Snippets of a Life Better than the Common

 

The sun playing hide and seek behind the clouds. The humid air wispily telling a smart secret. The land lying languidly; its pining thirst quenched by the sky's countless kisses and love-drops. A dove pair mating lost in the silent majesty of innocent and peaceful nature! Life can be far-far better provided we have the eyes to spot such marvellous ecstasies adoring the stage set around us. All we have to learn is to be at ease with the universal harmony. The ultimate melody will certainly reach our ears. She was at ease now. The girl from A Half House. Visiting Kolkata to be with her parents for some time, she had further gone to the village where her grandparents stayed with her uncle. To be at her roots, to strengthen, to solidify, to wage the battle of life after the temporary sojourn! The cool countryside air soothing and solacing, and wispily cooing a secret in her ears, the secret of happiness. She was taking big lessons from this small world.

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Always there are easiest of routes to the toughest of destinations. Every hard situation has the softest of a solution. So there is no unconquerable problem in the real sense. Our solutions make them so. When in the face of a tough situation blame your solution, not the situation. Isn’t life all about taking smart short-cuts to beat the puzzling array of problems randomly cropping around us? So be the solution provider. Behind most complex of a phenomenon there is amazing simplicity. Read that. Those cute fundamentals will tell you that every situation is a living being. It has a soft and sympathetic message for you only. Listen to these delicate murmurs and it will help you in breaking the hardest of superficial, outer cores. He had started to read those simple fundamentals. He the tortured young man from The Broken Dream.

The only thing you can be sure about life is that there are going to be problems. So just accept it as any other law in nature which you accept without any grudges. In fact when in the face of problems, we as humans ought to think from the solutions perspective. Still there are times when the wrong dice cast by fate just puts you in most difficult of a situation. These are the times when it’s even futile to think of a solution. During such times, all you need is just to be there for the sake of future. Just do not back out. It’s no routine preaching to put up a valiant superhuman fight. Just maintain the routine. It requires a little effort to do the barest minimum to see through the turbulent waters. Be guarded, be defensive, but do not leave the field. He realised it and put himself on the autopilot. When you find that your being serious about the issues is not going to help you in any way, just try to live life according to the tide. A plain assumption here! Always assume with 100 percent belief that things are going to be normal. Equipped with this belief, just slog it out at the lowest morsels of your mental and physical levels. There are solutions, rewards, opportunities and suitable circumstances. Just be patient enough to be there to receive them. As you assume the inevitability of better things awaiting you, most of the presumptions about the futility of things will be cut down to their real size by the natural forces always there to help you survive and prosper. Call it belief in God or the superior cosmic forces. All it needs is your trust and belief. Just invest this much. It will just shower you with rewards. He was slowly coming to this realisation. He had worked very hard in life. Of course the rewards had not been as per his expectations, but he decided to stand there and then walk slowly in case there might be something in store, just a few miles away, across some turn in the path. One cannot afford to be totally pessimistic. It means being dead altogether 

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The retired history professor had incisive thoughts that many times bruised the feelings of his fellow early morning visitors in the park where they meant to enjoy life and do Yoga to extend their stay on the earth. The professor’s unconventional logic rubbed against their conventional skin and the great time would end up being any other time of the day, just argumentative. The professor’s health needed attention. He realised it at the appropriate time. It was the time to feel, relax, not brainstorming. It was better spared for just special occasions.

 

If you can’t respect others’ thoughts, not a big problem with that. Just slog it out—even egoistically—to prove your point. But never do the same in case of feelings. Respect others feelings. There is a big difference between thoughts and feelings. You can trample your fellow human beings’ thoughts. But please spare their feelings. Feelings are sanctimonious. Leave them unstigmatised and pure on the altar of heart. The old professor knew that there might not be many such mornings left to enjoy, so it was prudent to enjoy every moment, sharing people’s feelings and respecting their opinions.

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Rivers and we share a great symmetry in our life-flows. During the youthful stage, a river full of energy cuts through the mountainous rocks. It is vigorous, torrential, fast, furious and adamant about its path. Aren't we like that as well in our youth? Then the middle age sets in. During this phase the pace gets mellowed down. Through flood plains it takes gentle curves, meanders, building its reputation on the sediments cut in youth from the hardest rocks. The flow is at ease with itself. There is comfort and peace. Then the final drowning of its existence into the sea. So in youth gurgle with enthusiasm. Tear apart as much sediments as you can. It will be after all the material for your middle life flood plains when other types of responsibilities set in on this fertile ground. The aged social worker, retired and spending a major portion of his pension funds in feeding cows and dogs, realised the importance of cooling down and just allowing himself to be drawn into the sea completing a well meant life where he did more for others than anybody else in the town. The media publicity did not matter much now. With languorous acceptance of the natural flow of life he was slowly-slowly moving to the sea of his destination. 

