Start living while waiting

In today’s Podcast, I reflect on the fact that we are all in a queue, waiting for our impending, inevitable death. We have two options here. Exist cowering in fear and miss the opportunity to live a full Life despite your circumstances. Or accept your reality and choose to live fully – no matter what! I draw perspectives from Anu Menon’s 2016 film ‘Waiting’! Listen time: 5:17 minutes

Gulzar, a Siddha yogi, Indeevar and the value in embracing pain

“…jeene ke liye, socha hi nahin, dard sambhalne honge…”

“I never thought I have to deal with/manage pain to live Life!”

This line is from the soul-stirring, famous song, “tujhse naaraaz nahi zindagi…”, from Masoom (1983, Shekar Kapur, R.D.Burman, Gulzar, Lata Mangeshkar; male version by Anoop Ghoshal). I stumbled upon this song, which is among my all-time favorites, yet again, this morning. And I instantly sent out a prayer in gratitude to Gulzar saab…only someone who has seen Life, felt pain and experienced inner joy, can write with so much depth, and yet keep it so simple, so lucid. This line holds the key to why we struggle with Life.

Almost all of us have encountered pain__and have resultantly suffered__without being prepared for it. As kids, our painful moments would be anchored and cushioned under the protective care of our parents. But we are socked and numbed by the first episode of pain in our adult lives because we have never been educated about the true nature of Life in our early years. We haven’t been told that:

• Life never guarantees any fair-play
• Life will keep on happening to us – no matter what we want or expect
• Pain in Life is inevitable
• The only way avoid suffering is to accept the pain and not resist it
• When you choose not to suffer, you are happy

A Siddha yogi who I met some years ago taught me how not to resist pain. I had gone to meet him with Vaani. I was totally beaten, demotivated and confused with my Life at that point in time. And the man told us: “Embrace your pain. It is trying to teach you something. Learn from it. Don’t fight it. Don’t resist it. Let it just be. It will go away the same way it came. Treat it with dignity, as if it is a ‘guest’ in your Life. Don’t hate it. Embrace it.”  Though I initially found his advice preposterous and absurd, over time, I came to appreciate how much truth and wisdom it contained.

Let me explain it the way I have understood it. You can’t choose what happens to you in Life. Life keeps on happening irrespective of either your wants or your expectations. When what happens to you matches your wants or expectations, you willingly accept Life for what it is. But when the unexpected and the unwanted happens, you resist Life, because this ‘unwanted guest’ is causing you pain. It could be a simple headache or a job loss or a cancer or a relationship break-down; anything that arrives uninvited causes pain. Now the event, the happening, as such does not cause you any suffering. Yes, it brings you pain. But your suffering is your own creation. And you are suffering only because you are resisting whatever is happening to you. So, when I internalized the yogi’s point of view, and I learnt – rather cultivated – the art of embracing and accepting my pain, I stopped suffering.

And that brings me to another great lyricist Indeevar and the sage lines he wrote for Samjhauta (1973, Ajoy Biswas, Kalyanji-Anandji, Kishore Kumar):

“…samjhauta ghamon se karlo…zindagi mein gham bhi milte hain…” meaning “…learn to embrace/compromise with your pain/grief…for you will encounter pain/grief in your Life…”

So, stop struggling with Life and decide to end all your suffering. Whatever be your source of pain, just accept it and embrace it. When you choose not to suffer, you can only be happy!

A Life lesson from ‘Waiting’: start living, while waiting!

It is always what it is. And you have to go through whatever you have to go through.

A friend had booked for us to watch Anu Menon’s beautiful, beautiful film Waiting last evening. Everything about the movie is so endearing and uplifting – the story, the script, the screenplay, the dialogues, the music and, above all, the brilliant performances by Naseerudin Shah and Kalki Koechlin. I don’t want to talk about the film’s plot so as not to spoil the viewing experience for readers who have not yet watched the film. But instead I want to share what we can learn about Life from Waiting, the movie, and how we can live our Life better while waiting…!

Actually, if you pause to reflect on Life, isn’t it all about waiting; from the time you are born, for your impending, inevitable death? As you wait, you are so consumed by the material pursuits that you indulge in – driven by your wants and social conditioning – that you have missed this point that Life – and living – is nothing but waiting for death. So, when Life gives you a zor ka jhatka that brings a twist to your fairy tale – a relationship issue, a career or business challenge, an irreparable health condition, someone’s death – you begin to want to understand the most inscrutable – Life itself! But because you are so used to having lived Life your way, and are so accustomed to everything being reasoned so logically, you begin with denial, resisting any disruptive – often irrational, illogical – change that comes your way. Your denying the existence of a problem doesn’t make it go away though. The problem persists. So, you ask, partly in anger, partly in grief, partly in helplessness, why, why me? But the problem still persists. You rage on angrily, thinking your aggression can drive your problem away. When this approach doesn’t work, insecurity and fear creep in. Because that which you can’t make sense of always scares you. But fear only cripples you and holds you hostage – and if you are not aware, it can push you into a dark abyss called depression. When after repeatedly banging your head against a wall, when after desperately seeking answers, after trying to rationally, logically analyze your situation, when you find yourself in a no-go, you grudgingly begin to appreciate that between you and Life, you are less powerful. That’s when acceptance comes in. While accepting a problem – your Life for what it is – does not either solve the problem or get rid of it, it sure does help you deal with it better. It is only through facing Life can you live it more meaningfully. So, Waiting, the movie, really helps you understand that you too can be Zen – attaining that seemingly elusive state of equanimity – by accepting your Life for what it is. It teaches you that, while Life is a wait, from birth, for death, there are two possible dimensions to that wait – waiting for you to awaken to your Zen and waiting for death in that awakened, transcendental, Zen state!

Yet, as Ankur Tewari’s lyrics in Waiting’s ‘Zara Zara’ song, sung so soulfully by Kavita Seth and Vishal Dadlani to Mikey McCleary’s music, remind us, it is a slow process. This awakening. This evolution, this arriving at your state of Zen. It happens with the passage of time. It happens slowly through each experience that you encounter, endure and overcome in Life. It happens as an integral process of the journey of Life. But it happens for sure – for each of us, in our own unique ways. In this time you do realize, one way or the other, that only you have to bear your cross in Life, going through what you have to go through, for no one else can or will do it for you! Finally, when you arrive at your personal, individual state of Zen, you realize that the waiting is what makes Life beautiful and meaningful. That’s when you stop waiting for the inevitable end. Instead, you start living, than merely existing, while waiting!