How to summon resilience from within and last a numbing phase in Life

‘Hichki’ leads me to revisiting an unputdownable Life lesson

When confronted with no-go situations in Life, learn to live in the moment, with whatever is.

Rani Mukerji’s Hichki (directed by Sidharth P Malhotra) touched me deeply. It’s a simple film. It is an adaptation of Brad Cohen’s autobiography – Front of the Class: How Tourette Syndrome Made Me The Teacher I Never Had. And Rani’s portrayal of Naina Mathur, a teacher affected by Tourette Syndrome , is brilliant.

I could relate to the powerful scene in the film where Naina sinks to the ground in the school’s balcony – feeling completely hopeless, clueless and defeated – and cries inconsolably. She is felled not just by her the fatigue of having to endlessly endure her peculiar physical condition, her spirit is punctured and she is truly, truly, deflated. I undoubtedly saw Rani on screen, but I empathized with Naina – because I know what it means to feel that way when you don’t know what to do. What do you do when you don’t know what to do in Life?

Hichki left me with an important message – each of us has our own metaphorical version of the Tourette Syndrome. And like Naina Mathur we have to learn to accept it, live with it and keep going on. Sometimes, even people in your close circle of influence – like Naina’s father (played by Sachin) in the film – will refuse to understand you. There will be times when it may appear that the world is conspiring to pin you down and annihilate you. But you must go on. When you don’t know what to do in Life, you just learn to live in the moment. Don’t think too far ahead. Don’t brood over what once was, what is over, on what is past. Don’t sweat over what is not in your control – what is the use of worrying about what you can’t solve? Just learn to last one moment at a time. This may initially seem impossible to do. But the human mind can be trained to obey you – to focus on what is, on the moment. And the human spirit is intrinsically resilient. So, when you take one step at a time, you often end up enduring journeys that you never thought you would even survive.

I have learnt that every Life situation is a teacher. It arrives in your Life with a specific purpose – to humble you, to remind you that it is not you, but it is Life which is in control. Some situations have shorter tenures. And some are permanent. In either case, accepting the situation – than resisting it – helps you to be non-suffering while dealing with all the pain that the situation is causing. Acceptance does not make a problem go away. But it surely gives you a lot of strength to face it, to deal with it.

Vaani and I have lasted this past decade – despite our enduring bankruptcy (Read more here: Fall Like A Rose Petal.) – only because we accepted our own Tourette Syndrome. We know what it means to be hung by Life at the edge of a precipice, we know how cluelessness and hopelessness can suffocate you. And we also know, from our own personal experience, that no matter what your context is, what your own Tourette Syndrome is, Life can and must be faced. Just take one moment at a time, one small step each time.

Figuring out a way through Life is what Life is all about!

 

Cluelessness will often strike, but you have a choice not to feel helpless!

A friend from the US called to say that she is at a cross-roads in Life. She has been laid off her job. She’s broken up with her boyfriend. She’s in a new relationship. And she’s figuring out what to do with her Life. She’s in her late 30s and feels both “hopeless and hopeful” at the same time: “I not sure I know where I am going in Life. I have stumbled along for over 15~17 years of my Life…I have only money enough to last me for 3 months without any employment…I feel stupid having done the many things I have done…only to find myself in this vague, directionless state in Life…”!

Surely, I don’t think my friend is either the first one to feel this way or the only one who is feeling lost at the moment. As I write this blogpost, I too am clueless about what’s going to happen next in my Life…but I am not hopeless. And this is the critical, discernable, difference between being anchored in faith and groping in fear.

Faith is not a privilege that only a select few have access to. It is not external at all – as all the religions, through their dogmatic pursuit of rituals, want you to believe. It is simply understanding and knowing that if you have been created, you will be provided for and taken care of. It is about trusting the process of Life. And this trust comes from your willingness to deal with the unknown, from facing your fears. When you look fear in the eye, it gives you the courage to face it, and courage opens the doors to faith within to last the course, to survive, to plow on!

