Cynicism: A Check-dam in the Stream of Love

 

Allow the boons of nature and manmade conveniences to bathe you. Let them fall spontaneously on you. Like a mountain allows the rains to kiss its slopes, bathe its forest and drench its top. It just enjoys it without trying to retain the showers. It is not looking for fullness with the help of external agents. It just loves the way it is.

A lake, on the other hand, is looking for completion through the outside phenomenon. It tries to retain water. It wants to hold onto it. In the process, it forgets the bliss of just being; all this while it is trying to capture the fleeting transformations of the free-flowing boons of life. No wonder it loses a lot.

I am afraid, we also unnecessarily cling to so many things that are simply meant to fall our way, giving us a skin deep sensation and a bit of learning, only to be left behind with a sweetly cute detachment. Don’t you think there is a mystical detachment in nature as things move on from this moment to the next? But we prefer to carry the unnecessary load that becomes unbearable after a time. It turns us cynical. There is hardly any chance for the flower of loving kindness to blossom in a cynical being. Love is a feather bed. Hardly apt to carry the iron weight of cynicism born of failed attempts at retaining the things that are just supposed to flow along. Let us try to understand it through a tiny fable. 

There is an old ascetic staying very happily under a banyan tree. No material possessions, almost naked and no worldly desires. The spiritual force of his wisdom is spreading far and wide. The King gets so impressed that he touches the saint’s feet and overcome by huge pangs of reverence for the sage asks the old mendicant to come and stay in his palace.

He is sure that the ascetic is going to say a loud “no” thus verifying the big mismatch between asceticism and worldly possessions. But then very surprisingly, the old sage says “yes”. So it becomes mammoth news and the King is even feeling duped. The old friar comes to stay in the palace. In irritation the King is pouring more and more worldly comforts around the mendicant who never shows any unwillingness to roll over more and more in comfort.

The sage is accepting all the worldly facilities on offer. The King’s agitation is turning into burning jealousy and then anger day by day. He starts condemning the sage as an imposter who has now forgotten all his wisdom after staying in the palace. The King’s anger reaches a breaking point and he condemns him as a disgrace in the name of monkhood and banishes him from the luxurious palace.

Nothing changes in the old monk. He smiles and says, “Ok King, as you wish! I was just fulfilling your wish to offer me luxury.” Smilingly the old sage prepares to leave the King with a blessing and a little sermon:

“I stayed in your palace but your palace didn’t stay in me. I am not a lake, I’m a mountain. I enjoy the water falling all over me, cutting my sides, kissing the trees on my slopes. But I am not possessive to hold the waters back. I simply allow it to flow down. I don’t hold. I don’t pull back. I just let it be as it is supposed to be. The lake is hollow. It craves for fullness. It wants more and more water. It has to hold. It has to collect. It is attached to collection. But the water will in any way flow away. So there is pain at the exit. Hence it’s forever looking upland for more and more water. I allow the flow, so enjoy the process, the mix of past, present and future. The lake holds. It suffers. It hardly enjoys its present, its being. It just turns it cynical, the cornerstone of suffering.”

So let’s try to extract the seeds of cynicism from our being. If not so, it lets loose a parasitic growth of bitterness involving scorn, doubt, distrust, sarcasm, skepticism, suspicion and pessimism. It just sours life’s taste to a point of revulsion.

Without cynicism one is healthily restful, holds a practical perspective, and possesses a balanced confidence, sense of security, patience and simplicity. All these are the manure nurturing the flower of a loving persona. Cynicism simply turns you skeptical to the inherent loving nature in the people around. Optimism for the possibility of selflessness in fellow human beings is the stepping stone to allow sunshine in one's dark corners. It enables one to see above one's personal miseries and problems of life. If you shed your insecurities, these appear like simple problems of life that everybody is facing.

A cynical attitude is the breeding ground of negativity. Once it sets in, it eats positivity like termites eat wood. You impose a blindness over yourself thinking all the people around are there to hurt your interests. Surely, the journey starting with such a big ‘no’ to life's prospects takes one to disappointing ends only.

Undue distrust is the rust that eats the iron fabric of one's being. With distrust we can simply justify any miscalculation of ours because it masquerades as wisdom and practicality. And mind you, one's empathy plummets down in proportion to the rising cynicism.

Most of the time, we camouflage our cynical nature as over-sensitivities, which in turn we self-justify as the natural results of our hurts and disappointments. But at the roots of our cynicism are our fears. And fears are nothing but bugs that plague a heart and stop it from actualizing the potential it got at birth time.

We are basically self-fucking species. Sorry to say it this way! I am looking for a better word to define us.

Very easily we allow our disappointments to turn us cynical. But if we go a bit deeper into the roots of our dejections, heartbreaks and losses, we find a simple truth. It’s basically we ourselves we have been stopping the winner in us? Just re-align the meaning of victory here. If you cannot win a gold medal at the Olympics, who has stopped you from enjoying the game in your local park? Nobody! Only we ourselves deprive us of the moments that could have fetched unqualified happiness and joy to us.

We don’t enjoy because we look at the end, the gold medal, and totally ignore the process—the present—of playing.

So what if you can’t be the handsomest man and the prettiest woman on earth! But who stops you from getting decked up to be the best for your resources and looks? There is no scale of beauty; we create one on the basis of our complexes. Nature made all of us different in appearance. Nobody holds the copyright on beauty. It’s a freebie lying there dirt cheap to be claimed by one and all.

Accepted that you can’t own a Jaguar. But who stops you from enjoying the pleasant drive in your old car while nature is at its kindest and the weather is applauding at its best?  

Long before destiny, society and governments arrive to rob us of our claims to happiness, it’s we ourselves who shut the door in our own face. We are basically self-fuckers, always pulling down our own pants to shame our own selves.

So guys, sulking self-fucking moron or a happy-go-lucky filly? The choice is always ours!