In the last two weeks, life has been a roller coaster… Lot
of paradigm shifts, perspectives have undergone a 180 degrees change, and I
started seeing things as if from a very different platform altogether. Things which would startle me no longer
do. This equanimity and level of
acceptance sometimes frightens me… Am I becoming passive I wonder? And if so,
is it a good thing?
The thing that seemed to keep surfacing the most was
relationships: my favourite realm of thought!
A friend of mine met me for coffee, and we spoke about this
and that, till we zeroed in on her current issues. She is embroiled in a relationship with
someone and feels guilty that she is doing so. But she put the lack of connect
with her partner as the reason for this socially unacceptable
relationship. The turmoil in her mind
was very evident as she spoke. There
were justifications, explanations, guilt, remorse, all in a row, one after the
other. There was nothing I could do, for
I did not come from any moral stand of right or wrong. And who was I to pronounce judgements here? All I could do was listen; which I did…
The other day then, another very dear colleague of mine told
me how their marriage has run into trouble, to the extent that they had got a
divorce. Though I had heard a little
about what had been happening, it had not been in my place to ask him. But when I saw him break down in pain my
heart wept for him. Here was a
relationship turned sour only because the partners did not see it fit to stop,
think and then act. In a flurry of
reactions, the whole institution of
marriage was dissolved, leaving two broken individuals in their own pool
of pain, but both refusing to swim towards each other, because of bitterness.
I kept wondering then that when we have so much of baggage
in our relationships with others, do we actually also have the same issues with
ourselves? As in, when we look within ourselves, do we also have such conflicts
when we need to build a healthy workable relationship with our inner selves? Is
that the reason why we do not want to work with ourselves? And keep looking for validation, ratification
and emotional fodder from people around us? I have found that to avoid this uncomfortable
person that we perhaps are, we are
unable to spend time with selves too. I
have met people who tell me that they long for time for themselves to do a
dozen things that they want to; yet when they do have the time, they are at a
complete loss, and want to just get back to work. Avoidance behavior perhaps?
Not really sure.
Can we really cut off
relations with ourselves, or maybe apply for divorce, as we do with significant
others in our lives, when we find things are not working out for us? Or are we ready to sit with ourselves, make
friends with our darker sides, our Shadow, reclaim it with both our hands and
thus start a process of integration? The
inner self is so beautiful, but the beauty is hidden because of the depths of
darkness and the loneliness created by our very own beings, simply because we
grow to adhere to overwritten rules on our psyche by long standing parameters
of society. Why can’t we take time off
to make friends with ourselves?
MOHANA NARAYANAN
JAN 31,2018