Hopelessness sets in only when you don’t trust Life to take care of you. And when you have naïve, uninformed expectations of Life. Consider this carefully – has Life promised you anything; has it given you any guarantees; has it denied you anything that you have needed in Life so far? If the answer is no to all three questions, why do you doubt Life? Why do you think you will not get what you need? I have learnt that you always get what you need in Life, perhaps not the way you want it, but the way Life deems it appropriate for you to receive its grace. So, while I often face cluelessness, but I have stopped, in fact I have given up, feeling hopeless, long, long, ago!

Now, dealing with cluelessness is never easy. The human mind will torture you by conjuring scenarios that are dark, frightful and, often morbid. But when you are not feeling hopeless, when you are anchored in faith, you learn to cope with not knowing what’s going on or what will happen. So, being clueless is inevitable in Life. But being hopeless is something that you can avoid.

I have actually begun to love being clueless. It keeps me creatively engaged – it gives me the opportunity to find out newer ways of living Life meaningfully, it sharpens my intellect, it enhances my resilience and make me further trust the process of Life. Most important, it helps me see the miracle in every moment as it unfolds. Figuring out a way through Life, I have realized, is what Life is all about!

Whether hopeful or hopeless, be happy!

If being hopeless makes you peaceful, be hopeless. What’s important is that you be at peace with yourself!

Yesterday a reader wrote to me saying she didn’t want to be hopeful about her Life anymore. She said she had made peace with her miseries. I did not disagree with her. If she is peaceful, even while she’s ostensibly in a lot of pain, that’s what matters the most. It is wrong to assume that people can’t have a truck with their problems. Always, that’s how acceptance comes. But the key is that you must be happy accepting your Life the way it is. If you are not happy, if you are not at peace, then such acceptance is, virtually, no acceptance. An intrinsic effect, an outcome, of acceptance is that it puts an end to all your suffering. The pain continues to be there. But the suffering ceases. If you are still suffering then you have not accepted your situation fully, you are still grudging it.

I have found that being hopeless is not a bad thing to do – as long as you don’t sulk, brood and become depressive. Hopelessness is nothing but acceptance. You reach a state when you decide that things are going to be the way they are and you can’t do anything but endure the Life you have. So, if this is the state in which you find inner peace, then it is completely irrelevant whether you call it hopelessness or acceptance! But there’s a caveat here – don’t complain or grieve about your situation. Just learn to cope with it and live with it. You of course can continue to work on trying to solve your problems, but with acceptance and not with resentment!

Now, whether you accept a situation or not, whether you are hopeful about Life or not, your Life will change over time. Everything changes. And every situation passes on. What comes, goes away. And something new comes in its place, to soon go away. Hope and hopelessness are human inventions. They are mere labels we stick on otherwise listless events and circumstances. Think about it: if you are likely to get what you want, you are hopeful; and if you are unlikely to get what you want, you are hopeless. But neither your wanting something, or resenting something, is going to stop whatever is coming your way. This is how Life works – it has a mind of its own and it keeps on happening to you, irrespective of how you feel. So, why label situations as hopeful or hopeless – and sweat over either? Just go with the flow, living with what is. But if you can’t avoid labeling, live with the label too – like the reader who wrote in yesterday. Whatever you do, be at peace with yourself, with your Life, and, important, be happy!

Go beyond hope and hopelessness, go take action!

When there is no hope, remember, you are still alive. And as long as you are there, the ‘God’ within you too is alive, kicking and capable of a miracle.

