Everyone’s got a story of grit and courage to tell you – if you are willing to listen!

You are not alone and Life is not victimizing you.

Yesterday we visited our friends, a lovely couple, who are in their seventies. We talked a lot about Life and its inscrutability. They shared about how many challenges they have seen in their Life. Their daughter, now in her 50s, had to go through several surgeries during her early adulthood owing to a rare health condition. The gentleman has been, for over 18 years now, battling an enforcement body’s cases against him in courts. It was a beautiful evening of sharing learnings and perspectives from each other’s journeys.

When we got home, Vaani remarked to me, “Everyone’s Life is strewn with challenges. Everyone’s facing Life in their own ways to the best of their abilities.”

I believe what Vaani said sums up an important truth about Life.

Almost always when Life deals you a hard blow, you imagine there’s a conspiracy against you. You rush to conclude that you are being singled out, that you are alone and you are now consigned to a lifetime of suffering. Whenever you feel that way, pause and you look up from your situation. Look around, and you will discover that everyone – without exception – has a story of how they are dealing with a unique Life situation. Life, to me, really, is an equal opportunity player. It treats everyone with the same compassion and with the same rigor. And, important, Life is not out to victimize you or punish you. A Life challenge is just an event, a roadblock. You have to work around it, and sometimes even live with it. You can’t fight it and you clearly can’t wish it away.

When you consider the stories around you, than obsess with just your own, you realize that you are blessed in more ways than you know. You can’t surely avoid pain in Life. You can’t even choose pain – as in you can’t decide when – and with what impact – it must arrive. But you can make your pain less significant by looking at another’s pain, by sharing with them, by helping them cope with their own journey. And yes, you can avoid suffering totally by accepting your pain, by never asking ‘why’ or ‘why me’!

There are as many stories of grit and courage out there as there are people. Every single experience and story is precious. To be inspired you must just pause to listen, to share, to learn and to count your blessings!

 

Let alone a misunderstanding, what if people don’t want to understand you?

Choose to be amused, curious, bewildered about people’s behavior – and not bitter!

“Why can’t some people understand us? No matter what we say or do, why is there only an effort to misunderstand by them,” asked a reader on FB Messenger yesterday.

My answer: “Such is Life. That’s just the way some people are.”

Indeed. I see no other explanation for the way some people behave. In fact, personally, I have even reached a stage when I don’t even want to understand – or explain – why some people behave the way they do. Ultimately, everyone does what they think is right. If they thought otherwise, they would not be doing what they are doing! Simple.

The other day, members of my estranged, fractious, family were trying to reach me for a reason. I was preoccupied for a while and so I did not respond immediately to any of them. But the number of messages they pounded me with on WhatsApp, SMS, FB Messenger, e-mail, the number of calls they made, and the tone of their messages indicated that they felt I was deliberately avoiding them. We haven’t been in touch for several years now. Nothing much has changed in the equation among us. But to assume, within an hour of sending someone a message, or after calling them, that they are avoiding you, I believe is being, unfortunately, judgmental.

I wasn’t angry with the tone my family employed. I was amused. And I guess that’s a good way to deal with people that don’t understand you or perhaps that don’t want to understand you. Respond with amusement, not anger. If you look at it objectively, people know what they are doing. If they are saying something nasty about you, or to you, or if they are doing something irrational, illogical, unkind and unjust to you, they are doing it only because they want to do it. I have realized that you can’t stop someone who’s determined to do what they want to do. So, I just let them be. I live in the comfort that the opinions they hold of me, the way they choose to express themselves to me and their actions cannot affect my inner peace.

Actually, it is equally fascinating to see how different people look at the same situation or at the same person differently. This variety makes for an interesting study of human behavior. I am eternally curious to see how people imagine or think up plots, sub-plots, theories and conspiracies in plain, mundane situations. Without such colorful imagination, I believe, Life will be boring. So, I have learnt to let people’s machinations and manipulations, their interpretations and misuderstandings, keep me entertained. I don’t crave for being understood anymore. If they are choosing to be the way they are, it is only appropriate that I remain the way I must really be – unruffled, curious, bewildered, and never bitter!  

Just as you celebrate happiness, you must celebrate sadness too!

If you don’t know how to deal with sadness, you can never be happy.

Someone I met yesterday wanted to know if there is a way to avoid sadness. I asked her why she wanted to avoid sadness. “Because I intensely dislike being sad,” she replied. “Then”, I replied, “What you can do is to examine the futility of sadness and drop it, let it go. You can’t avoid sadness. But you can let it go.”

