Happiness Addicts

Three days in the third week of June 2017 in Kodaikanal, a small town in Tamilnadu, which hold so many memories for me, gave me a lot more than what you can encapsulate in a document.  But if I have to précis my feedback, it would be :

• an experience which opened a lot of closed doors for me, and closed a lot of unnecessary opened doors.
• It gave me the permission to feel less than strong, and that it is okay to be so.  
• It allowed me to close issues which were rankling at the bottom of my heart, and I did it with heartfelt gladness.
• It taught me to let go, and it taught me to receive.
• It taught me to connect, and it taught me to feel warmth of the group members in the nippy winds of the terrace where we ate together, and hugged each other for simply BEING.
• It taught me that there is more to life than what I am leading right now. And I am already on the journey to explore more.
• As a counselor and a therapist, it has opened a whole new canvas for me.  The awareness with which I was assimilating information shared by the client seemed greater, and my understanding of the situation seemed to be deeper.  Sessions seem more fulfilling…
• And finally, it taught me that it is okay to be addicted!!!

And I thank each one of the group members for if not for you, I would not have seen that part of me in me.

the dynamics of social groups

I have started to feel more than ever now, that the more technology invades your life, the more you are inviting trouble! You are also giving room for a lot of unnecessary complications you could do without, and the age old maxim of Keep It Simple seems to be fading into oblivion. 

Don’t get me wrong.  I am not a member of the creed which derides progress, or looks down on development through technology, which makes life convenient for a lot of people, though learning the ropes stresses them out.  I have seen people struggling with the steps to take for getting an access to their net-banking procedures, trying desperately to book their tickets online, which others do in a jiffy, making them feel illiterate, actions which a lot do without giving it a second thought!  We have conferences online, do money transfers at the click of a button, send off mails changing people’s lives by just tapping a key… there is no lag of response time!  I am sure, once we get a hang of it, and work on the mental blocks towards these procedures, life definitely is very easy, and we can achieve all we need to do, just by sitting at our desks all day. While I really don’t know how beneficial or detrimental to the quality of our lives that is, I am sure a lot has already been said about the matter for us to ponder on it here.

No, what I am talking about infiltration of technology into is the aspect of relationships.  Has it really benefitted from the more developed communications means I wonder?  With the advent of free calls, free messaging, and the like, aren’t we complicating life?  Talking more than needed, messaging more than necessary, simply because it is all free, and because we need to be in touch all the time?  In the process, are we losing touch with ourselves I wonder? And the worst iniquity of it all is the group chats I feel.  At the risk of sounding like a misanthrope, these group chats give rise to a lot of unnecessary conflicts and arguments.   More than sharing information, and learning, I think a lot of energy is spent just trying to prove a point.  In the process, feathers are ruffled, and remarks are personalised. 

I have personally never really liked belonging to the chat groups, and more and more I have come to feel that if there is any communication to be shared, and if the other person is important enough, or you are important enough for the other person, share the information either by a phone call, or send a private message.  Groups are fine for discussions, but if just hanging on to the group means you have a sense of belonging, while you actually don’t, what is the point?  More chats there mean less chats with yourself!  And God help you if you dare to leave the group without the sanction of the members.  They feel a sense of personal rejection!  I can never understand this, and I have gone to great pains, to explain my need to exit certain groups, basically because I have felt a sense of not belonging there, or when I feel I do not resonate with all that is being spoken about in the group chats.  In spite of explaining that it is nothing personal about each of the members, they go on a mission to either retain you there, or else have a committee discussion on why it has happened! 

Do we lose our sense of individual self when we feel the disconnect?  Or we find  the connect with self,  and that is why we feel the disconnect?  I am not really sure; but am sure of one thing.  If the members of the group are not willing to connect with you personally but only on the group, then I am definitely better off exiting the group!

