Interlinked fates

 

There is an interesting report. Food experts have noticed a change in the Chinese palate. More pork and less duck and goose meat is being consumed in Chinese restaurants and homes. The rise in the consumption of red meat and fall in the birdie delicacies means the poultry farming business going down. Loss for poultry farmers; gain for pigsty owners.

There are other consequences also in different regions, especially India. The cost of shuttlecocks has gone up by as much as fifty percent. The lesser the duck and goose meat in kitchens, the lesser the feathers available for the Chinese shuttle makers.

China has near monopoly over the shuttlecock trade, hosting the premiere brands in the segment. So the Indian importers have to pay more.

Now, it directly affects the financial fate of Indian badminton academies. They have to spend more money on training young shuttlers. As a result, they are forced to charge more from the trainees, majority of whom hail from modest lower middle class in society.

Boys and girls from economically and socially sound families are not usually drawn to spend the crucial period of their youth in sweating out in unknown, unglamorous corridors of sports training. They have better choices to excel in academics, elite jobs, entertainment and business. Most of the sporty sloggers come from the middle and lower middle classes. They carry the weight of expectations from their struggling wards to make a name in the sports arena, earn loads of money and heave the family’s social status in one clear jump. So they are willing to sweat out with aching limbs and bruised skins.

Shuttlecock prices going up by as much as fifty percent just because the Chinese are eating more pork is a spin-off of the modern-day travesty—the countries are interlinked more than ever before; and they are divided more than ever as well. The countries are getting more and more interdependent side by side becoming more divided politically. Economics pulling this way; politics pulling that way. Like two hands churning milk. The fates of millions of common people getting churned by the economic-political churner—some of them being badminton players in developing countries.

And what will come out of this churning? It will be ghee for the select few corporate houses and oligarchs, sour buttermilk for some more people, and absolutely nothing for the teeming masses. The last in the category are sold forever-unfulfilled dreams. At high prices. They pay it through almost un-paying labor, hardcore bone-breaking labor. 

Thoughts are things

 

With every thought you make a new mind, and as a direct consequence, almost parallel with it, a new body. It’s a new you with each thought. So learn to think in linearity with personal growth and evolution; in spontaneity with life-sustaining natural functions taking place within you, with their own intrinsic trait of minding their own business.

For example, the second brain, the gut brain (having 50 million nerve cells and its enteric nervous system) is capable of minding its business almost independently of the brain’s central nervous system. The latter has to provide emergency push through its system of nerves when we put extra pressure on ourselves through anxiety, fear and nervousness.

Just feel the harmony, rhythm and sovereignty of life force within.

It’s rather unfortunate that you, with this feeling of being the over-concerned owner of all these automatic processes, put unnecessary pressure on so many biological processes minding their own business. We disturb myriads of natural functions going smoothly within us through over-thinking and random thoughts and emotions. The latter switching on the emergency measures available through the central nervous system.

The entire system works the best when there is no bombardment of unnecessary thoughts or overbearing emotions. The less they are, the smoother the flow of life within. That’s where all meditation techniques point to. An eased-up, relaxed state of being like a tranquil pond where one’s anxious self, with its overbearing thoughts and emotions, isn’t throwing pebbles in the water.

Just sit down and feel yourself present in the entire body, not just in the head. When we are feeling ourselves just in the head, we are concentrating a weight of clogged energies, which unleash various hormones that switch on the emergency mode for their corresponding organisms. It’s like an angry person himself hastening his own destruction.

So dilute your feeling of being in the head only; sit, walk, work, drive while feeling your entire body doing the same. It’s a lovely process of melting the ego; a tender technique to facilitate a gentle flow of energy in the system. You harness the art of an awareness and acknowledgment of the entire processes within you. An acceptance of their unacknowledged, selfless service for your (the you in the head) cause. The heavy-headed, pointed, weighty existence spreads to acquire a broader area. Of course you feel light, eased-up and relaxed.

It’s a habit basically. The more one goes into it, the more he gets rid of the unmaking, disturbing thoughts and emotions which disturb the autonomic functioning of the biological processes in the human system.

Hone the art of just being present in the entire body. It sends a soothing wave of awareness. A gentle spread of just being. It naturally happens when all the biological processes in the body are functioning at their optimum level. One grooms prodigious patience. It stalls the process of one’s hopes getting devoured by despair. Accidental living and conflicting providences slowly leave their grip on your fate.  

A little step to be a big creator

 

I exert myself to actualize my potential not for acceptance, applauds, rewards or recognition. I write and create basically to free myself from the rolling convulsions of my own fears, illusions, warring thoughts, assumptions and limiting conditioning. My endeavor to create something fresh, or for that matter all art, is primarily a process. It’s not a destination. It’s a path to liberate myself from what limits me. It’s a small pathway leading from a stern, haggard look to a healthy smile.

