Be your own champion

What is there to win for you? 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 which could have fetched unqualified happiness 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 the 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 bases 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 ourselves. We are basically self-fuckers, always pulling down our own pants to shame our own selves.

Expansion and contraction

A raindrop in the ocean,

and a balloon in the air,

One mixing with the whole

to become complete and happily spread out,

The other capturing a part of the hole

to egotistically confine for a specific, limited self.

A simple remedy for thousand ailments

Raise awareness. Work on it diligently. It gives you a nobler heart and more controlled mind. It’s a practice much like you build your physical strength through regular workouts. Natural instinct, almost similar to being inclined to be lazy, is to be caught unaware. It’s nothing short of blindness, just like going into a dark tunnel. Once you cannot see, you are no longer responsible for your actions.

Evil has roots in unawareness. Awareness is a disinfectant. A human being, while being fully aware, can’t kill, rape, rob or fight. It’s simply impossible to be aware and be at your worst at the same time. Goodness flows from awareness. It’s simply being in the warm light where you feel better and see everything crystal clear.

There is a fountain of happiness inside. It lies dormant under the crust of fears, lies, illusions and ignorance. All these are bred by unawareness. To sharpen your awareness you need to do the spadework. A lot of unearthing required. You need to dig. Stop, take a pause and dig again. It needs a long look within.

With just knowledge you can walk on the crust. It makes you simply competitive, wherein you want to win at any cost. It pushes you into a zone of being terribly self-centered. No wonder you become less humane.

Awareness breeds wisdom. You reach the source of happiness. Therein you just don’t run to your destination stampeding over the lesser things along the path. You have empathy and you care for the consequences of your actions.  

Unawareness is the root cause of pseudo-illnesses of the mind. In the long term these even turn into real physical ailments.

The soldier of peace

If avoidance of fight and quarrel is cowardice and escapism, then biting back a dog that has bitten you is bravery. If running away from fire is defeat, then standing in front of a speeding car is bravery.

Acceptance doesn’t mean defeat. It means taking control of yourself, sympathize with the self, giving yourself an understanding pat on the back, pause, sit down, rest and allow the storm to pass over. And then you see the light. Believe me, storms burn out too fast. And peace drags moments to eternity.  

When you get caught in the whirlpool of adverse situations, the more you struggle, the more are the chances of drowning. The perilous eddies are most dangerous on the surface. But sometimes allowing yourself effortlessly to be sucked in gives you a chance to slip out of the vortex, because the base is very narrow. Similarly, problems have an apparent broad surface, but in reality have a very tiny base below the surface. So don’t choose to waste yourself on the surface of issues and routine headaches. Just dive down. There you see the reality. Most of the seemingly mammoth problems eddy out of a very small, funny base.

So the cool soldier, be on your guard, lower your head and dive to survive and see your glorious sun some other day at some other point.

Repose, rest and creative imagination

Don’t be in haste, don’t run too fast, for in running too fast, always looking at your destination, you lose the real charm of your journey. You miss the real fruits that were placed along your path. You hardly realize the real boons coming across your path. Is it, in any way, better than a blind run? And mind you, no destination is defined just in itself, something lying at a distance in abstract. Every destination is the sum total of the experiences coming across the way.

So cool down, take a pause, and move restfully with respectful awareness. The things that light up your awareness at each step are as important as the final destination to which you mean to reach. The trees, birds, floating clouds, gentle breeze, sunshine, ponds, rivers, nice people, charming conversations, and what not. Your each step carries the prospects of the pearls of happiness provided you slow down your time. The time which is yours, defined by you, not by the clicking hands of the clock. Your time obeys you, not the vice versa. You can slow it down with your increased awareness. Stretch each second on the enlightened curve of awareness. Time then obeys you, giving you more in seconds than you ever watched and experienced in whole days.

Do you think a journey is accomplished by the running force you propel into? Think again if you say yes. It’s not possible to run forever. A run has to depend on rest to sustain itself. Do you think the accelerator paddle in your car takes you to the destination? No! It’s the brakes intervening to give restful pauses for safety to give meaning to your speed, to make it an organized run instead of a mad rush ever accelerating and crashing into some fatality.

The break, the pause, the rest, these are the basic ingredients to turn any random movement into a meaningful, assured, safe journey taking us to some destination. Miles and miles of mindless dash without breaking, restful pauses are meaningless crazy jump into the desert ending in painful mirages.

As you run without pause, rest and awareness, and with heedless hurry, you stress yourself out. This stress and tension kills the imagery. All tensed up and stressed, looking anxiously at the destination far-far away, you lose that dreamy imagery which makes each step a victory in itself. Do you think life is meaningful without restful reflections and creative imagination? It simply isn’t. If not now, you realize it later when unfortunately it is too late.

So guys watch your step. And look around you. Countless things and phenomena await to enrich you. These are the things which make your journey fruitful and meaningful in the true sense. The destination stands defined only in terms of the process of journeying and the experiences gained alongside. And when you reach your destination as someone different, almost a victorious king, from the one who began the journey, it’s only the experiences before the final goalpost which have turned the scale in your favour.

The nutshell is: Enjoy the journey fella. Don’t just close your eyes to the surroundings thinking about the destination where you presume to become happy some day in future. Forget it. No destination can give you happiness if you haven’t been happier while journeying.

Happy journey!