MOHANA NARAYANAN

March 14,2018

Balance is Insufficient

It leaves us with a disconnected feeling when the phone recorded message tells us that there is insufficient balance in our account, hence we cannot connect with the world.  Is it nature’s way of telling us, connect with yourself, you don’t need anyone’s permission to do so, or to recharge your account balance to look within?  It disappoints us when we dial a number and a staid voice says back off I am not willing to connect:  But the underlying message that I get from the universe is different.

I got up today morning, feeling wretched for no reason at all; I thought it was just one of those days, and went about my work, but was preoccupied.  A call from my niece did not help:  they were off on a holiday she said.  I wondered when I would be able to get away from it all, just have a few quiet moments to myself when I would be able to do my own thing without having to worry about schedules, deadlines, to do lists, and projects to be completed.   What a dichotomy right? I mean on one hand I am not allowed access to people at all thanks to a break-down in technology; and on the other I am grumbling about not being left alone. But I guess that is basic human nature: to have what you don’t want and to want what you don’t have.  I cannot run away from the emotional responsibilities that I have and I am unable to disconnect from the effects of possibly doing so. And I am also unable to unthink my thoughts which would free me from the shackles of negative spiralling thoughts, dragging me down like a dense fog.  Running away is never a good thing, I know; but sometimes, running away could get us out of the tornado, to stand, catch your breath and get a perspective from outside of the circle.   And that is the reason, that is the only reason I want to get out of the circle: for a while.

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?

Timelessness

When we are able to move forward and allow ourselves to grow, we need to:

v  Allow experiences which open a lot of closed doors, and close a lot of unnecessary opened doors.

v  Give oneself  permission to feel less than strong, and that it is okay to be so. 

v  Allow oneself to close issues which are rankling at the bottom of one’s heart, and do it with heartfelt gladness.

v  Learn  to let go, and allow oneself to receive.

v  Learn to connect, and learn to feel warmth of your soul travellers in the nippy winds of sadness, and hug each other for simply BEING.

v  Learn that there is more to life than what one is leading right now. And allow oneself to be ready on the journey to explore more.

MOHANA NARAYANAN

DATE: Timelessness

the water hyacinth

The sound effects, of the boat in the distance, the visual drama of the sun in the water, glimmering like gold, and the spots of silence in the background… It was perfect.  I had seen this only in the movies or read about it in books.  The idea of dissociation crept up somewhere in the back of the mind: the way I should have lived my life perhaps?

The water hyacinth floated gently past me, and I saw the sun peeping slowly, coming up from under the water, the clouds urging her gently to be slow, to take her time like a newly-wed bride.  The  big blob of bobbing water hyacinth came up towards me, on its way downstream, as if to say hey, long time, where have you been all this while?  I have been trying to live I told them, wishing them well, hoping they have a good journey on their way to eternity… Behind them I saw a single, solitary water hyacinth, maybe trying to keep up with the earlier one.   The birds flew over my head, circling over the water, as did the eagles, trying to spot their prey in the water.  The fowl and the geese in the walked around my feet, pecking at the grass for their food.   I wanted to tell the people around to be quiet, not to talk… It broke the pattern of purpose. But then it was their space, their way, their flow.

  The sun aimed at reaching the sky, moving towards sunset.  The birds looked for their food.  The occasional canoe that glided by was aiming for a destination.  The small boats in the distance were busily looking for good catch.    The cock that woke us up, with its loud demanding volume, had done its bit for the day. Where was the water hyacinth going? What was its destination, its purpose?

Have I found mine?  I am not sure anymore… Or maybe I am sure that I have not found my purpose only now?  All my life I lived my roles on the stage, doing what is to be done, saying my lines, and perhaps never once patting  myself for having done well.  The world was dissociated from me, or me from the world?  Not sure.  But when I started holding on to the roles, they were being snatched away from me one by one.  I need to be like the water hyacinth, just moving, just floating gently down the stream, not rooting myself to the water.  Not being the roles, just playing them.  Was that the purpose I needed to find?  Sitting at the banks of the stream, watching the water hyacinth float by?

Mohana Narayanan

October 15,2017

To own your shadow

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

For they may come and they may go, but I love on forever!