It’s also not something abstract, limited to my own self. I’m part of the collective as well. Every creation in this world will have at least one genuine appreciator to whom the creation would feel like her own, who will feel she is absolutely in harmony with the meaning coming out of that creation. This is as much her creation as the creator’s.

After my smaller self’s integration with the larger self within—which sows the seeds of creativity—the crop (art) blooms and harvesting is sharing it with the world outside. It’s never about money and numbers. It’s only about sharing. Creation itself is sharing. One feels overjoyed and rejuvenated. The heart that once shuddered and contracted now opens up.

A piece of art is a decorous and dignified outreach to the forces of cosmic creation. A joyous convulsion by mother creation. Its potential was always there in you but the moment you actualize it, give it a specific shape, you directly share it with the world.

As a creator you gracefully add to the lazily cantering cavalcade of life. So as a creator be not cumbered either with praise or condemnation from yawning, fuming critics or fawning fans. If you allow yourself to be affected by either positive or negative comments on your work, the stream of creativity meets a dead-end. The colors, scent and elegiac vision get diluted from your creation. The work stands shorn of its inherent purity. A piece of lost purity it becomes.  

The tiny escape route

 

A herd of sheep running away from imagined wolves. But then it gets bored with its fear as well and then the driver of the run takes another shape. It becomes imagined pastures. The latter again changes to some other imagined predator, which again shifts to become imagined water pool.

As a herd we are mostly running away, maniacally assailed by unbreakable predicaments, from our imagined fears towards imagined security. Very rarely we are resting balanced between fears and security.

It’s a meaningless stampede. Our impulses rampantly pushing us like rocket fuel in the mad rush. Logic, sanity, reasoning all clouded by panic hormones. So difficult to see beyond the cloud of dust.

The horde unconsciously christened for meek, blind followership. The large brood forever ignorant of the hitherto inaccessible pools of views, thoughts, emotions and creativity. Little brats stuck up in the much studied and much hyped syllabus of stupidity, the tools of hatching a stilling insularity from the bubbling potential of human evolution.

But the solution is just a step away. We can step out on a quite by-lane. It’s always round the corner, an individual by-lane, always there for you. It pursues you. It’s quite loyal. All you have to do is to accept the invitation. And step in. Everything changes. Just being aware of this by-lane is as good as expiating the voluntary, involuntary sins. It saves you from unquestioning servitude to impulses and reactions.

The clouds of collective phobias and mass dose of opium of illusionary elements of security are too big to pursue you and enter this quiet, narrow by-lane. Here you have to deal with little entities of individual fears and illusions. You are too big for them. You easily overpower them because you are well poised and not running away from hallucinatory hounds.

Once you see the light of your own little truth, you pass the test. Then you can easily come out to the main boulevard of life. Then you will be walking even in a stampede without getting pushed or crushed.

Well, that’s a miracle. Isn’t it? And be sure that it happens that way. You become a stable walker even in this worldly stampede. The snorts, grunts and confounding rigors of life hardly leave you shaking with fear like a rabbit.

Be aware of the patterns that control your life

 

We need to be careful of patterns in our life. They draw us into comfort zones; into easy choices. Yes, it begins with our response to certain situations in life. But most of our apparent responses are mere repetitive reactions basically born of our fears and insecurities. They are just escape mechanisms. Under their spell we start screeching with the searing passion of parakeets on their favorite tree.

A pattern thus consolidated over a period of time becomes the mainstream of our life in which all the tributaries—our assortment of attributes, talent and skills—flow into and lose their significance. Believe me, it’s disservice to life. It’s falling into a hypnotic claustrophobia with a foolish smugness and taking it to be the proof of our realistic, logical hold on life. It’s heretical to one’s true self and real, almost infinite potential. 

Under the influence of a powerful pattern in life, we feel there is stabilization, but in reality it’s our acceptance and surrender to one pattern, one push. It has popular appeal and cherished theme. As a wide-eyed, shy and introvert boy, lanced by an entire array of pre-teen fantasies, the solidly patterned person stops evolving towards maturity, wisdom and creativity.

The masterful masquerade of mediocrity. The paying propositions by the pauperizing king of misers, the hypnotic pattern. No wonder, life becomes one-dimensional under the rule of populist potentate.

So we need to routinely analyze the predominant patterns of our individual life. Test them. Critically evaluate them. Dissect them. Once we do that, we open ourselves to multifold choices and opportunities on a broader plain of existence.