Most often, hopelessness leads you to conclude that it is all over. That you are finished. You miss something very crucial at that time, that all your data points, all the evidence, that you use to arrive at that conclusion, are external. They lie outside of you. Your prayers also are to reference points outside you __ a ‘God’, as in an idol in a faraway temple, or in a sacred church, or at a distant dargah! When you find that your efforts to seek a miracle for yourself are reduced to a naught, you amplify your conclusion and say, nothing is possible. You resign. You give up. In all this time, even for a moment, you have not looked within. You have not realized the blessing of your being alive. There’s a famous saying, “With God anything’s possible!”  That ‘God’, that miraculous energy, is what’s powering you. The fact that you can conclude, basis external reference points, that you are finished, is proof that you are alive. If you are alive, that Universal energy is powering you. Dip into that energy. Go within. You will then realize the futility of benchmarking all your wants and needs on external reference points.

On 30^th August 2012, we had to pawn Vaani’s last piece of jewelry – her thali(a gold chain, the equivalent of a wedding ring in South-Indian culture) – to raise cash for us to survive as a family. As we did that, I remember telling ourselves that “after this effort, when this cash dries up, we are on love and fresh air”. We had nothing more of value to liquidate to raise any more cash. The 30-odd months that followed saw us being roasted, as a family, over the hot coals – with zero income and zero cash on many, many, many occasions – but both Vaani and I never lost hope – not in ourselves, not in humanity, not in the Universe. It’s over 3 years now, since that day, and we have still not recovered from our 8-year-old fragile, bankrupt, insolvent situation (To know more about this story please read ‘Fall Like A Rose Petal – A father’s lessons on how to be happy and content while living without money’; Westland, August 2014; available to order on this Blog). But we have survived. And we have survived only because Vaani and I believed, deep within us, that we would.

This experience has taught us that hopelessness is a wasteful emotion. To live through any crisis you just need to be aware of your being alive! With this awareness try and understand how you are feeling at the moment. If you are sad, accept that reality. If you are fearful, accept it too. If you are anxious, again accept it. Whatever you feel, acknowledge it, accept it. Then ask yourself, what can I do to change this reality? List down your actions that you can take to leverage your being alive. Some of them may be painful, uncomfortable actions. But if you have to do them, you have to. Because you want to change how you feel, right? With the actions you take, the problems you face, that led to a state of hopelessness in the first place, may not immediately go away. But if you are feeling good about what you are doing, you can be sure that you will walk into a new reality.

Every new journey starts with a first step. That first step is to change the way you are feeling about whatever’s your current reality. You may not be able to see your destination yet, but if you have sat in the plane, fastened your seat belt and have closed your eyes, you can be assured the pilot will take off, and with the available data on probability, chances are good that you will land where you intend to in some time.

To be sure, both hope and hopelessness are imposters. One tricks you to imagine that all will be fine. It breeds inertia. And the other deceives you and tells you it’s all over, nothing’s possible. Again it breeds inertia. Whereas visiting the energy that powers you, you feel rejuvenated, inspired and begin to act. Inertia can never get you started. Only action can. 

Hopelessness and inertia can never transform your reality. Only action can.

When there is no hope, remember, you are still alive. And as long as you are there, the God within too is alive, kicking and capable of a miracle.

Most often, hopelessness leads you to conclude that it is all over. That you are finished. You miss something very crucial at that time, that all your data points, all evidence, that you use to make that conclusion, are external. They lie outside of you. Your prayers also are to reference points outside you __ a God as an idol in a faraway temple, or one in a sacred church, or at a distant dargah! When you find that your efforts to seek a miracle for yourself are reduced to a naught, you amplify your conclusion and say, nothing is possible. You resign. You give up. In all this time, even for a moment, you have not looked within. You have not cared to look at your soul. You have not realized the blessing of your being alive. There’s a famous saying, “With God anything’s possible!”  That God, that miraculous energy, is what’s powering you. The fact that you can conclude, basis external reference points, that you are finished, is proof that you are alive. If you are alive, that Universal energy is powering you. Dip into that energy. Go within. You will then realize the futility of benchmarking all your wants and needs on external reference points.