Nobody wants to be sad. Yet sadness is unavoidable. It is a natural human state, that’s how you will feel when you don’t like what is happening to you. Life is not in your control. So there will be times when you will feel sad. When you feel that way, hold that feeling close to you. Examine it. Dissect it – who or what is causing your sadness? Is there anything you can do about it? If you can, fine, go ahead, do it. If you can’t, ask yourself, is there any point in continuing to feel sad? The moment you come to this level of clarity over whatever’s making you sad and what you can do about it, your sadness will disappear. This is how you deal with sadness – simply be willing to accept it for what it is and move on! This is what is called ‘celebrating sadness’!

Celebrating happiness is easy. We all know how to do it. We share. We radiate positivity. We spread cheer and goodwill. Sometimes, we party. Interestingly, the same approach will work for sadness as well. Surely, a party to share your sadness will work as well as a party to share your joy! We don’t know it works because we have not tried it. Why? Because society has conditioned us to restrict celebrations to happiness and has associated sadness with a state of mourning. The truth about Life is that unless you have learnt to accept and experience sadness fully, you can’t experience happiness! Osho, the Master, has a beautiful perspective to offer here: “Celebration is unconditional; I celebrate Life. It brings unhappiness – good, I celebrate it. It brings happiness – good, I celebrate it. Celebration is my attitude, unconditional to what Life brings.”

Life’s really about experiencing what comes your way. And over what comes your way, you – and I – have no control. The real question is, how do you want to live your Life? Do you want to live it lamenting that nothing’s in your control? Or do you want to celebrate the fact that because you are not in control, because you don’t have to control, because you have nothing to control, you are free?

I choose to celebrate this freedom every day. I ask myself when I am confronted with a situation, and an emotion connected with that situation: is there anything I can do about this? If I can, I go do whatever I can to fix the situation. If I can’t, I let it – the way I feel about the situation – go. And I remind myself, in either context, not to sweat over the situation or the emotion it brings along with it! This is my learning from Life: celebrate it for what it is, the way it is, as it comes!

For your own inner peace, you always have to do what you have to do!

Focus on the issue on hand – not on the people and not on the emotions they are fanning!

Late last evening, a situation that we are involved in, blew up in our face. It was yet another chapter in the ongoing saga of our bankruptcy (read more here: Fall Like A Rose Petal). Someone we know manipulated the whole situation and made it a circus, an emotional drama, in our circle of influence. In this time, we had two choices, either douse the fires caused by the drama or do what is appropriate – remaining detached and focusing on the issue on hand. We decided to do the latter. So, even as the circus played on, we went about the task we felt had to be executed immediately – and we did it with a clinical focus! This episode is far from over, but we have done the best we can do in the given circumstances.

If you think about Life calmly, it always boils down to the choices you make. And the best way to make a choice in any situation where you are swayed by emotion is to do only what you believe in. You have to do what you have to do. Simple. When you make that choice, chances are you may hurt others in the bargain. You may even feel uncomfortable when executing your choice. But eventually, unless you do what you have to do, you can never be at peace with yourself. Your inner peace, above all, is sacrosanct. Don’t let anyone or anything disturb it.

This perspective holds true particularly in contexts when people around you are being manipulative, slimy, or are simply insensitive, and are raking up emotions. I always find it useful to remove all personalities from the picture. And focus on the issue. I ask myself – what’s going on, what needs to be done and how can I do it? The moment you bring in factors like who is doing what or how can I deal with so-and-so person, how are they doing this to me and such, you are playing into the emotional drama. Then you are not thinking with freedom and clarity. You are just adding to the already explosive situation. Blowing things up, out of proportion, really serves nobody’s purpose.

The bottomline is this. There may be situations in Life when you may end up finding yourself where too many people may be saying or doing too many things. Emotions may be running high. Please don’t capitulate and play into all that drama. Take a deep breath. Think calmly and just go do what you have to do. Focus on the issue on hand than on the personalities involved. Don’t think in terms of what is right and what is wrong – that will always be subjective. Instead think on what can make you feel peaceful – and just go do it. Remember: whether you like it or not, whether others like it or not, you have to do what you have to do!  

Life happens in its own time, of its own accord, at its own pace!

So, be patient.

A bug in an original, 3-year-old, licensed version of MS Office led to it crashing on my laptop on Monday morning. After some futile attempts to download and install a fresh version of the license, I got on to a call with Microsoft’s tech support representative. What started as an estimated 20-minute problem resolution window, took over 24 hours and three spells of remote desktop control and tele-support to fix.

In this time, I re-learnt something supremely important for everyday living – the value of patience!

Two Microsoft technicians took turns working on the fix on my machine. Windows 10 had to be, as a last resort, reinstalled. Since they required remote access to my machine, uninterrupted net connectivity was a must. The process became unbearably painful for all of us because we had to contend with both sloppy connectivity and frequent power outages. I was very wary of losing data when the Windows 10 reinstallation and a C drive reset had to be performed. But the technicians remained calm with my naïve questioning, with my hesitation to go through some steps in the process and, at times, with my constantly wanting to know how long it was going to take. They were ultra-patient. They left me feeling good and comfortable every time they even remotely felt I may well have been upset.

