Carry on living with whatever is, just the way it is!

Life is full of ironies, full of imperfections – don’t seek clarity, don’t search for meaning, just live in the moment with whatever is.

The Week magazine, in their latest issue, have run a cover story on celebrity love children – those born outside of marriage, and from an affair, that celebrities have had. The story features Masaba Gupta (Neena Gupta and Sir Vivian Richards), Prateik Babbar (Smita Patil and Raj Babbar), Aatish Taseer (Tavleen Singh and the late Pakistani businessman and politician who was assassinated in 2011) and Rohit Shekar (Ujjwala Sharma and N.D.Tiwari). While all these people have made peace with their ‘unconventional’ identity, there is an emotional, unstated, underpinning to the story. All of them seem to be asking: ‘why do we have to be judged this way?’ I totally understand that sentiment. Fundamentally, any social norm that labels and categorizes people must be expunged. If you view Life objectively, aren’t all children – all of humanity in fact – born as ‘love children’? The act of making love, having sex, that furthers procreation, is the same among our species. In a way, it is the same biological process that has caused all our existence. So, why label one set of progeny as inferior and another as superior just because the other has come out of a socially acceptable arrangement a.k.a marriage? The best way to deal with such an irony – where you are judged for no fault of yours by those who have no role or business to judge in the first place – is to simply be who you are. As Masaba Gupta told The Week’sShweta Thakur Nanda, “Yes I am a love child. So what are you going to do? Eat me up?”

Let’s face it. Life is full of imperfections. And ironies. Many a time you are confronted with situations that you did not cause or create. Yet, you have no choice but to live with them. You can’t understand why things are the way they are, you can’t explain the why of whatever is that you are dealing with and, often times, you simply can’t make meaning out of Life.

I talk here also from my personal experience. I have no explanation for why my mother called me a cheat or why my siblings remain estranged from me or why I can’t interact with my father although we all live in the same city (‘Fall Like A Rose Petal – A father’s lessons on how to be happy and content while living without money’; Westland – August 2014). My faulty decision to borrow from the family, my enduring bankruptcy and poor chemistry with my mother have confounded an already vitiated environment. Things have now reached a point where unless I return the money I owe the family, none of them is going to – or perhaps is even willing to – have anything to do with me. As long as I tried to convince my family that I have integrity and the intent to repay, that I meant well, that I am a victim of circumstance (some of it caused by my poor decisions), I suffered. Because they just refused to believe me. As long as I wished that I was understood by them, and not judged, I grieved. But when I gave up all efforts to convince my family and stopped craving that I be understood by them, my suffering ended.

I am reminded of the way Osho, the Master, explains Krishna’s conversation with Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita: “Don’t think of the result at all. It is a message of tremendous beauty and significance and truth. Don’t think of the result at all. Just do what you are doing with your totality. Get lost in it, lose the doer in the doing. Don’t ‘be’– let your creative energies flow unhindered. That’s why Krishna said to Arjuna: ‘Don’t escape from the war… because I can see this escape is just an ego trip. The way you are talking simply shows that you are calculating, you are thinking that by escaping from the war you will become a great saint. Rather than surrendering to the whole, you are taking yourself too seriously– as if there will be no war if you are not there.’ Krishna says to Arjuna, ‘Just be in a state of let-go. Say to existence, ‘Use me in whatever way you want to use me. I am available, unconditionally available.’ Then whatsoever happens through you will have a great authenticity about it. It will have intensity, it will have depth. It will have the impact of the eternal on it.’”  

If you look at your Life deeply, just the way it is, it is so beautiful. So, don’t try to escape the ironies and imperfections of your Life. Just be in a state of let-go. Whatever is happening to you, let it happen. Don’t resist. Don’t analyze. Don’t wish it were different. Let Life use you the way it deems fit. Whether you are labeled a love child or a cheat has no relevance to who you truly are. You are who you believe you are. So, carry on living, being available, unconditionally available to Life, with whatever is, just the way it is! 

An unputdownable learning from a pesky co-passenger

Each of us has an opportunity to make trauma meaningful.

Tragedy, and the trauma that follows, has spared no one. Even so, few people make the transition from victim to survivor. And the reason why many don’t make it is because they fail to look at trauma as an opportunity – to evolve, to understand Life and to make whatever is left of it meaningful.

What differentiates a victim from a survivor is simply the way each of them approaches Life post a setback or a crisis. A victim blames the extraneous factors that caused the crisis for his or her plight. Some victims even blame fate or God for their predicament. But psychologists believe that survivors are not likely to be on a blaming mission. Yes, they too will be besieged by hopelessness, anger and depression, but they will choose to move on. It is never easy. But they will, nevertheless, get up, dust themselves and keep walking – knowing that time – and Life – will eventually heal.

Survivor is a very academic term. I would like to replace it with another one in this context – champion. A champion here does not just mean a winner. It also means one who champions living fully – trying to do his or her best, no matter what the circumstances may be.

In an essay in the latest issue of The Week,  on the fortitude displayed by survivors, Shutapa Paul writes that scientists attribute survivorship – the ability to face Life despite the odds – to biological factors like high serotonin levels, no post-traumatic changes in hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis or less reduction in hippocampal volume in brain. But there’s another reason why champions have the indomitable (human) comeback spirit. And that reason is, they don’t waste time asking why something has happened. Indeed they experience pain and do suffer for a while trying to make sense of whatever has happened. But they stop sulking pretty soon. They face their trauma, accept their reality, recognize the futility of their grief and of blaming anyone – including Life – and simply go on living. They see Life as a gift and don’t intend on wasting it. Nor do they ever feel the urge to quit and to give up on Life.

I was once traveling by the Rajdhani Express from Surat to Mumbai. The passenger sitting next to me was keen to have a conversation with me. I was least interested in a chat and preferred to go back to reading Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, which was nearing its unputdownable climax. But the man was irritatingly persistent. I finally put down the book and succumbed to my neighbor’s efforts to chat with me . I soon discovered that he had an inspiring story to share. He, I learned, is a very successful diamond trader. His wife and only child had died in the Indian Airlines (now Air India) IC 113 plane crash at Ahmedabad airport in October 1988. He showed me pictures of his deceased wife and son. He told me how difficult it was initially for him to cope with their sudden, devastating loss.

“I loved my wife and son dearly. For many months after their death, I would wake up in the middle of the night screaming their names. I would be alone in my palatial bungalow. And my screams would echo back to me. It was eerie,” he said.

“How did you move on? Did you remarry,” I asked, considering I thought he was in his mid-forties when I met him.

“I chose not to remarry. I moved on, however, because I soon realized suffering and grieving was foolish. It was not going to bring back my family alive to me. I realized that while I loved them a lot, I was hardly spending time with them. I was busy making money. Now, I have lots of money. But no family to go back to. So, I have made it my mission in Life to awaken people to the importance of spending time with their families, and not just on their careers. Which is what I want to tell you too. Please make time for people who you love. Spend quality time with your wife and children. Life is very unpredictable and impermanent. Make sure you have meaningful memories when you are finally alone,” he explained.

To me, that man on the train, is a champion. His wisdom, it turned out, was more unputdownable than The Da Vinci Code! For he’s understood not just Life but its value. So, he’s managed to make his Life – and his trauma – meaningful. We may all not be successful in making trauma meaningful, but we can at least ensure that we are not held hostage by it. Clearly, when Life socks us, as it will often do, we can come out of our initial state of shock and trauma, by accepting our current reality, by understanding that continuing to grieve is wasteful and by simply “living Life fully”!