I had a very long and a happening day yesterday.  The week had been very tiring and busy, and I was nursing a bad back as a result of all the work and running around.  I checked my mobile for messages halfway through cooking, and saw a lot of missed calls from a friend of mine, who never calls me in the morning as both of us are rushing to work. 

Worried I called her back at once, only to hear her gasping and choking, and crying.  I managed to get some sense out of her, got to call my support system, as I was not in a position to drive because of my back.  I also managed to call a couple of her friends whose number I fortunately had, and we all reached her place. 

The situation was brought under control with difficulty, and meanwhile having constant calls from my place of work, I  settled my friend, arranged for food, promised to visit the clinician with her in the afternoon.  We finished all this by 5 ‘0’ clock and went back to my place, where we hashed out the issue again and again, till we could speak no more, and she left.

The day no doubt left me drained.  The day triggered a memory of another somewhat similar incident, when I was driving back from work one day and another friend called me sobbing her heart out, and claiming to walk out of her marriage.  I turned around, went to see her, brought her home and calmed her down for the time being.  She stayed with me for a couple of days, sharing deep secrets of her life she had never shared with anyone before, and which of course I have not either till date.

They patched up and she went back home.  And after that there was not much to say… she simply dropped out of my life... like the countless others who faded out like a black and white movie.  But like I mentioned to someone earlier, the fading out of these people is not an issue for me. No one stays forever.  It is how the fading out happens that hurts.  Being there for people is a part of being me.  I cannot be anyone else.  But to know that these people who for no reason whatsoever just got up and walked away with not so much as a good-bye, have not managed to change my view  on love and relationships, and have not succeeded in making me cynical, is very very gratifying to know. I thank the universe for testing this fact!

The book I read some time ago comes to my mind now:  The Anthem By Ayn Rand.  There she speaks about how Collectivism gave way to Individualism, in the name of development and evolution.  The novel starts with the pronoun We throughout, but it is very symbolic that the last chapter of the book speaks of the protagonist as “ I”.

We are all catapulting towards the above doctrine today.  Be it in the name of self-growth, or development, or even self-awareness.  But sadly, in this process we seem to lose touch with our core selves, that one point in all of us,that keeps us connected to each other.  In the human sphere, we cannot think of it but in terms of qualifying and formalised relationships.  This kept the structure of the family, community and country together.  As time progresses, we stand stuck.  We are not growing, not imbibing the finer qualities of humaneness, but letting go of them in the name of it being burdensome, and too cumbersome.  Even the labels no longer seem to matter and disconnect seems to be the order of the day, with no time to invest in relationships.    

I remember writing a piece sometime back of a squirrel that visits my balcony every morning for crumbs.  And how the crows that caw for their share of morsel, patiently wait for the squirrel to finish eating, or the squirrel leaves some crumbs for his  companions in eating.  That was about inter-species camaraderie, a sense of belonging. 

But we are so far removed from their world today, that let alone take care of other species, we don’t even resonate with our own.  Individuation at its peak today!

Mankind attempted to keep the social fabric together by making rules and regulations in the forms of festivals, ceremonies and functions.  But he forgot to make the rules with consequences.  Or did he?  I am not sure.  Maybe the consequences are not immediate so we do not really bother.  So we redefine our priorities in attending these rituals and ceremonies, stating unavailability of time, (for we dare not yet state inclination as the cause), social pressures, etc., and beg to be excused from being present.

And when we do face the consequences, of a sense of rootlessness, of a sense of disconnect with the rest of humanity, resulting in pathological diagnosis of depression, anxiety, little do we realise that it is largely our doing;   it is a result of us running ahead so fast, leaving our loved ones behind that when we do turn back and look, we are indeed really, really alone… and perhaps too late.

MOHANA NARAYANAN

JULY 3, 2017 

Antiseptic

When I opened the spices box in the kitchen today morning, I found the turmeric powder had small insects in it. I was very surprised!  I thought turmeric is an antiseptic, and if that itself is getting infected I wondered what the way out would be. That set me thinking on a totally different line of thought, as usual, and almost burnt my toast in the process, but then that is a different story!