Most of the time, a pattern well analyzed and remedied accordingly leads us to a still more superior pattern. That’s inevitable. It’s as per the cosmic law of evolution. So start asking yourself about the major patterns in your life. Study your patterns of thoughts, reactions, fears, insecurities, anxieties, comfort zones, greed, lust and relationships.   

The little seed of sin

 

The seed has the potential to blossom into an entire forest. Similarly, little-little ticks and mites of tiny lies, small tricks, miniscule cheatings and puny short-cuts are the seeds of big forgeries and criminalities.

They look harmless in their tiny grainy avatar. But they germinate, grow and evolve drawing sustenance and nutrition from our ill-advised ego, the dark shade of survival through any means. The little mischievous opportunists get clandestinely cosseted in our moral fabric to eat it like termites over a period of time.

Spurred by an exorbitant spree of insecurities, the wild growth develops and takes possession of our persona. With the passage of time, small saplings grow into big ones. Bigger lies become tolerable. Larger illegalities don’t strike as vulgar and bad. They seem natural steps that one has to take in the name of practicality and convenience.

The seed hands over its potential to the tree. Becomes a tree. A natural evolution. The small saplings of immorality grow and cover the conscience.

So it’s essential to be mindful of the tiny seeds. Watch your little steps of short-cuts and tiny, selfish facilitations. It comes as an innocent child, but grows into a big bully and changes the course of your entire journey.

Among all your amiably performed squabbles take the pill of this humble advice on an empty stomach and go through the day conscientiously.

A kind farmer

 

There was a 250-year-old banyan tree. It stood on a parcel of land owned by a farmer named Balbir Singh. The land was acquired by the NHAI for road construction. The farmer tried to save the tree and requested to let the tree stay at its original place and divert the road a bit.

The kindly farmer had absolutely no problem about his land being acquired for building roads. He just wanted to save the tree. He was ready to offer more land for development provided the highway was re-routed to save the tree.

He told them that the tree would look beautiful as a landmark. But they didn’t listen to him. The roads go straight with a dreadful effrontery. Mere trees are just insignificantly irksome. The roads, on the other hand, are the swords cutting distances. They are cold hearted and cut trees, hills and homes in their wake. Unsparing insentient beings.

All his efforts to save the ancient tree went unheeded. The farmer really loved the tree and requested the authorities to replant the tree at a suitable place. He launched a campaign to force the authorities to replant it at a place of his choice.

A social media campaign was started to save the tree. Many activists, NGOs and volunteers also added their voice of support. They even reached the doorsteps of the local Member of Parliament.

His efforts at least convinced the authorities to relocate the tree to another place in his landholding. The NHAI officials, the local administration, horticulture experts and land acquisition authorities assured him that they would try their best to expertly uproot the tree and replant it at a different place. He was clearly given a word that the tree would surely survive after the scientific relocation.

He chose his own land for the grand old tree’s replanting and became the axis of the replanting drive. The administration kept emphasizing that the roots would be intact and the tree will be grafted using all the scientific practices to ensure it will re-grow.

Sadly, even after a good monsoon came and went, the tree didn’t grow a single new shoot. The farmer himself watered the replanted tree and took ample care. Even the horticulture experts visited frequently for follow-up steps. But the tree didn’t sprout.

The farmer is feeling let down by the authorities. He is thinking of taking them to the court for making a false promise and breach of trust. Kisan Unions and environmentalists have been lending their voice in support of the farmer.

The farmer sees the tree as a legacy for his progeny. His ancestors had worked hard in the fields and rested under its shade. The tree was the pride of the village and was said to be planted by some Muslim family in pre-independent India. He fondly reminisces that cattle, animals, birds and humans took shelter under it in the scorching heat.

Well, it’s a glimmer of hope that there are people around who love trees more than the commerce of land. The cherry-toned whisper of love for nature in this post-modernist bewilderment. The soft-springed gait amidst the collective floundering rush towards the precipice overlooking a still nastier abyss. 

The entangled mirages of the mind

 

We always have a highly exaggerated sense of problems, tough situations and challenges. Our primal fears and insecurities stretch the minor possibilities of negatives to make them babbling pools of consternation and imaginary worst-case scenarios.

Highly exaggerated assumption of problems acquires the shape of a wall between us and the people over there. Testily we lose trust in people. In the throes of approbation, we glutter and stutter and become so insecure that we feel ourselves to be at everyone’s target around us.

This is plain paranoia. A causeless encumbrance. The journey quavering and the path trackless. Smothered by impulses the journeyman gasps for the air of truth (reality).