This morning, when I rebooted my machine, it started off faster. My internet access is fast too. And overall, there’s a refreshing quality to my computing experience. So, whatever happens, I concluded, happens for the good! In addition to this, there are a couple of flavors to my learning from this MS Office episode. One, technology can be a tyrant – a minor bug can drive you nuts – and the only way you can lead it and drive it is by being patient!  Sometimes, situations and people around you can drive you up the wall, but you must not succumb to the pressure; you must keep your focus, you must be at it to beat it – this is what the young Microsoft technicians did admirably well!

Patience, I have realized, is a non-negotiable, a must-have, pre-requisite to deal with Life’s upheavals and with the twists and turns of everyday living. I totally believe in what Osho, the Master, taught the world – “Be patient. Everything happens in its time, everything happens when it is ripe and, everything happens when you are ripe!”

Like in my MS Office instance, there may be times in your Life when you will catch a bug that you can’t immediately fix. And the only way to resolve the situation would be to go through a reboot, a reinvention – however painful it may be. And if you would like to enjoy that process, if you wish not to suffer through it, you must be patient. Because no matter what you want, how hard you wish or pray, Life happens in its own time, of its own accord, at its own pace.

Feeling worthless? Try being useful!

Today’s blogpost appears as a Podcast. Listen here: 4.44 minutes

In situations when success is elusive, work on making yourself useful!

 

“Sub Kuch Changa Hai Ji!”

Today’s blogpost appears as a Podcast – Listen here – 4:46 minutes

In this Podcast I share my learnings on why I believe the Master Plan has no flaws and why it is futile to expect someone or something outside of you to solve your problems!

 

 

Acceptance is not failure. It is not defeat.

Only when you accept a situation can you go to work on it with clarity and focus.

“How do you learn to accept Life for what it is? Isn’t it very difficult,” asked a young man from the audience the other day, ahead of my Fall Like A Rose Petal Talk at the Madras Literary Society. Interestingly, after hearing my Talk, he didn’t have that question anymore!

It is not just him, a lot of people out there struggle to accept Life for what it is. As I reveal in my Talk, I too have struggled with acceptance. The fundamental reason for resisting Life is that we think we can fight, we can out-think, we can out-smart Life. We think just because we are educated and think logically, rationally, we believe we can solve all the problems we are faced with. But there are some Life situations that are beyond our control. And those cannot be solved no matter how strong our intent may be or how capable we really may be. In such instances, acceptance is the key to avoid suffering and helps immensely with keeping the focus on what needs to get done and in keeping the faith that it will get done.

Consider some instances to understand the value in acceptance. What do you do in Chennai, and most parts of Tamil Nadu and South India, that are struck by drought? The day temperatures are closer to 40 degrees and there’s no respite from the merciless heat – with no signs of rain. Is there any point in fighting Nature? Or take the case of the Malaysian Airlines plane MH 370 – that went missing over 3 years ago. All the world’s forces and resources, technologies and experts, cannot trace the plane. Is there any point in resisting that situation? Is it worth at all to fight it? Or what do you do when you have a rare health condition that no doctor can really put their finger on it? Is there any point in fighting this situation?

So, when a situation is beyond your control, when you know you can’t solve it, the best way to deal with it is to go with the flow. This does not mean inaction or resignation. It means you must accept the situation, you must keep making your efforts to solve it if you believe it can still be resolved, but you must remain non-frustrated if the results don’t add up. So, acceptance is not failure. Acceptance is not defeat. Acceptance is employing common-sense in the wake of an inscrutable Life situation and trusting Life to sort itself out over time. Only acceptance can help you to be non-suffering. And only when you don’t suffer can you get down to working calmly on a situation that requires to be changed.

Stop rushing, simply flow with Life

You must examine your choices if you are not happy with the quality of your Life!

We bumped into a friend who has been wanting to meet us for several months now. Every time he receives an invite for any of our public events, he will promptly message me saying he’s going to try and make it. Then on the day of the event, he will cry out citing a business schedule. Most of our events are on weekends and almost all weekends he is traveling. When we met him yesterday, he was apologetic. “My Life’s not in my hands. I am just a slave of the work I do. I am always rushing, from meeting to meeting, from city to city, from crisis to crisis,” he confessed.

I have been in that place. I have run for over 20 years of my Life like a maniac. I have been so rushed for years on end that I did not even know how my children were growing up. Until Life brought everything, all my busy-ness, to a grinding halt and helped me value slowing down. So, what I am sharing here comes from personal experience. Do take some time off to calmly evaluate your Life.

And you may like to begin by employing a weekend, perhaps this one, to reflect on how your week has gone by! Meetings. Deadlines. Delays. Stress. Anxiety. And before you knew it, the week’s over. Where did it disappear? And how much quality time did you get for yourself – to focus on what matters most and why?