They say that the hurts inflicted by the near and dear ones hurts more than the ones by people who do not matter so much to you.  I actually can vouch for that.  How else do you explain the sheer disappointments you handle when you don’t have that one person calling you or being by your side when you need them the most?  You keep waiting for the door-bell to ring, for that one phone call that has the person at the other end, simply calling to say I care, I am here. You are meanwhile also fighting an internal battle, spurred by your latest knowledge of life and the living, gained from your spiritual texts or self-help books which says stop expecting from people, it’s not worth it.  Do your part without expecting anything in return.  All very well to say.  But how difficult to put it into action!

Life can be difficult without us dwelling on the have-nots I know.  And I guess my learning here would be complete only when I allow a little bit of cynicism to creep in when I form new bonds, and foster newer relationships, all the while being aware that once my role is over then whether I move on or not, the other person will, and I need to learn to accept it with grace.  But the problem is, would someone please tell the other person that the moving on also has to be done with grace? The dropping of the hot potato, the abrupt fading away, without any explanation whatsoever, all leaves so many question marks. 

MOHANA NARAYANAN

Date: unknown

Redefining Moments

I was going through my writing of my diary, which is titled Defining Moments. And I found that I had not really chronicled many of the defining moments in the recent past.  And there had been so many of them. The moments when you realise suddenly, like a thunderbolt striking you, that relationships that you thought were important suddenly cease to be so.  Like when someone stops mattering to you, and you stop mattering to someone and it no longer feels strange. Like you suddenly meet someone from your deep past, and you suddenly feel that time had not really passed at all.

But where did all these moments originate from?  They came from the depths of my being, from my threads of existence, where I had been bound by all the thoughts that formed these relationships in my head.  Had I been leading these relationships along in my head?    Were there any rules that structured these relationships and gave them meaning?  Or were they only senseless, meaningless meetings, where one thought the meeting held more meaning than it actually did?

How long can such a relationship really go on, unless it has been given a social meaning, a label from the structure that is called family?  Once you are bound by a formal label of a relationship, there is another invisible contract to it: the concept of forever, always.  And so, we drag it on, smelly, putrid, stale, not knowing how to get rid of it.  Well, I would for one not want a label on any of my relationships here afterwards.  

I divorce all my labels, and have only ‘people’ in my life.  Thus, there is no concept of rules, no concept of justification, unmet expectations, and no formal labels to tag your relationship on to.  You hold it in your hand, and you nurture it, instead of tagging it on a coat rack of a labelled relationship and remove it to wear it when you need the cloak of appearance.

So when a dear child whom you brought up in her infancy gets engaged, and that is the first thought that strikes you when you get up in the morning, and are living moment by moment when the engagement is taking place far away, and you are not there in person to see the possible glow and the tension in the air, and the prayers that all should be well, when that dear child does not spare a thought for you because you possibly no longer matter anymore to her, then that is the time when the divorce paper needs to be signed, labels erased, cloaks of pretences taken off and flushed away.

When you visit the temple to seek blessing for this very same child and slip and fall in the slush in the temple, but take it as divine grace, and the child does not even have an inkling of the thoughts that you are sending her way, then it is time for the cords to be severed.  But when you sever any cord, it hurts, there is no anaesthesia strong enough for emotional numbing.  But it is fine… I will make do with the local available, and soon Tomorrow will be another day….

Vardah

The howling of the wind stopped. But I could hear silent tears the trees were shedding, long after the rains stopped and the winds took a breather. It was pitch dark outside and I tried to get back to sleep though my dreams were full of flying leaves and a war dance that the trees seemed to be doing around Mother earth.