Just look into the past experiences of your life, you will find that mostly we acted on the impulse of being defensive or offensive imagining the worst-case scenario. But our ego will take credit that by acting in that manner we nullified the chances of that common threat from acquiring a nasty shape.

The simple fact is—we imagine a disproportionately big problem or situation and then we take credit for that thing not happening.

It’s all in the mind. Balance is the way out, as Buddha says. Balance will tell us to be cautious to what extent. It helps in having a realistic and logical threat assessment. Then our system doesn’t go into an overdrive due to the panic-button’s trigger.

I know it’s very difficult to beat these impulses. But we can practice to remember that most of the time our fears are overblown; that things are pretty normal most of the time after the brief sandstorms. Situational sandstorms are the moments that need a pause and composure with eyes closed. Haggard, impulsive and stifled look doesn’t help. There is no need to eat dust and getting blinded by the sand. The sandstorms surely die. Just remember this.     

Things aren’t tangled generally. They are just slightly out of order. Like the cord or chain of the necklace or amulet worn around one’s neck. Just a tiny incongruity. Meagerly abashed. It’s our chaotic effort that turns a slightly tricky loop into an irresolvable knot by randomly, indignantly pulling from chance directions. Chaos and disorder born of just pulling by chance. If we just hold it and allow it to untangle itself, it falls into place by itself.

Similarly, most of the time, the seemingly tough situations are simply slightly tricky loops. It’s we who pull at them randomly and discordantly, driven by impulses and reactions, and turn them into tight knots which are very difficult to undo.

An apparently tangled cord has very small wrong turns. But our reactionary effort, plentitudes of vexations, assortment of anxieties, faculties prostrating to the imagined fears, fearful fancies and silly suppositions put it into very tight knots and mess it up.     

The hierarchy

 

It’s a pyramidal socio-economic structure. At its any given point, there are less (in numbers) luckier people above and more (in numbers) unluckier ones below. That’s almost a natural law.

Prosperity softly narrowing down to a point at the apex; poverty and misery broadening to cover the entire earth. The ribald splutters of some unjustifiable, cruel derivation of the unknown cosmic laws. Millions on the burning, hammering anvil as a prelude to small shapes of luck for the chosen few. And mother existence looking with a kind of pre-selected apathy. Mass austerity for little lucrative fates.

Wherever you are placed, just analyze your standing in socio-economic terms. You will find that for dozens of luckier people (let’s say better placed people—both on account of inheritance and hard work), there are hundreds who are placed lower than you mostly by the accidents of birth, by being born in more challenging situations. Wherever you are situated, you are still standing on the soil of myriads of unluckier fates.

The baseline comprises teeming billions who are cast in the same mould of poverty, hunger, misery and numerous other disadvantages. They symbolize loss and pain itself. They are the benchmark. They have the luckier and unluckier ones only among themselves. There is absolutely no one below them as a class or group. They are the base field for any windfall, any successful parley, any congratulatory word buzzing around, any precursor to smile, any tiny step leading to quantum leap, any ounce of progress, growth and development in the world above them. They are the broad canvas of pain on which a few pictures of pleasure are drawn by the unknown hand. 

The same applies for the few odd people at the pyramid’s apex. They have nothing to look up above their heads. The well-heeled elitists can just look within their peer group for some relative perspectives. But for the majority in the pyramid, it’s just dozens of luckier people and thousands of unluckier ones.

 

Afghanistan is a beautiful but bloodied land. So many dreams die even before they take birth. But a 13-year-old boy dreamt big and high. He took a gutsy step to fulfill his dream of going to Iran. A brusque and curt plan propelled by boyhood’s innocence where there is hardly any difference between facts and fancy.

On a promising Sunday morning, dressed in white kurta-pyjama, he managed to sneak into Kabul airport and got mixed in a queue of passengers going to board a plane and occupied his free, unauthorized seat in the plane’s rear wheel well, his private business class in the internal compartment housing the landing gear.

He had come all prepared. His luggage included ‘a small red-colored audio speaker’. The boy must be in love with it. Perfect. But he boarded the wrong plane. The plane was bound for India rather than Iran.

Flying over 40,000 feet, where temperature drops to minus 50 degree Celsius and oxygen just a small fraction of what it’s at the sea level, he landed at Delhi airport after the 90-minute flight. A miracle survivor in the unheated and unpressurized wheel well. Hypoxia and hypothermia make mortality rate as high as 80 percent for such stowaway passengers. Then there is a great risk of getting fatally injured by the movement of the landing gear. Or one may fall during flight or while landing due to the sheer shock of it.

