colours in which you see him or her so that in that moment when they feel their worst, they get to see how special they are to someone else. It is love that can help your loved ones grow stronger. It is what gets you over rough patches. It is what you should be true to, love for your family, for the children that count on you to shape their lives and for the work that you have been put on earth to complete.

If the past year taught me anything at all, it was that everything passes on – the good, the bad, the painful. What remains is your belief in yourself to stand tall. Here’s hoping that 2016 brings my friends a renewed sense of purpose, the ability to love simply and the art of being grateful for the blessing that is your life.

My roses...

I got up today and stepped out to pick up the newspaper. It was a beautiful, crisp winter morning – the kind of morning when you can’t help but take a deep breath and immerse yourself in the scent of freshness. Next to the pillar of my front porch grows a rose bush that I had planted 12 years ago when we first moved in to this house. She had brought forth a half dozen roses of a red so stunning that it brought a smile to my face. I gently tug at a stem bringing down the rose close so that I can inhale her scent. It is subtle but all-pervading and I don’t want to let go. This is also the only rose plant I have with hardly any thorns. I love it because it is my one success story when it comes to flowering plants. I love it because it is a rose plant like no other.

I think back of myself as I entered my shiny new house all those years ago. I was excited. I was also pregnant and very skinny. Despite being tired nearly all the time (I never fare well in pregnancies) I took delight in choosing things for the house. I planted a drumstick tree in the backyard, a little mango sapling and curry leaf plants. There were days when I couldn’t do more than lie down after the incessant throwing up. All through it I felt it was the house that gave me strength. Within its walls I was safe and through its windows I would watch and see how my garden prospered.

When the baby came, she was a delight. She slept through the night from the moment we got her home and grew up with her brother in as much harmony as one could expect. They played by the rose plant running barefoot on the grass. I still have a picture of Mahi as a baby smiling next to a huge rose that seemed to be smiling too.

My rose plant is like another child to me. She is always there – in any season. I cut off her withered blooms inexpertly. I don’t feed her well but I do water her. I stroke her. I talk to her. In turn she gives me such joy with her mere presence. I have been told she is lanky and not bush-like. She climbs too high. She tries to peek in through the bedroom window. She looks awkward. But I don’t want to cut her too much. To me she is tall and stately and every single branch ends in a rose that is nothing less than perfect.

When you love someone or something, don’t try to change them or it. Leave them be to grow as they like. Watch them blossom. If they love you back, you will never feel the prick of thorns. If they don’t, then you move away but you never stop loving them for a moment. Let them grow without you. Stay away from the thorns. They will only draw your blood to grow stronger.

My roses are as red as blood itself but they are the red of unselfish beauty. I hope they bloom for me as long as I am able to see them.

Hear the rhythm

The ticking of the clock reminds me it is time to go to bed. I have to shower and snuggle under my quilt with a book. I then have to sleep and wake up at 6 to start another day. The ticking doesn’t stop however. It goes on and on – relentless and unforgiving. Time moves. It fills in me the anxiety to move as well. If I sit still, I feel guilty. Yet there are many moments when I am less than productive or I feel I have achieved nothing despite trying awfully hard. The ticking builds pressure. So much time is gone. You know not how much you have left. Do more. Be more. Fie on you if you stop.

I sit and type aimlessly and watch my words come together. Black on white. Tonight is a night where I feel calm despite the ticking that grows louder when all else is so silent. I have stopped measuring myself by the successes or failures that have been my life. I try and count only the moments where I believe I have made a difference. It could be to a family member or a complete stranger. It could be to a friend or someone who no longer is one. It could be to someone who calls up asking for help or advice or just a listening ear.

No one is indispensable. The ticking should teach us all that. So many moments since the beginning of time. Does anyone remember all those who were? Even if you were famous once, you will now be mostly forgotten. Time is inexorable. It is cyclic. What once was might be so again. There is no lasting significance to your so-called achievements, the money you make, the cars you drive, the boasts you manage to pepper your conversation with, the names you drop to be a celebrity by association. What is of some import is the imprint you leave on a heart. And you do that only through love. Not through force.

The clock ticks on as I type the thoughts that gather in my mind. I think back to my father who knew how to love with such heart that I will never forget him. The people he touched still talk of him, more than a dozen years after his passing. He was not a successful man or a rich one. The ticking of the clock did not urge him to make money. He tried instead to be a good man – a better man than most.

Time always moves on. What it leaves in its wake should be memories of a life that was lived with some passion, some joy, some sorrow and a whole lot of courage. It should not mark time for a relentless rat race. Too few realize that the ticking of the clock is not the beat to an endless march, it is the rhythm of the background score that runs through your life like a rich melody. I hear the rhythm when I am silent as I am now. Have you ever heard yours?

Shadows of friendships

Looking back over days spent with happiness or sadness, you can draw a map of sorts. You associate certain spaces with joy and some with consternation or embarrassment or anger. You associate the development of a relationship with little milestones. These milestones may be of your memories alone; the other may not even have noticed. In a relationship, it is often the small things that you notice about the other that leave the greatest impression upon you. It is the memory of these small, thoughtful, almost unconscious gestures that revive you when you think that there really is nothing left in that relationship that is worth keeping. When even the gestures stop however, the memories between you and the other fade away to nothing.

Occasionally you learn harsh lessons from people who at first appear to be the epitome of niceness. Sooner or later the façade of niceness shatters and what is revealed is a selfish, needy, egoistic inner self. More often though it is those you love who teach you harsher lessons. Certain words that come tumbling forth reveal a side that you would not have known had existed. Certain actions show that the gems of memories and moments that you have collected as treasures along the way are as valueless as old cobwebs. I find myself more often than not being the one who ends up with strings of sticky cobwebs all around me. Others always move on and yes for a certain type of person moving on is way more fun than being there.