The morning was a different story. I opened the windows and what I saw made me go silent and numb. I could get a clear view of the road from my bedroom window, as all the trees in the line of my vision were lying stark on the road. There were parts of ripped branches still left hanging from a couple of the odd trees that had survived the holocaust, and these branches reminded me of wounded soldiers in a battle, who would beg to be put out of their misery. There were hesitant sounds of birds, who came searching for their nests, and when they did not even find a trace of the tree let alone the nests, the cacophony of grief started. The stray sounds of motor vehicles broke the silence, while people slowly started coming out of their houses, trying to make sense of nature’s wrath. The sense of dismay, shock and helplessness was palpable. Life would never be the same again, without the breeze of the neem trees on my balcony, and the absence of the chirpy birds, who would fight with the squirrels for the morning crumbs. Coffee tasted bitter that morning.

The uprooting of giant trees defied logic. The gaping craters on the roads, ripping the concrete pavements bore testimony to the fact that the roots imprisoned underneath the concrete prison man built under the guise of civilisation and development are way too strong to be curtailed. Maybe the roots could no longer meander around under the earth in search of water, and desperate for survival, they started growing upwards? And too close to the surface, they could not withstand the onslaught of the fury of the slashing winds and just leaned over and fell? Though not like gentle giants, but like huge monsters, in a last attempt to perhaps let man know, that everything has a price: and sometimes, the price we pay is way, way too great for us to ever recover from the bargain.

I am writing this after a week of the onslaught of the cyclone. The view from the window is still clear, I still miss the familiar view of various hues of green leaves of the trees that shielded me from the view of the road. But I saw a new palm frond in one of the surviving tree today morning. My eyes welled up when I saw it, for some strange reason. It made me realise that while nature punishes, she also is very gentle and caring. She understands pain; and maybe this was her way of telling me not to lose hope?

The Squeaky World of Ethics...

I remember penning my thoughts on being a responsible healer.  I think we need to first become responsible human beings. Responsible towards self.  And when I say that, I mean, we need to understand that we all are here to grow, evolve into better human beings, and while we do tend to slip and slide now and then, our larger responsibility lies in leaving this place better than we came in.

That is why, when I see a corrosion of ethics and the way we twist our pattern of thinking to suit our own narrow self-centered ends, I get very agitated and wish I could do something more than just sit and watch.  I am not a coach; I can’t be on the side-lines and watch the game.  But then neither do I know the game to play it the way it is being played!  So what am I ? A spectator perhaps?

A colleague of mine took up an assignment which was ethically wrong; I am not going into the reasons why she did so; I was not looking into justifications. Suffice it to say that choosing what she did totally undermined what I thought she was as a person. It also pained me because her action made me partly responsible for the affected party, and I wish she had kept the communication channels open for me to intervene and help the affected party to make an informed choice.  I know we all have vested interests in the way we think and act, and that I suppose, is the Way of the World as William Congreve says.  But I am not able to digest the fact that a person so dear to me personally, could mess up so badly professionally. And the messing up is not on the grounds of ability but on ethical issues.  

The icing on the cake is the fact that it is not even viewed as a problem that has created so much of turmoil in me!  Maybe I am over-reacting to a situation which is a win-win one for all?  And I don’t stand to lose anything either; except perhaps a teeny weeny bit of faith in humanity, which has led to me gaining a little bit more of cynicism. 

Some stories never end...

The torch on the bed under the pillow. The spectacle case neatly arranged next to the day’s newspaper... The pile of neatly folded laundry. Everything looked just the same, but the silence came from the blank TV screen. The silence came from the stationery walker which now held his last worn dhoti and vest...   I could no longer sense the lingering smell of the sandalwood powder.... It was his trademarked aura. 

The pictures of the divine powers in their myriad forms all looked at me benevolently, and the forms all slowly turned into the many faces he used to cajole, threaten, and worm his way into people’s thoughts and hearts.  

A commander ....... Said one of the persons who clung to me tightly.. he sang away to the nurses, complained about the lousy food at the hospital, but also used his famous pick up line, “I have met you before...”

