Worries....

Have you ever worried about your worries- what exactly is the worry about, how to get rid of it, what is the next thing to worry about and so on and so forth? (Of course, with life in 21^st century, you cannot expect to sort one worry and sit back!! The next one is always queued up… sigh!!). Well, I have been doing exactly this in the last few months. Like all of you, (heart-core empathetically) I have been burdened with a lot of uncalled-for responsibilities, the biggest (read saddest) one being “hide-your-frustration-and-smile”. I don’t know if I ever have been sadder to SMILE before this!! In short, I was sad, sad because I had to smile with all reasons against it. Anyway, apart from all the worries, my ever-growing worry-list seemed to be my biggest worry at this point of time. Guess I am confusing you all. That is exactly what I am right now- CONFUSED!

Myth: Physical exhaustion overcasts mental exhaustion.

Fact: Luxurious attention is the perfect cure for a lost soul.

I always saw my Mom over-working and tiring herself when she was sad or worried. She engaged herself in cleaning book-selves and show-cases including dusting of miniature show-pieces from milli-micron coating of dust, or knitting sweaters or stitching saree-fall etc. Not to forget, I always fell victim to this spree, for oiling window panes or iron bars of collapsible gate or cleaning fan blades, all those which were beyond Mom’s reach, unless of course, if I was sleeping. Now that was one advantage I always got (courtesy: my skinny look and dark eye-sockets) – no matter how much I slept, I seemed to her to be perpetually sleep-deprived and hence, at any point of time, if I fell asleep, she would make an all-comfort ambience for me to sleep away to glory – a major contrast to my elder sister. Sadly enough, given her lovely plump face, no matter how many sleepless nights she would have had spent, mom would never let her sleep after 5 in the morning.

If nothing else to do, one of Mom’s favorite time-pass was intra- and inter-room furniture rearrangement, notwithstanding the size and weight, and again her only enthusiastic partner being me. Dad would help us out by heading towards his chamber to leave us alone, but only after his composed commentary on Mom’s supernatural physical strength and suggestions for pivoting all furniture to the ceiling and rotating as and when wished. Didia (my sister) would try her best to escape back to her favorite work (Studying!!!) but again, of course, with Mom around there’s no escape from household work. So basically, Mom’s emotional-stress busting would drive us all to fits of irreparable muscular and bone-icular stress for the weekend mornings. But then, God knows how and when, amidst all these, she managed, all the havoc would be replenished by her super-delicious recipe for our weekend-special Late-Family-Lunch at 3:30 pm.

Anyways, I have grown up noticing the same pattern of her stress-busting strategy and perhaps by inheritance or voluntary habitualization, applied the same to my life, esp. in hostel since college days. Whenever I was sad, I would clean my room, dust the cob-webs, do the laundry, and even rearrange furniture in my room (!!!). I would do all these till I was too tired to cry and then fell asleep. It did work for some time. But inheritance involves both parents. No exception for me, with time I realized/acquired chronic insomnia like my Dad.

I started working out and early morning uphill jogging in the river-twined highway of the hill station where my college was. The rippling sound of the green waters and the ethereal view of winter fogs nearly touching the waves accompanied with the cool breeze would take away all my worries, the speed of the cascading waters would clear my mind of all other earthly things. The workout would tire out my muscles completely so that I was almost ready for the next fit of Sleep. In short, I did everything I could do to tire myself and all my strength would exhaust but could not keep my eyelids together at any cost. Being a Pharmacy student, I started wondering whether I had some problem with my eyes, apart from the already existing myopia or was it actually Insomnia. It was much later that I realized my worries were too huge to be accepted by my little unused grey cells and hence they attacked my eyes.

Irony of Life: When you are young at heart, you are not unto your age. When you grow up, you are far beyond your age.

At times I felt so restless; I didn’t know how to make myself happy. I tried all means, literally. I tried Meditation to discover the actual “Me”. I tried fags to forget the real me. There was a time when I almost gave up eating because I did not care what happens to me. There was also a time when I over-ate and sweated out in gym to shape up myself. I tried changing phone numbers once every month and as well as going on with the same number for years. I tried to be away from home to escape all complaints about me. I tried to be at home when I was ready to accept complaints as feedback or convince when and where I was not at fault. Some of the ideas did work but I am too disoriented to continue one trend for too long. Finally I met someone who showed me a totally new way of thinking.