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We can fly and rise higher only if we are tied to certain responsibilities and commitments; our freedom-lorn spirit tamed to an extent by social conventions, individual values, family setup, the sweet-sour tides in our offices, etc. But most of the time we find it as a drag on our real enjoyment of life. We just feel how great life would be without all such traditional stuff. But guys tell me, can a stringless kite fly? The kite flies because there is a string pulling it and thus enabling it to rise into the higher skies. It also tries to negate the limitations set up by the string. It shakes its head in negation. OK! What happens when its dream to be string-free comes true? It just takes a few ecstatic circles in air and falls onto the ground. Those free dives of its dreams prove to be its death dives. We are the stringed kites fella. We fly and rise high only because our destructive passions and traits are tamed and tied to a string. So love your commitments, your responsibilities, and your struggles for small-small things in life. He had also given a good string to his life. Stringless kites cannot fly. The guy whose time had slipped out of his pocket in Friends and Foes was anchored to small domestic responsibilities with his time safely secure in his pocket. 

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For the lovers of freedom, responsibilities sound as prison chains. Responsible people on the other hand find themselves squeezed in a tight corner by the commitments which do not allow them to enjoy freedom. The question is: Are freedom and responsibility inherently contradictory in nature? Is it really possible to make them complementary to each other by melting the contradictory edges? Across the dark into the stormy sea she had a saltier sea in her soul on that fateful night on the beach. She the lady in Legitimate Tears knew the most important responsibility in her life. Her daughter. The corporate career was for the daughter, not the vice versa. A smile on her daughter’s face was more precious than applauds in auditoriums. 

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For good people it’s very difficult to enter a relationship and still more difficult to come out of it! For bad people it’s very easy to get into a relationship and still easier to come out of it! On this account her husband had been luckier than her in their marriage. She survived, the woman from Life doesn’t Smile Back, and regained her front office executive charm. Her husband was lucky in that she was a good human being on the basis of the above principle. The daughter was doing exceedingly well in studies to do them proud in future. 

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I think it always (without exception) helps not to lose your temper. When you lose your temper, you not only deprive somebody’s chances for more happiness; you in fact deprive yourself of the same. So why fall in the trap of such a bad bargain. If nobody gains anything out of it (except perhaps that hypothetical and flimsy enemy of ours, called ‘ego’) why invest in such a loser scheme?  The retired Brigadier was forced into this realisation by near fatal upshot of blood pressure. The war was long over. It was the time to spend days as a peaceful ageing man who brought more purpose into the lives of those around. Time with his grandson and teaching him mathematics was more important than losing tempers over China.

 

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Thank God life is not just a smooth road, taking us uninterestingly to a plain destination! Guys be thankful that it is pot-holed and bumpy. The vehicle of our life gets jolts and jerks which are in fact the lifelines for our material being. It tests the vehicle of our being. The latter responds and this see-saw battle releases energy for the engine of our survival. So guys if your road appears bumpier than others, just feel the sea-storm of energy your system is creating not just for your own survival but for the common cause of creation and survival at the universal level as well. As a struggler you contribute far more to a great unseen cause than it appears on the common plain of your material existence. The social worker with the overworked broom in the political streets realised the value and utility of his efforts. He could feel the value of his work, even though he had failed to become an MLA. The political potholes had jolted his calm journey to rob his soul’s peace once. He now decided to struggle with the aged Anna. The great man needed supporters after him.

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There are times when our long-held beliefs sound untrue. It is however just a smoke-screen. If we just project our hands over our eyes and try to look into the haze with a bit of more focused look, we will see the faded glow of the sun of reality. It not only consolidates the beliefs very close to our soul, but allows more perspectives to our struggle to see through the cloud. Long-held beliefs are generally true. Their mere survival around the epicentre of our being authenticates their validity. Temporary ones just glow for a short time and fade out in jerks. So do not allow your long-held beliefs to die or fade out during the periods of crisis. Believe it or not, they are like life-belts tied to our endangered selves during the sea-storm. Sukh Ram’s jolting pivot of faith caught in the trap of ‘my faith’ and ‘his faith’ came free of the entrapment. After all the storms always get finished. His dilemmas had gone. He realised the value of the only religion, the religion of being human.