He had his beatific smile on his face when his pressure fell alarmingly. And when he finally decided to move on, all his grandchildren stood around him and sang that one song that he had made up for their lullaby when they were babies.... Nani ma nani ma nani manni nani ma naani ma ni.... The room resonated with his presence in our hearts... He was around. Some stories have no ending. Neither does this one.

Appa...

When I touch the wet mud to replant my roses I think of appa, for he inculcated in me the love for gardening.

When the light flickers  I remember appa because he taught me to to change a bulb, replace a fuse or repair a plug.

When the tape gets stuck in my recorder, his voice calls me out to use a cellotape to stick the pieces together. 

He taught me to ride a bike.and be independent....
To polish my shoes...
To iron my clothes....

When I see evenly, finely cut raw mangoes for pickle...

When I don't get math sums right...

My knuckles remind me of his stern discipline when it came to math formulae.

He taught me skills. He taught me it's good to enjoy good things and be happy. He taught me to laugh at myself, when he would talk broken hindi, and we would make fun of him. He taught me to love animals, he taught me it's okay to cry...and he taught me to be who I am today. I miss you... But I miss more, the fact that I can never say good bye to you again and have you cry like a baby anymore. But rest in peace appa. You are the angel who is going to smile all the time now.

A different kind of holiday

I woke up to the sounds of peacocks calling out to each other. Sturdy, comforting hills beyond a range of coconut trees greeted my view as i parted the curtains and gazed out of the window. My friend had kept calling me to visit her in the retirement home she had shifted to recently. I decided to take her up on her invitation over a weekend. I came, expecting to be greeted by a staid run of the mill boarding atmosphere, surrounded by senior citizens who would seem to be dull, lost and desolate. What greeted me is something I am still registering. The place looked no less than a well developed resort, with laid out green lawns, cobbled pathways with lush green plants at regular intervals. There was a clubhouse for lectures and extra curricular activities, a dining hall, a temple all interspersed with benches to sit around, and patches of green.

But all this was what was provided by the developers. What caught me and left me pleasantly surprised was the contribution to the atmosphere by the inmates of the place. I could only see smiling faces greet each other. I was not a stranger but a part in of the place. Everyone had a word of greeting for me, a nod of recognition, though I did not even know them. People were using walkers, some were being helped by the assistants employed by the place, others were just sitting, too tired or old to walk around. But all this simply did not deter them from being warm and exchanging social greetings.

Were they here out of choice? Or compulsion? Were they living up to the stigma attached to the idea of children not taking care of their parents in their old age and resorting to an old age home? It did not seem so. It seemed more like community living, following a regular schedule of meal times and exercises, attending lectures and religious functions, exchanging notes with each other about their families. The living quarters were tastefully done, but at the same time functional.

We all have such fixed notions about things, and I was no different. This visit opened my eyes to the sheer practical angle of such a beautiful shared life, in a serene environment. At a time in your life when you certainly don't want to worry about bill payments, house maintenance, leaking roofs and garbage disposal, such a living seemed god sent. Then why do we look at such community living with such a negative opinion, and in such a judgemental view? Why can't we accept that "The old order changeth giving place to new", with grace?

A Responsible Healer

In my practice as a counsellor and family therapist, I do a lot of training work and supervision with upcoming counsellors. While most of them show great promise and I am hopeful that the future of counselling is in safe hands, there is still a lot that needs to be done. And I mean personal work, intense inner work.

Counselling is very serious work. We are dealing with people’s minds and feelings. We cannot afford to go wrong here. And unless we are sorted out within ourselves to a large extent, I don’t think it is fair that we hand out platitudes to our clients. The responsibility of self-care and self-growth is tremendous in our line of work. But unfortunately, a large population of the mental health professionals do not seem to understand this aspect or if they do, choose to undermine its importance.

 
I met a young graduate who was raring to go, and one of the first doubts she asked me was nothing to do with the subject or training. It was: how much do you think we can charge as our fees?
Was being a counsellor just that to her? A source of income? Though no doubt it is a profession and she was going to make a career of it, the focus seemed to be skewed to me. When I gently reminded her that she needed to hone her skills before she even contemplated employment, I am sure it did not sit well with her.