To live __ you just need to be aware of your being alive! With this awareness try and understand how you are feeling at the moment. If you are sad, accept that reality. If you are fearful, accept it too. If you are anxious, again accept it. Whatever you feel, acknowledge it, accept it. Then ask yourself, what can I do to change this reality? List down your actions. Some of them may be painful, uncomfortable actions. But if you have to do them, you have to. Because you want to change how you feel, right? With the actions you take, the problems you face, that led to a state of hopelessness in the first place, may not immediately go away. But if you are feeling good about what you are doing, you can be sure that you will walk into a new reality. Every new journey starts with a first step. That first step is to change the way you are feeling about whatever’s your current reality. You may not be able to see your destination yet, but if you have sat in the plane, fastened your seat belt and have closed your eyes, you can be assured the pilot will take off, and with the available data on probability, chances are good that you will land where you intend to in some time.

Both hope and hopelessness are imposters. One tricks you to imagine that all will be fine. It breeds inertia. And the other deceives you and tells you it’s all over, nothing’s possible. Again it breeds inertia. Whereas, by visiting the energy that powers you, you can feel rejuvenated, inspired and begin to act. Hopelessness and inertia can never transform your reality. Only action can.

On why hopelessness is not a bad thing

To be hopeless about a situation in Life is, after all, not a bad thing. It helps you gain great clarity about living Life – fully, in the now!  

I recently read the story of a lady who was diagnosed with last-stage cancer. She talks about how, when she first heard the diagnosis, she went from one specialist to another, hoping fervently that she would hear a different diagnosis and the prognosis would be positive. She continued to work at her job – and the stresses of both her health situation and a demanding job began to take their toll on her. Finally, when she met a very eminent oncologist, he told her that she had “only six months more”. The lady recalls that she was shaken awake from her “hope-filled reverie”. She says she had been hoping badly, madly, that she would be told that she would live longer. But when she was told of her possible expiry date, coming up in just the next few months, she decided to “live” fully – in the time that she had left with her! She quit her job, made a list of all the people and places she wanted to visit, took to painting (something she loved doing but never found the time when she was working) every day and chose to be happy over feeling mournful about her health. She explained that “as long as she was hopeful of being cured she was clinging on to a Life which she was hardly enjoying, but the moment she realized her health situation was beyond hope, she began to live her Life – intensely, joyfully!”

This lady’s experience teaches us something invaluable. It helps us understand that while hope is a good thing, in certain situations in Life, it may hold us hostage and blind us from seeing reality. Reality, however, cannot be escaped. So, while you live through certain unchangeable phases with unalterable realities in Life, being hopeful in a hopeless situation can indeed make you feel miserable. Your intelligence will tell you what the reality is. But hope will make you delusional – vainly wishing that the reality did not exist. This conflict will cause you to suffer – day in and day out. There’s a way to break this jinx. And that way is to simply accept a situation to be hopeless – when it really is so. For instance, if you lose someone to death – it’s pointless to hope for that person to come alive. Or if someone loses their limbs or eyesight or hearing or speech – it is futile to hope that it will be restored without a specialist medical intervention or, perhaps, a cosmic miracle!

Hopelessness is not about giving up. It need not only be about feeling desperate or despondent. It can, if you allow it to, help you see the reality as it is and can teach you how to face it. For, whenever you are hopeless about some situation, you can always ask yourself “what does this mean” and “what must I do now”. The answers you get for these questions can inspire to move on, in acceptance, and in peace.

Hopelessness leads to awareness

To be hopeless is a great boon, an opportunity – use it!

We often come across situations where there is no hope. In such times, what stares at us is a wall or complete darkness. Fear and insecurity in such situations is a natural response. But the moment fear takes over, any chance of you coming out of that situation are eroded. So, even as fear lurks around, choose your hopelessness to remain focussed in the now, in the present. No it is not difficult. If you understand hope you will be able to understand what hopelessness truly means. Hope is an aspiration of a future which is yet to arrive. So, when you are hopeless, it really means you see no future. Which therefore only means that, since the past is over and the future doesn’t exist, what you are left with is the present moment.