The boy has entered the elite club of 132 such passengers who travelled in landing gear compartment between 1947 to 2025 (according to the US Federal Aviation Administration). But the boy didn’t know that it takes more than boarding a plane to successfully reach the destination. He could barely feel the solicitous sensation and playful air of a boy realizing his dream. He had no clue how and where to go, so was easily spotted by the security personnel. Sadly the Indian authorities had no ways to reward him for his feat. Under the immigration laws there was just one option. He was made to board the same return flight in the evening. But inside the aircraft this time.

Well, his stowaway journey earned him a stopover at the IGI, New Delhi and a normal ticket back home apart from the status of few rare surviving stowaways. He is still a kid and I’m sure will retain his spirits and share all about his popular journey with his friends. He definitely has dreams of flying. But he needs to work, study, turn wise, skilled and then board a legal flight to pursue his Iranian dreams.

Given his raw cache of guts he can surely do this. He has lots of stamina apart from bundles of courage. But courage and stamina should never be put to such wayward, random plans. There is always a proper, legal way of realizing one’s high-flying dreams.

His courage is irrefutable and incredulous. He possesses the seeds of a handsome stalwart. He just needs to tone down the thundering pitch of raw valor and guide it for proper objectives. Rather, the Afghan authorities need to take note of his potential and guide him for better plans than stowaway flights.

Undirected freedom: the agent of atrophy

 

If you can’t balance the internal push to assert your almost absolute sense of freedom with the outer restraining pulls of laws, rules and regulations—and can’t prepare yourself to be tamed by the prevalent customs, norms and traditions (the overall collective acceptables) which put duties, responsibilities, laws, injunctions that seem binding and suffocating to you—then you have to abandon the certainties and safeties born of such a customized mould.

If you have the courage to spare your sense of identity from being comprehensively stamped with collective safeties, you have your entire energy to pursue your own path. But one has to be very careful with this untamed spirit or un-caged energy. It’s a storm basically and unless you have a specific path leading to a clear meaning of an alternate reality, the spating fury of this untamed river will consume you. You then become a self-predator—eating your own self.

The whirlpool of random energies is nothing short of a demon. It will manifest in random, accidental, chancy, impulsive bursts—which give the illusion of being the expression of freedom—that will shake, ruffle, push and pull you as per its own weird sense of randomness.

This is as good as—or as bad—going mad. You end up being a king or queen waging a war against your own self, taking it to be a fight of freedom against others. Even the slaves to norms are better than such kings and queens.

So if you believe in absolute individual freedom and take yourself to be free from the cast of social conditioning, you should have an idea about what to do with your un-caged, un-customized energies. You should have a roadmap to create your own version of alternate realities. Moreover, you have to be prepared for reactions, ridicules and judgments. The latter won’t affect you if you have been honest about your path of individual freedom. But these will lance you if you have been dishonest and taken your pleasure dives as expression of inherent freedom because in that case it’s mere escapism—escaping from duties and responsibilities and unjustifiably wallowing in your rights only.

We have to pay, in the form of commitments to the larger collective or to the solitary self, something in the form of duties to allow ourselves the set of rights including the right to the so-called ‘almost absolute sense of freedom’.  

The tiny subsets within the cosmic set

 

We are connected to the larger dimensions of super-consciousness through the shadows in our subconscious. The latter mostly serves as the soil of manifestation, our consciousness, the platform of our conscious being, the awareness of our individual awareness, the sense of our identity.

The super-conscious is nothing yet everything at the same time. It is just pure potential, a probability for infinite manifestations. Our individual subconscious is just a tiny ripple in the super-conscious cosmic sea. With our conscious being we can perceive its vague shadows. These unresolved shadows flippantly drive our impulses, habits, fears, insecurities, desires, dreams, imagination. The acrid substratum smell casting its invisible layers over the fragrance of lovely spring around us. Life then seems just a random series of confronting coincidences.

There is a significant part of negative forces in the subconscious that works as a check-dam on the life-stream of manifestation at the conscious level. These shadows acquire the shape of invisible ghostly army that keeps ambushing the troops of our conscious effort to create and manifest a really meaningful life in broad daylight.

The shadows in our being. The antagonistic vituperations. A weird exasperation flaring up. Life becomes dreadfully wearied and perpetually harassed. Instead of becoming a nice storyteller, one is flung into the miserable, tattered corners of life in survival mode only. Self-tarnished. Turmoil and dissention within. Enthusiasm peters out.              

I think writing or journaling—or for that matter any form of art involving creation—is a very constructive means of allowing those unmanifested shadows to acquire shape and be present before us. The hidden impulses, fears, cravings and insecurities get embodied and stand there in front of us. We can then see them with clarity and analyze the pattern of our negativities.

