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.