Yet another enthusiast had closed her mind to the kind of population she would not work with, which happened to be children. She said she would not feel comfortable working with them..
I wonder what history went behind her shutting herself off from children... The way the society is moving, I think children need the maximum emotional support in the coming years. What was it in her life that made her uncomfortable handling cases involving children?

Still another candidate who fitted in the above category would be so casual and easy-going, it seemed to be a defence of a quiet storm underneath. She was anxious to be seen as one who was in control at all times. Though this would be a strength in her, it would only be so, if she had worked on the deeper underlying issues, and resolved them. It is not possible that one has no problems to resolve; but according to her, there was nothing wrong in her life. Which seemed to be a total blind spot in her personal Johari Window.

And finally the kind who feel they have the power to change the world: and that the responsibility for the client being healed rested solely on their young shoulders. These people are the most dangerous ones. The sense of omnipotence they exude is frightening. They believe they have the power to correct a lot of wrongs, which has the danger of making them extremely judgemental and opinionated, two of the greatest faults in a counsellor.

The most senior of therapists come up with issues they are not able to resolve within themselves. The dangers of transference and countertransference is forever lurking in the background. Unless the person is emotionally sorted out to a large extent from within, she would at best be doing what a compounder does in the absence of a duty doctor in a hospital. And with physical wounds that may work. But with emotions, you can never say you know… you can mar a life for a lifetime if you don't know what you are doing…

Let us become strangers once again...

The hardest part in letting go is not the fact that you need to let go.  It is the fact that you are not ready to do so without knowing the reason why.  And I guess this is true of any relationship.  A friend of mine I met the other day for coffee was talking to me about how she is unable to understand why suddenly another friend just dropped out of her life without any warning.  They used to meet up every weekend, go out together as a family and share a lot of personal stories. It suddenly came to pass that the friend had her sister visiting her, and the calls tapered off.  She put it down to the visit of her sister, and she went to visit them too. But she came away feeling very cold about the whole visit, for reasons she could not explain.  The sister left, she messaged a couple of times, the response was perfunctory … As far as she was concerned, it ended here.

She also spoke about another friend, who used to practically live in her house, but of late was hardly to be seen. Of course, her new job kept her busy, but then she was not talking about meeting- even the usual phone connect had dimmed. However, she openly confronted this friend about this fact, and told her how much she felt the absence.  Though the friend did agree that she was not around as much as she was before, and she too felt the lacuna, what hurt was that there were no attempts to even minimise the distance between them, even after this talk. I guess this hurt her more.

Realigning an existing relationship is extremely difficult.  In the case of the earlier friend, she could honestly say she did not feel like even wanting to find out what went wrong; in the case of the second friend, she tried and there were no results.  What I could observe in both these cases were that the relationship had shifted gears.  The connect was totally missing, because of which the score for count, the feeling that she mattered enough in the other person’s life, was very low.

She had the option of picking up the phone and confronting them with this fact: to tell them she was nursing a bruised feeling, a hurt.  But she was too tired.  And though she was still coming to terms with the whole new dynamics of the relationships, she believed in : “If you cannot bring the story to a happy ending, then it is better to give it a beautiful turn and then forget the story... Let us become strangers once again…” Lines from an old Bollywood song!

What is in a flower...

"Each day is a credit to my knowledge bank" had been my status message for a while on one of social media sites.  It still is, I think, I am not sure. I am not much of a social media person.  In fact, come to think of it, I don’t even think I am much of a social person right now.  I seem to have a list of things I expect that are not lived up to by others.  I seem to be on this constant watch mode, where I am able to pick out stuff that no longer works with people.  And then I start wondering where it all starts to go wrong.

Take the case of this friend, for instance. We had been pretty close, or so I would like to think, till a couple of months back.  To be candid, I had figured in a large part of her life, and I felt wanted, needed.  One does not really start to count pennies, unless one is down to the last bit of it… In the same way, when I find the relationship wanting, I am going back and counting all the inputs that I had put in into the relationship, I find I am a pauper now. 