Ask yourself why you make friends. Is it to pass time? Or is it a more meaningful exercise in order to share a journey that might not be along the same path but close enough that you can care? I make friends with great difficulty. Actually, I make friends easily enough but the trouble I have is with keeping them. Some of the friends I most cared about don’t stay within a reasonable distance anymore. Some of the friends of my college days have no longer the title of actual friends because we are so different from who we were when we were young. Life beat out of me whatever little lightness I possessed so that now, today, I find myself too ponderously weighed to attempt to make new friends.

I look back on my life and find I truly have only a handful of people in my life I can call friends. It is a sad testimonial to a life led in three countries. I find myself unable to even think of letting a person into my life. It is a surefire way to get hurt at some level or the other. At best it would be a way to get company when either of us needs it; at worst it will degrade to a status where I feel too much and get nothing in return. People do not have time for friends or any relationship that requires work. Its easy to take someone for granted. The tough part comes when you look around one day out of sheer habit and find nothing there, not even the memories of the words spoken or the shadows of gestures forever forgotten.

Explaining God

The other day an idle thought flashed in my mind – how would I explain religion to Appu? It intrigued S too and we both sat and mulled it over. For a child whose comprehension is limited to the real and experiential, how does the abstract make sense?

Appu knows math. He loves science. He can spell excellently. He knows how to make his own snacks. He knows how to love and laugh. He also knows what angers him and why. He feels anxiety. He knows sadness. He is an emotional child with a heart of gold. But he does not know of God. And I realized that I do not know how to teach him about God.

Well, I thought to myself, let me lay it out logically. I expect him to understand that which he cannot see, touch, smell, feel or hear. It is no use asking him to believe that the beauty of all creation is attributable to an unseen force. He would simply stare in confusion. If I tell him that God will protect him even when his parents are no more, he would ask me where does God live, what kind of car does he drive, can God come to my house and endless such queries. He would also literally wait for God to arrive at his doorstep and keep an eye on him. He will ask me to show him pictures. Imagine having to google God and show him the results as I do with fractions or earthquakes or orangutans. In short, there is no logical way I can explain to a child with autism, the idea of God. And then I have to ask myself - why should you know of the idea of God to be the best person you can be?

Appu is the epitome of simplicity. He has all the characteristics of a good human being – lovability, generosity, inner joy without having any of the characteristics like envy, pride, vanity or egoistical arrogance that mar essential human nature. If I cannot explain God to him, how do I explain God at all? That being the case, why is it that this nebulous concept has created rifts among human beings – rifts of the sort that no one can bridge, rifts of the sort that see madmen opening fire on innocents including children, rifts of the sort that are made in the name of a compassionate and loving God? And how do I explain intolerance to him?

If the world were ruled by those with autism, it would be a far better place. It would be a world of discovery, of playfulness, of generosity. They would not see the logic in fighting over something that no one has ever seen. They would share their food with someone who has none. They would not mess up the world they live in. They would take joy in little things. On the days I wake up to headlines announcing death in a hundred different ways, I wish with all my heart that those instigating violence be given the understanding of children like my son. At least there would be no more killing over what one ate or how one chose to pray or how one decided to dress or whom one chose to make love to. The world could do a lot worse.

More heart...

You can write down whatever it is that is haunting you. You can attempt to express the tumultuous feelings that envelop you when you are least prepared. You can try and talk to someone to ease the pain just that little bit. The truth, however, is that you are alone in your pain, in your frustration, in the sheer intensity of your emotion.

How can another human being fathom the depths of turmoil within you? It is simply not possible. All of us view our world through different lenses. The lenses themselves are determined by age, upbringing, environment, health, stress and any number of other factors. When no two people perceive their world in the same way, it is safe to assume that no two people process stimuli in exactly the same way as well. So no one can understand another’s response especially to conditions that they themselves have not been put through.

The thing about wanting to communicate is that it is a very human trait. Everyone wants someone to talk to, to listen to, to care about, to be cared for by. And sometimes you and your loved one share a problem so deep that he or she can actually do nothing to assuage you. Indeed, how do you ask for consolation from someone who is going through the same pain you are albeit in a different manner?

That is why we have friends to turn to. Most usually I feel free to vent. But there are days that hit you so hard that you want to be understood without having to explain. You are embarrassed at feeling too much, at knowing that talking is futile, at wanting to simply not have to be this way any more. So talking too becomes difficult. And when it becomes difficult, the words convey less than nothing. You feel lonelier than ever.

To those who classify this as whining, I point out that a whiner never takes responsibility or acts. It is not my nature to be irresponsible or laze around. However, many things that fall to our lot are not choices at all. They are challenges that last a lifetime if we are unlucky and a few months if we are lucky. I hate platitudes and I absolutely hate the statement that ‘Five years from now this won’t matter’. Really? Platitudes from people who are impatient in a traffic jam, who think not having the right dress to wear classifies as an emergency, who believe that their child not getting 99% in some exam is the disaster of a century are utterly ridiculous. Five years from now you could ostensibly forget your less than perfect dress or an affair-having spouse but can you forget that your child faces progressively worse complications that threaten the quality of his life? So never say to anyone “it doesn’t matter”, “my aunt’s son has it worse so count yourself lucky” or “you will come out stronger for it”. Just shut the hell up and leave if you cannot stand in silent solidarity. Pain is ugly. Grief is uncomfortable. If you only have friends to have fun, then you don’t know the meaning of either friendship or love.

Like I said, we are each of us alone in our pain. If you have it in you to make a suffering soul feel even for a moment, some alleviation of agony, then you have heart. More heart makes all the difference…