Creative expression through art is a mirror in which the creator can have a specific outline of the haunting shadows that have tormented his soul and manipulated behavior. Because once you face something, it becomes very easy to deal with it. The fault lines within are put into light. The friction, the conflict, the restlessness all of them acquire a tangible shape that is clearly readable. The whirlpool of random energies that has been meaninglessly churning pain within gets an outlet. There is a release of the pent-up energies of pain like lava seeping out of a vent, avoiding an explosion.

Art is basically a vent on the existential surface of the artist. It slowly spews out the lava of discontent, unorthodox ideas, unique dreams, offbeat desires, alternative realities and exquisite imagination. That’s why art is so cherished and condemned simultaneously. It’s worshipped by the few for being a fresh manifestation, a goddess of originality. But it’s condemned as a rebel also for not yielding to the collective mass reality. But the artist still takes risks because outer condemnation is nothing in comparison to the inner damnation if it isn’t allowed to be manifested.  

 

Walking in the lane of solitude

 

The sense of freedom is the sum total of all the elements of self-interest in the domain of life. Mostly, this is counterbalanced by customs, social norms, rules, responsibilities and duties. The rampant horse of freedom is reined-in and runs, trots, walks or gently jogs on the path of life. As a result, life has a conformist, sweet-sour, lukewarm meaning: not all good; not all bad—a conventional cocktail of survival.

Here, in the main lane, one acts, thinks or behaves almost like what all others are doing. But there are individuals whose sense of freedom overlaps the collective mould. They find it too confining. The little rebels they are.

It’s a blizzard of a peculiar type of energies that pushes one into unorthodox lanes promising walks on fresh pastures further on. But these little lanes, by-lanes and back alleys have a puzzling network.

Walking in such abandoned lane, one needs to have a very strong sense of the meaning of his/her unorthodox sense of self-interest; otherwise, it turns out to be a disorderly ramble into the unknown leading to isolation, loneliness and depression.

One ought to have a clear idea where it might lead to in the absence of conventional cushion supports of relationships, routine jobs, occupations, social networks, peer groups and the rest of collective cushion support naturally born of conforming to the sense of collectivism.

It’s a walk in isolation and only a sense of definite meaning serves as an inner compass to help one navigate the unchartered territory. But even when you are successful in crossing over to the lovely pasture across the maze, you realize that it’s never about severing all links and exist as an abstracted entity. You will find that connection is unavoidable on earth. To be a human is to share and connect in one form or the other.

We carry too much collective Homo sapiens-ness in our genes. So the best way out, in my opinion, is to maintain a healthy balance between individuality and collective identity. A well-honed sense of equilibrium is the way out. You have to set-up your own sense of individuality and meaning of life in the collective pool of human existence in a well-poised, harmonized manner.

The best path is the middle path between extreme individualism and callous collectivism.; between absolute freedom and sweetly binding responsibilities; between giving and taking; between free run and protocol-led walk. A juicily well-occasioned existence in the form of a reasonably independent part of a defining whole.   

The galactic tango

 

It happened when the current universe was rather young. A huge star loitered too close to a super-massive black hole. Aah, the perils of proximity! It was torn apart with cosmic brutality, its proud mass shredded to pieces. Catastrophic and carnage wreaking. Its burning pyre, the blasting flare, shone with a brightness that would equal ten trillion suns.

The black hole had cosmic tools of cataclysm—tangled magnetic fields in heated gas disks—around it. It happened ten billion light years away from earth (one light year is about six trillion miles). It occurred so long ago and so far away that its flash reached an observatory on earth in 2025 only. The explosion happened when the universe was young and there was no earth. Just imagine the scale of cosmic events. Doesn’t that signify our insignificance in the galactic scheme of things?

A galaxy has a super-massive black hole at its center that gives it a spin like it’s revolving around an axis. O thou habitual chest-thumper, just imagine the power of such a black hole that keeps billions of stars around it in a colossal orbit. So the next time when you feel the weight of your own or someone else’s ego or pride or get blinded by someone’s grotesquely coquettish, towering light poles, just recall these mammoth facts. Then everything will get leveled up.

Just remember that everything and everyone are smaller than the sky above. Similarly, whatever happens on this tiny speck of dust—our little home, earth—is utterly, absolutely inconsequential in comparison to these cosmic behemoths.

All that we do is merely innocuous, impotent rant and cacophony. The funny and vainglorious humanity with its vaporous fumblings. So cast-n-crew, go on with your rabbits-out-of-hat-tricks, but always remember the above given colossal facts.