She just stopped talking… just like that.  She initially had practical reasons with work, visitors at home and the like, but then once all that settled down, it was still not on comfort level. An uneasy quiet so to speak.  My overtures at conversations were met with stilted answers.  That is when I started questioning the efficacy of the relationship and for once I did not question where I went wrong;   I was so tired of this question all the time.  I just gave up.  

I was not longer bothered about doing post-mortem.  I just gathered enough evidences to prove it has all been coming a while, only I was blind to it all and moved on.  But the shoulder felt a wee bit heavier…

Today was another friend’s birthday. She too has suddenly found a lot more to engage her in life, and there is suddenly empty space here.  She too cited work as a reason for the sudden disconnect and I took her at her word, though I did not feel listened to, I did not feel she understood what I meant when I said the connect was missing. And today, when I went to wish her, I took her some yellow roses.  Yellow roses are supposed to be a symbol of friendship.  I said so when I gave them to her.  And she left them back in the restaurant. Just like that.

   

Not that I am not busy.  Not that I don’t have other people in my life.  But I need all of them, and I would hate to be guilty of making one of them feel they don’t matter enough to me.  It is not a nice feeling.  And of late, I seem to be feeling that feeling a lot. In reverse…  That I don’t really matter much anymore.

The roses of course will wither and wilt away in a couple of days.  But what I felt when I discovered she had left them behind will take a long time to fade away I guess.  Unless amends are made sincerely, thoughtfully and deliberately.  I guess that is too much to ask. 

Once we enter into a relationship, we are no longer the same.  The relationship may end, but it does not cease to exist.  In some way or the other the dent is made and it is there for life.   Another friend of mine commented once about how I give all of myself and I expect the same and that is where I get hurt.  Maybe.  I am not sure.  But this is not about my giving more.  It is about how the other person no longer wants anymore…

Lessons from Relationships

I read a book which was titled Inner war and peace: lessons from the Gita.  I searched for the sequel which was titled Conflict Resolutions: relationship lessons from the Gita.  This book was not available on the stands!

I wondered whether it was because people are finding it more difficult to handle relationships than themselves.  I have been seeing relationship dynamics at various levels, and I am reflecting on the various handles and triggers that sets off an ordinary discussion spiraling into a conflict. What can be a simple conversation over a cup of tea becomes a convoluted issue where everyone is sucked in, and each one has a hidden agenda, their own stakes in the matter, and finally a whole lot of hurts for the garbage bin, in addition to uneaten biscuits and cold cups of tea. The one left with the unresolved issue finally starts wondering at the futility of the whole exercise and needs help to gather the broken pieces.

Helping such a person, you are in danger of getting sucked in into the issue if you are not careful to be in the problem-solving mode. The person continues to hold on to hurts, feeling unsupported and challenged. If we are able to equip the person with seeing the problem from a solution-focused instead of a problem-focused viewpoint, the person is able to start acting on making small changes, redefining expectations, and the scenario starts to look brighter.

Let me illustrate. I know someone who is on this project of getting her children settled...   But she feels very challenged as she feels the whole process of vetting the proposals, getting information etc. is all very technology-based, and she feels inadequate to cope as she is not very savvy in this field.  Her dependency on others because of this limitation is a block in her getting things done, and when she reaches the end of her tether, all hell breaks loose, and while there is confrontation there is no conflict resolution: both within herself and around her.

Now, she has two options: she can either just give up on her project, and nurse the feeling of guilt in not being a responsible adult, or she can break down the problem into smaller problems and find effective solutions... I don't claim to be a Microsoft geek, but I was able to help her resolve some of her practical issues regarding the workings of the processes involved... When one feels he or she is doing something towards resolving an issue, that itself makes one feel more in command of the situation... It is the feeling of being helpless, dependent or trapped that is debilitating!