Revising a Story Lesson

I’ve discovered a magic therapy. Of late, many times (if not most of the times), I have seen and experienced it working wonderfully on myself. And I believe it has got to be effective if it can help someone with symptoms of hereditary Clinical Depression.

That reminds me. Over two years ago, when I was visiting a psychologist regularly for my certifications, she had told me quite clearly that I had a tendency to develop a mild Clinical Depression, especially since it has been being passed on, on my mother’s side, particularly amongst the women. She had advised me to keep psychiatric help accessible, especially through the most important forthcoming period of 3-4 years in my life. A lot was going to happen and even though it was all for the good, there was no guarantee of the period itself being good.

And surely, there were times when I would wish to skip life on particular days. I’d be desperate to find a way to just jump to the next day, or to somehow discover an Invisibility Cloak and simply carry on with life without having to undergo the pressure of being SEEN. How I wished that nobody would see me, nobody would look at me, that people could just see past me, like I was nothing but a molecule of air.

Today, however, I don’t see the point in thinking or talking about those days. Yes, they made me stronger, braver and all that, but today, I also wish I had tried the magic therapy in those days. But then, I didn’t know about it then. Well, actually, perhaps I did. Perhaps all of us do, because it is one of the earliest story lessons of our lives, but we forget about it. We grow up seeing most of the people around us complaining, cribbing and self-pitying; and somewhere along the way, we unknowingly learn it and make it our way of life too.

It’s simple. It’s the lesson we all learnt from the story of the poor man who didn’t have shoes, who went to the church to complain to God, and there, saw a man who was thanking God, even though he did not have legs.

About a month back, on NDTV, I happened to watch a special report on a 2 feet tall man, who was born without legs, without arms, without speech and hearing abilities. All you could see was a tiny torso and a little face. But what was most striking about that face was an absolute absence of complaint on it. The report showed the man going through all his daily activities by himself without any help whatsoever. And I found myself wondering whether it was right of me to make myself hopeless and helpless when there is such a vast landscape of hope and possibility in the world.

These days, when I am morose and basically carrying out an eternal crib-fest, I try to remember this man’s courage in the face of the cruel fate meted out to him by nature. And invariably, I find myself feeling guilty for not thinking above just my own self.

It is not always possible to think of another, when you’re busy thinking of the ‘unfairness’ of life you’re dealing with. It is only possible when there is that little spark existent somewhere deep inside you – the spark of a genuine desire to rid yourself off pain, the desire to be happy. I have a feeling that I just might be igniting that tiny spark inside me these days, that I might be succeeding in letting it prevail…

This spark which is gradually making me believe that despite all the flaws that I might be made up of, I’m likeable… because I like myself, I love myself, I want myself to be happy, and not on the parameters of the world, but on the scales of happiness that I have to define for my own self.

The Circle of... Sorrow

[I had started writing the previous post with the intention of writing what I’m going to write here now. The two streams of thoughts, albeit interconnected, would feel more justified in being discussed separately]

“There are burdens in this world… And they have to fall somewhere. If they fall on you, Know that You were chosen because You have been given the ability to carry them”

I may not have been able to reproduce verbatim these words from a very moving film ‘Parzania’, but the beautiful thought in them never leaves me. It’s not like I don’t have the moments of – “Why me?”, not like my mind doesn’t get restless in trying to find Someone to Blame, but sooner or later, some voice (from within or without) in some way always reminds me that I have the Choice to Be Happy, Choice to Feel Content, Choice to Forgive, Choice to Be at Peace, Choice to Choose… With so many choices at hand, need I fret over being helpless and hopeless?

Let’s face it. There’s no Fun without the Boring. No Smile without the Tears. And there’s no Joy without the Sorrows. The flip side will always exist, because that’s what gives the sunny side its existence. But which side should stay up depends on the hand that tosses the coin… Our hand!

There are many ways in which one deals with Sorrow, a few of which are these:

~ Sulk! {Which only leads to more… sulking, but may I add, that Sulking can be quite a lot of fun! Especially when you have audience!}

~ Try to forget by means of self-indulgence! {Momentary relief, to be generally followed by a torrent of emotions again}

~ Try to forget by helping out others. {A much evolved and seemingly successful method}

~ Seek professional help. {Works for some people}

~ Seek revenge!! {The bruise always remains fresh and tender, because it is never allowed to heal}

~ Subconsciously nurture the Pain and Sorrow...

The last one is perhaps the most dangerous. It happens when the scar is much deeper than it seems. So much so, that it might have even been removed from the most frequently-visited pages of memory. The surface heals, yet deep down, it never stops bleeding and affects one in the most unfathomable ways. It creates a Sense of Sorrow which is difficult to justify and to come to terms with. Because the wound is so deep that you have no touch with it anymore. And without air and care, it only cuts deeper and deeper within.