If you found those questions uncomfortable, you must ask yourself another one – why are you rushing through Life, chasing your tail most of the time, and not savoring any moment?

You have a choice though to slow down. And to go through Life slowly, soaking in each moment, is a skill that can be learned just as any other.

But begin with a re-examination of yourself and almost everyone around you. From the time we wake up, to the time we sleep, we are rushed. The way we read our morning papers, the way we bathe, the way we eat, the way we drive, the way we walk, all of it is gripped by a sense of busy-ness that ultimately will lead us to the same point that everyone will arrive at: death! Why will you want to hurry towards an appointment with death? Well, that’s what we are doing precisely – by being rushed all the time!!!

Ask anyone who’s rushing why he or she is in a hurry and you will hear them say: “Well, I am saving time!” Saving time? The irony is, at the end of the day, everyone who’s rushing always complains that there isn’t enough time! Your rushing may help you cover the distance faster but will not enable you to enjoy the scenery. At the end of all the rush, when it is time to depart, you will regret never having lived, never having arrived where you intended to, never having smelled the flowers in Life’s garden!

Here are 10 simple changes you can make to your routine so that you can live and savor this experience of living – and not just rush to earn-a-living!

Reduce the number of meetings that you have to have in a day: one big or two small ones is all you can take

Arrive at the airport with 2 hours to spare before a flight

Eat you meals slower than you normally do relishing each morsel

Spend 15 additional minutes with your family each day; when you kiss your spouse and children goodbye, look at them just a wee bit longer.

Take an additional few minutes in the bath thinking not of the day’s schedules but of how rejuvenating bathing is

Read one inspiring passage over 30 minutes daily

Read it at least once more before you retire for the day

When you see Nature in full bloom__a sunrise, sunset or trees swaying in the breeze or birds chirping__pause, admire, soak in, before you proceed

Spend 15 minutes daily on Facebook connecting or chatting with childhood friends

Be silent for 20 minutes daily.

Spiritual thinker Eknath Easwaran says, “Where hurry prevails, there can be no satisfaction for the doer.” So, stop rushing, stop the hurrying…simply flow with Life. And, well, if you are not happy with the quality of your Life, you now know who is responsible and where to start!

How not to complain about the dirty cup and enjoy the pure wine instead

Worrying serves no purpose; postponing worrying helps immensely though!

Yesterday, I found my equilibrium disturbed by a few irksome operational situations. This was in addition to the drama that Google’s actions had whipped up in my Life. And as if what we were dealing with was not enough, a new crisis arrived in our midst by mid-morning. The last thing we need right now is this new crisis, seriously! To add to the chaos, this crisis comes with a deadline – it has to be resolved within a short timeframe, else…well…it is looking like it will snowball into something bigger – grave and unwieldy!

By mid-afternoon, I decided to get myself some quiet time at my desk. I find it absolutely necessary to remain silent for some spells – at least one – daily. I use this time to pause, reflect – and importantly to postpone worry!

In my silence period, I make a list of all the stuff that worries me – and I have enough and more to worry about, just like you have – and bucket them into two lists. Stuff that I can act on and resolve over time. And stuff that I can’t resolve. Those that I can work on and solve, I convince myself that I need not worry about them. And those that I can’t solve myself, I convince myself again, that I must not worry about them either. This is how, methodically, practically, logically, I postpone worrying on a daily basis.

If you think about it, worrying serves no purpose; because no problem, however big or small it may be, has ever been solved by worrying about it! The biggest benefit of postponing worry is that you are available to the now – and are present in the moment. No past. No future. Which means no grief, anger or guilt over what has happened – the past. And no fear, anxiety or worry over what may happen – the future. No past. No future. You are just present in the moment.

In the present moment there is just beauty. There is complete magic.

Taking a break from all that I was doing and grappling with, I looked outside my window. Several jackfruit hung from the tree in our building’s backyard. They looked so beautiful. A few squirrels scampered up and down. And in the distance, a train blew its horn as it pulled out of the station. For a while I stayed immersed in what I was seeing and hearing.

When I returned to attend to my notes on my desk, I was a lot more anchored. I felt very good. Important, I wasn’t obsessing with my worries that were gnawing at my feet. The worries were there. And I was there too. But I wasn’t picking up any of those worries. My thoughts instead went to Jalauddin Rumi, the 13th Century Persian poet, my favorite, who has said this of Life: “Be aware of the pure wine being poured. Don’t complain that you have been handed a dirty cup!”

You too can train yourself to postpone worrying if you choose to bucket them into the categories of those that you can resolve and those that you can’t resolve. When you do this, you realize the futility of worrying. When you learn to be non-worrying, you can only be in the present. Then the dirty cup doesn’t matter – only the pure wine does!