(to be continued….)

God Ceases to Exist in Us

Isn't it funny that no matter how good or bad a person we are, we can always end up justifying ourselves as good human being, correct in whatever we do. But we conveniently forget that we have an ultimate conscience to face. That conscience which makes us feel good when we fight our own possessiveness to share that favourite dress with our sibling, blames us when we cannot control our disappointment and retaliate only to hurt the sentiments of the person we love the most, and punishes us, makes us pay in full for all our sins. It is that same conscience that we, believers, call God. That’s right, God. I must sound insane having said something like that, or at least agnostic, but I am not. I am an absolute believer albeit with weird ideology. I say weird because my faith and way of seeing things are not particularly conventional. Anyway, that is not important. I was talking about conscience. Our mind is a very powerful vehicle. We call it abstract because we cannot see it. We cannot see God but do we call Him abstract? No. That is because we have given Him a face and thousand names. Why can’t we challenge our existing thought process and visualize our conscience? It is even easier. For God, we need an image or an idol. For Conscience, it is Me. I do not need a picture of mine. I can walk up to the mirror and say,

Hey, how are you? How do you feel? Do you feel joy or the peace of confident wait for the desired?

Yes

Congrats. (Smile and you can see your conscience smile back at you from the mirror, genuinely happy.)

No

No? What is wrong? Do you feel bad? What is it that is making you feel bad?

Trust me. Our mind (Conscience) also needs a friend. It also feels like justifying. We may confide in that one person in our life, but it feels secure only in us. When you question, it is more than happy to answer. Of course, if you want your Mind to speak, you cannot afford to concentrate on that pimple scar on your forehead or admire your shining cheeks.

The fact is our MIND is more existent than anything else in this Universe. It is stronger than any magnet. Whatever we think, feel- knowing/without knowing- is attracted towards us. Let me put it this way. When we ask something from God, our Mind constantly thinks about it with a strong belief of God giving it to us and presumptively cherishes the good feeling of getting it. It is this same constant thinking that we call meditation or worship and results in receiving God’s gift or just an outcome of our Mind or conscience. Having realized that, my ever-wandering mind questioned back my own theory. If our mind attracts whatever we want, then how come I never scored well in School even though from exam end day till result day, I constantly prayed for good grades and thought nothing except that? I ran the same question again and again until I stumbled on the deeper fact—FAITH. I realized, whenever I wrote my papers well, I didn't pray for grades because I knew it would be good, I had that Faith. I prayed for grades only when I knew I did not write well and wanted to hold on to God to give me grades. My deeper conscience knew this was not possible and I was always scared of “what if my grades are not good?” I did not have that good feeling of high grades but I perpetually had the bad feeling of that “what if” consequence. So, I prayed to God but my conscience knew I did not deserve. In other words, my Mind was meditating Grades but I did not have Faith. Just as no worship is fruitful without faith in God, no thought can be powerful without Faith of receiving it, and Faith comes from the Court of Conscience deciding what we deserve and what not. While our Thoughts attract the things we wish for, our Faith brings our mind and reality into equilibrium for delivering the same, based on the judgement of our Conscience (God).

So it is all a Mind-game. When we say God exists in all of us, we refer to this conscience. My Mom used to say children are the angels or embodiments of God himself. Too full of questions (and often answers as well), I used to ask her, “Why only children? Why does God disappear in adults? God doesn't want to grow up or what?” Mom used to smile and say, “Adults are adulterated and children are pure. That is why God stays in children.” I would go back to my reverie thinking, I am a child but I do not take a bath every day. Then how am I pure? How will God stay in me? Mom baths every day. So she is pure. Then why will God not stay in her, just because she is adult. It did not make much sense for me at that age of 4-5 years. I thought God is unjust or partial. Now I know what Mom meant. She referred to the conscience. As children we say upfront what is good, what is bad, what is right and what is wrong. We know and care little about consequences and speak whatever our heart feels. As adults, we modify or even falsify the truth and manipulate the facts in order to justify ourselves. We adulterate our Conscience and God ceases to exist in us.