~0~0~0~0~

PR is a man from the upper middle class, comfortable living, good wife, lovely children, a pretty satisfactory life… PR beats up his wife or children at least once in a week. He begs of them for forgiveness for days after that, and yet, he can’t stop himself from doing it again in moments of confrontation. His wife has learnt to live with it. “When he was a kid, his father used to beat him black and blue everyday. He is trying to improve. I want to give him time…”

The Circle of Sorrow. PR is caught up in it, and I fear his children would too. The bruises his father gave him decades ago still breathe in his subconscious. In his conscious mind, then, he would have vowed to be a man just the opposite of his own father. And yet, he finds himself incapable of doing that today, inflicting the same bruises on his children’s bodies and hearts.

Why? Because the place he should have been able to call Home, became a Haunt. The man he expected to be protected by, became his tormentor. Quite obviously, the ground which is the basis for bringing up a stable human being… That ground, itself, was unstable, shaky… and so, that is the kind of man it produced as well.

PR has nurtured his Sorrow. And now, he is carrying forward the tradition, the Circle of Sorrow. Unknowingly. Not that he wants to. Given a chance, his conscious mind would try to discard all the wounded parts of him and feel free. But his subconscious wouldn’t let him. Because somewhere along the way, that Sorrow has become a part of his very existence. His identity even. He would feel hollow without it. Incomplete. Maybe handicapped.

~0~0~0~0~

And that’s why the Circle of Sorrow is an unusual circle. It builds on every negative emotion a person harbors within himself – fear, pain, insecurity, hatred, and it keeps growing bigger and bigger in circumference and area, as each hurt person emanates his Sorrow to the ones linked to him.

The only way to cut this Circle away is for one person to free themselves… That one person who can realize that whatever happened to them made them a stronger and better human being, whoever made that happen to them was human too and they made a mistake and that mistakes are forgivable [Yes! Toughest! Highly Debatable! And yet, the only way to Redemption], and that they, today, take the Choice to Let Go – of their Pain, their Grudge, their Loss, their Wound, their Circle of Sorrow.

I came across one such exceptional person recently. And if you’ve read Me until here, I urge you to go ahead and read Her.

The Circle of... Pain

[‘Man’, ‘He’, ‘Him’ words in this piece should not be looked at, as gender-specific]

"Nobody has had it easy in life."

I’ve come to believe that, over the years. Yes, some people have to ride against the tide much more often than the others. And some of the rival tides carry the might of a cyclone behind them… It feels from the look of it that life has perhaps been the most unfair on these few. Perhaps, it has too. But then, were it not for the adversity, the Heroes would never have been called so.

Heroes have special powers. And the most important of those powers are their own oppositions, their own hardships. Not everybody is a Hero, because well, not everybody gets to be conditioned by mammoth problems.

This, however, does not mean that the so-called (and believed to be) ordinary man doesn’t have a taste of real problems. For most people, their ‘ordinary’ problems are extraordinary, because whatever said and done, at any given point in time, one man’s problem is unique to him, and he’s the only one fighting it, even if millions before him have seen, faced and dealt with exactly the same crisis.

Heartbreak may seem an extremely mundane and passé reason for swollen eyes to some people, while these very people would probably shut themselves into darkness over the loss of a pet. Actually, other things being constant, pain is as small or as big as the lack of familiarity with it. It works like antibodies – like one of those immunization injections – which build a protective wall inside you, a wall against any afflictions by similar sources of pain attacking yet again. But well, if the source of pain is a new one… Boom! There goes the Wall! And then, starts the process of the buildup of a new defense mechanism. A new thing or two are learnt, and the Wall is repaired to face the storms yet again.

Every storm is unique, which is why every wall is unique. Resilience is built up as and when new storms loom large on the skies. But to say that a certain Wall, as it exists today, has not been through the worst possible or hasn’t endured as much as its ability is, would be a little unfair.

Nobody can get into another person’s shoes. Yet, in every way, one must have a heart big enough to accommodate those dealing with seemingly trivial problems. Looking down upon them as trite is tad insensitive.

After all, Pain and the Ability to Bear It – come in a circle. You may never know which came before the other, but they must always coexist. If the Ability exists but Pain doesn’t, then there’s no way to prove the existence of the former at all. If the Pain exists and the Ability doesn’t, well, it becomes a question of existence then. And the choice one makes in that one moment is actually the only choice available to them. To create the Ability, to complete… the Circle of Pain.