The invincible threads of life

 

Human endurance is a mere fraction of what many species on earth possess in terms of survival against odds. We claim superiority through incessant verbosity, while they—the smaller species—covered in dusty layers of neglect perform superhero feats with humility and natural ease. Nothing to boast and flaunt the flagrant colors of ego born of the super achievement.

Now it comes to light that the moss—yes, the ordinary tiniest plants found in shady, damp places—possesses extraordinary resilience. Moss ancestors were the earliest covering or clothing of life on what was then a baby earth, just emerging from the onslaught of hot lava. It was the harshest environment when life took soft baby steps in the form of moss, giving mother earth its first layer of clothing.

In 2022, scientists put a handful of moss spores on the outer walls of the International Space Station. The 20,000 moss spores remained exposed to the harshest elements of open space for more than nine months. After that they were brought back to earth and put to tests in a laboratory. Almost ninety percent of them had survived and germinated.

The reproductive tissue in a moss spore is safely hidden under multiple layers of spore walls. Marvelous self-fashioning! The exotic regalia of its well-protected procreative urge. The astounding will to survive. And still we brag about our armored vehicles even after coming across such humbling facts of mother nature!

We the master crafters creating juggernauts with sawdust, varnish, tar, paint, seasoning wood. While the moss simply has an inert shield against cosmic forces.

If we learn our lesson well, it might help in developing ‘sustainable life-support systems’ in space. Maybe the lessons from moss resilience will help in generating oxygen, controlling humidity and forming soil in space.  

Enhancing one's individual cause

 

It’s human to be self-centered. Bristling denizens and opaque stalwarts as we humans are. That’s how we have evolved. That defines our approach and attitude to life.

This narrow linearity of our dreams, desires and ambitions is comforting and assuring on the surface. But like all comfort zones it sets up big limitations on what one can accomplish because one erects very strong and high walls between his particular life and the rest of existence. It will be just a peripheral photograph of the lovely broad panorama out there.

If we dilute the boundary by linking our interest with some larger cause—however small that may be—beyond ourselves, we open ourselves to the grace of positive factors that in fact boost our individual ambitions instead of limiting them.

For example, suppose you are fighting for success in business, politics or elite jobs. If you link your fate—the success that you want to achieve—with someone needy, let’s say some bright student from a poor family, or a special child from a needy family and decide to support that child—however small the monthly amount might be—you broaden the horizon of your personal endeavor.

Now you are not walking on a razor-sharp individualistic line. A unique credence blooms in the orchard of your private project. It’s as good as walking on the sacred sands of the cross-cultural path of humanity. You are walking on a nice broader path involving love, ambition, kindness and altruism.

By linking your hard work with the fate of some disadvantaged child, you become a greater creator than what you would have been if you had just thought about yourself only and thus limited the input-out equation strictly to your fate.

So pursue your ambitions as much as you can o thou tactical genius. That’s your right. But you have a duty to your true version—your larger self. And that duty is to walk on a broader path instead of the knife-edge of strictly personalized interest.

So slog hard, earn money, set-up empires, become a big shot. Go for paramount search in disused quarries with your own self-created striking nuances. No problem. But as you invest your soul in your project (input), link the process to some poor fate (by promising to yourself that you will be giving this much money or support to help that disadvantaged fate).

It’s my word that the output will be so much that even after deducting the charity amount you will still make big profits.

Favors federated to those more near to ground than ourselves fetch many direct-indirect benefits. This is no sterile lesson by a traditionalist. It’s herbal soup prepared by a conscience-stricken chef for the nourishment of soul.

The AI-empowered femininity

 

In the human-centric world, during the current era which started around 4000 years ago (when Homo sapiens started to control the ways and means of life on earth), the males of the alpha species on earth have been the dominant force in shaping cultures, institutions, economics, politics, occupations or for that matter whatever stands as the defining feature of the modern world.

The dominant physical force of the males has subdued the role of females as contributing factors—rather than the deciding one—to the development of human society on earth. But things are rapidly changing now. The blizzard of male force has overspent itself through wars, intrigues, disasters, natural hazards, atrocities and genocides at the collective level.

The men carry the evil consequences at the individual level as well. They have led, driven by blind ambition and ego, very undisciplined lives. They smoke, drink, fight, brawl more than the women. As a result, the physical system of the males has degraded more than that of the females. In almost all the societies, the women have better longevity than the men. In my village itself there are hundreds of men who have perished before their wives. The old women are still enjoying blissful old age while the men are gone long time back. The husbands over-drank and over-smoked themselves to death.