As Osho, the Master, has said so beautifully: “When there is no hope, you are. When there is no hope, the present is.”

Which is why hopelessness is an opportunity to live in the present moment. For when you have nothing to look forward to, then you can only live from moment to moment. Having lived this way for months and years now, let me tell you, it is a beautiful, awakening, humbling experience. Because you witness how magically Life goes on, without you controlling any of the influences – particularly, money, food, clothing and shelter – that you have been conditioned to believe are key to living.  

Hopelessness is still a desire. When you are pining that there be hope. And when with your human mind and vision you can’t see one, you despair, but even then, from deep within your heart, you continue to hope. Which means you expect a change in the situation. But true awareness is when you have transcended expectation, desire, hope, hopelessness and are simply with Life, living in the now. That’s when you have given up expecting anything from Life. And you simply are.

Is there really a God or is that someone “out of office – on vacation”?!

Ever so often, every once in a while, you will find God ‘unreachable’! A much touted omnipotent savior who is simply not traceable when needed the most! Who’s probably fiddling away on his harp, while your home’s burning. Irrespective of what religion you follow, you will find that it’s most prized invention, it’s God, is not available to its followers, including you, to stop injustice, pain, death, separation, disease or loss. When you zoom out, climb to 30,000 feet, and take a holistic view of things happening in this world you live in, you will seriously wonder whether there indeed is a God? Tsunamis, earthquakes, wars, terrorism, malnutrition, AIDS, starvation, water scarcity, lack of education, the rich become richer and the poor get poorer, rape, murder, forgery, betrayal, deceit, the good, the pious suffer while the sinners prosper  __ what is God doing? At a personal level __ you often wonder why you don’t ever get what you believe you deserve? Why do people whom you love have to leave you or die? Why is there so much pain__and suffering__in your Life when all you have striven to be is good, ethical, devout and caring? But despite all this grime, gore, tears and sorrow, look at each new day, look at the sun rise, feel the rain, watch the birds fly away and the butterflies hover from flower to flower or watch a child smile. Now, how’s all this possible? Is there someone who makes all this happen? And is it the same one who simply watches when everything’s going wrong in the world?

However fair such questioning may well be, it is also futile. Because there’s no point in asking such questions. They have no answers.

Yesterday, my own Life came to yet another precipitous point. In the 30-odd minutes that it took for that crisis to finally blow over, hours after it had kicked in, I discovered that I was in a state of complete inner peace while a storm raged outside. It was one of those moments in Life when the paradox is both stark and soulful! In my moment of solitude, I recollected a friend’s email, which had arrived a few hours ago. Someone in that friend’s extended family had died. And there was an overall pall of gloom and anguish, understandably, in the family. Given my own circumstance, I was able to relate to their grief. Which is when it dawned on me, one more time, that the only truth about Life is what you are experiencing in the present moment. Nothing else counts. If you can encounter inner peace in the throes of a storm, you may have well found God. If you are searching for one in that moment of, call it despair, know that you are moving in the opposite direction. Not only will you not find peace, your search for God__and God’s answers to your whys__will end yield nothing__and in fact may enhance your desperation!

Think of all the reasons why God is relevant. Fundamentally, God is an emotional crutch, a form of security that consoles you, gives you hope and succor. God-bashers make you believe that all such hope is  hot air because why would a merciful, compassionate God create so much hardship and suffering for helpless, hapless, people in the first place? So, those who find hope in God, are the believers. The theists. And those who find no hope in God are the non-believers. The atheists. Atheists say they are free from God. Good point. But being free from something or someone is one thing, and being free for something or a reason is another. If freedom from God has led you to peace and joy, great. If it has not, and you still remain miserable, then, something’s not right. Obviously!

That’s where I would humbly like to offer a different take. A third dimension, if you will. When you are confronted with a dark and desperate situation, and you are drowned in hopelessness, remember that you are still alive. If you are alive it means that the same energy which is powering the cosmos, is powering you too. Which further means that if the whole Universe is a miracle so are you. And if you are a miracle, then you are capable of one too! We miss this simple truth when we are confronted with death, pain and suffering. Instead of dipping into the endless reservoir of cosmic energy within us, we look to external reference points. God too is one such external reference point. In its most identifiable forms, God is an idol at a temple or a church or a tombstone at a dargah. The problem with an external reference point is that its tangibility only makes it unreal. So, when you ask why, wailing in prayer or pouring your heart out at a place of worship, you don’t ever get a reply. Instead, if you go into the world of the intangible, go within, then you encounter the real truth. The real God! So, simply, if you go inward, you will awaken. You will then understand that:

1. Life happens differently to each of us all the time. It IS inscrutable and it IS always what it IS!
2. Nothing is permanent. Anything that is created will be destroyed. Anything born will die.
3. As long as you know you are alive, you are capable of living happily. The choice to live happily__despite your circumstances__is your own.
4. If you have not known how to live in the moment, you never will have lived. You will have merely existed. If you have only existed, you have not found peace within you. If you have not known inner peace, you will never know God!      

Kabir, the 15^th Century weaver-poet, said it so beautifully: “Moko Kahan Dhoondhe Re Bande, Main To Hoon Tere Paas Main…..Na Thirath Main, Na Moorat Main….Na Mandir Main, Na Masjid Main….Main To Hoon Tere Paas Main….” This means, referring to man’s quest for God, “Where are you searching for me? I am near you. I am not in a pilgrimage nor in an idol, not it a temple nor in a mosque, I am near you, in you….”.

Here’s hoping you make that short journey inward. You will find your God at work__and not on vacation or missing in action__24x7, there!

When nothing works, know that Life’s working on you!

When you think that nothing’s working for you know that Life is still working on you!

 

There will be those times in Life when all your efforts will come to a naught. And you will want to simply die. You will not see any light at the end of the tunnel. At such a time, instead of grieving and hating the phase you find yourself in, if you focus on what Life may be trying to teach you, you will discover that entire tunnel lights up. It’s amazing this discovery, this awareness, that Life’s working on you all the time.

Life happens differently to each of us. And trying to know why it happens that way or why something is happening to you is futile. Instead just know that there is a reason, why you are faced with whatever you are facing, which will reveal itself to you at some time. And love Life for continuing to teach you how to live. This is so true. We all work ourselves up for the smallest reasons. We worry. We fret. Fume. We sink into sorrow and depression when our expectations are not met or when we lose something or someone. Yet, Life does not give up on us. Through every trial it is teaching us__you and me__how to live better and be happier despite our circumstances.

This isn’t about cultivating hope. It is about acceptance. You often decide to give up on something after having tried all ways to solve a problem situation. But you still remain in pain and are suffering. The reason why you continue to suffer is because you haven’t given up completely. Hope can be dangerous when you don’t temper it with reality. There must be a bifocal approach to Life. Focus on your harsh, brutal reality and also focus on your vision for yourself. You cannot let go of one for the other. Both must be pursued equally. Giving up is not about giving up either or both. Giving up is the letting go of an expectation that what you are going through will be resolved soon or in a specific timeframe. Giving up is ridding yourself of the expectation that your efforts will bear fruit immediately. When you be at your problem this way, which is while enduring the pain you don’t have any expectation of the pain going away anytime soon, you will not suffer at all.

The only thing you need to understand to live Life fully__and happily__is that Life cannot be understood. It has to only be lived and learned __ one day at a time! Know that Life’s working on you, through your challenges, trials and tribulations. And you are only getting better at living it with every blow you face and with your every fall!