This waywardness in men has eroded their physical and mental capabilities as well. Even in deeply conservative societies, the women, using their emotional strength, have slowly acquired better role and position because men have failed in their patriarchal roles. And in a family where women’s effort and opinion carry a bigger weight in running the affairs, obviously the position of the girl child improves. So the female child is getting better education, more balanced nutrition and enhanced career options. We have now more women in jobs, politics, sports and business.

I think the position of men will continue coming down. The women will have more share in power—from managing households to running countries. It’s a slow progression to a gender-equal society. It may still go ahead to turn a global matriarchy within a century. We have a huge database involving facts, figures and analysis about the men’s wrong treatment of the women since historical times. In the future world—with algorithms picking up new versions of reality on the basis of facts and data fed into them—the AI might end up considering itself to be a feminine entity, viewing itself as something new, a fresh step in evolution, the natural as well as scientific progression.

Database is the soul of the AI body. And the soul of the AI body of course will be biased towards the women because of the substantiated facts of the men’s wrongdoings. The algorithms going into the historical chambers reeking with masculine nastiness and evil secrecy might churn out feminine-centric (full of angst against men as a separate entity) solutions and applications. So when the AI will be the deciding force, it will obviously pick up a pro-women system of knowledge—and its practical application—that will further help the women in acquiring more influence in running the show on this planet.

It’s just the completion of circle. A natural thing. A new deity on the archival altar. A new swiping narrative: impassioned, poetic emotional rollercoaster and comprehensive sensitivity for the cause of the women as the historically subdued and exploited species. A unique circulation in the evolution of consciousness. A super-physical bond between the human females and the AI.

‘You will stand where I stand today,’ as someone said. So I expect it to be a matrilineal society after a few decades. Manliness linked to barbarism and femininity related to entitlement born of man-induced privations. The women with the fragrance of sweet, wild water. The men, the cacti and thorn. The moral sand dunes will shift and old moralities barely affordable. A buxom femaleness would set up new-age feminine paradigms.    

The empowered self

 

The real power is the power and control over one’s own self. Seeking power outside—through authority, influence, wealth, networks and relationships—is simply avoiding the reality through a pseudo-reality.

Real power lies in facing one’s own dark side.

Real power means the capability to control our impulses, fears and insecurities. It’s the power to dispel the shadows of the worst in us.

What lies in us is the pure potential. It’s beyond the categorization of good and bad. It can go either way. It can turn into a thorn; it can blossom into a flower.

Real power means to checkmate the ‘wrong’ inside and allow the ‘right’ to germinate, sprout, blossom and ripen. Once that happens, the reflection of that power within will be a lovely manifestation on the outside. It will be a sweet fruit for others to cherish. Then you share and care.

Once the source of darkness inside vanishes, you spread light outside.

What does god want to convey through this unflinching periodicity of light and dark? In eloquent intimacy with light, darkness is just a background shade and this existence just a combinatorial cosmic saga.

To become really powerful we just need to be aware of the possibilities of good and bad within our own self. Like a farmer trying to control the weeds and nourishing his crops. A harvesting of the potential within. To raise a crop, a fruitful one. Fruitful for one’s own self and helpful for others as well. The latter occurs of its own once life becomes meaningful.  

Stepping into the zone of freedom

 

The heady scent of wild flowers, shrubs and grasses under the open sky. Peace pouring from every chink of sky. Silence coded in the lullabies sung by a soft breeze. Free, frank and honest; nothing to hide. Ultimately esoteric. Primarily unselfconscious. An openness to life.

Freedom layered over the scented air. The unqualified, artistic oeuvre of mother nature, the paragon of ultimate virtue.

Brushstrokes of an esoteric poetic protest against cutting-edge modernism. A soft singsong opposition to the radicalizing, egocentric onslaught of the same age-old, decadent thoughts and ideologies masquerading as new-age panacea and illustrious propaganda. The new-age repackaged piousness peppering the same evil of the old, sidestepping love, beauty and truth.

One can just be aware of it—freedom—and inhale as much as one wants. Aware with the lucidity of the full moon in the heart of night. And with it will arrive, naturally, softness and acceptance of what one is; and respect and belief in what one can become.

O ye all those who carry heavy air around you (the ego itching with lice, nits, ticks and fleas of rampant desires and untamed fears), invigoration and lightness lie just a step away. It’s not in the ego-dog’s pursuit of meat pasties. It’s there lying on the tender blades of grass jeweled with free diamonds of dew.

Take a step and claim your bonus. For a change, turn your head away from the wobbly scramble, flimsy and wispy shine of futile fragilities, drop that contentious gaze and look into the delicate mist of the truth. Loose and vague abstractions get straightened to achieve an almost equal felicity with the ultimate truth.