Never settle | Just live

Never should we lean on someone else’s learnings. Grand experiences and advices by the famous are probabilistic and have caveats of the context. So all we can do is to give it a good read but make our own concoction of living strategy. Here are some ramblings to myself.

1. Body heals
   I went through a bad patch around the age of 40 with severe lower back pain (could not sit straight for more than 15 min at a stretch, neck pain (spondylitis), knee pain (could not climb stairs of an aeroplane). I remember going to a gym for the first time and I barely managed TWO squats. A doctor even surmised my state for ‘ankylosing spondylitis’ and almost told me that rest of my life will be just managing this pain. If this was not enough high emotional stress (that time) resulting in chronic fatigue and high acidity issues added to my list. Another dithered doctor ‘laughed’ at me when I told about the problems I had in the body and said, “is there any thing that is not wrong with your body? What would happen when you would be my age?
   Good news. I climb 5 flights of stairs in a go, several times a day today. I deliver workshop sessions, standing 6–8 hours at a stretch. There are people with stronger body and those who run marathons but I am happy anyways. I don’t run marathons because I can’t. I am at peace and I can focus on what I need to. Body has healed. Body heals. It is a mechanism mastered over millions of years. It won’t conch-off suddenly. It’s built for resilience and fights back. Never lose hope.
2. Strength is within
   My father saw some real bad days growing up. Mother died early. He had to run away from his home to continue studying when he was 20. Ended up in some far off town with nothing in pocket. Ate nothing for several days as the first salary got delayed etc. etc. I used to wonder about how comfortable my life is compared to his. He broke the spell by saying that everyone would have to fight the battle sometime or the other. It didn’t take too long. I had my share of the battle to fight- battles that left me dry and fragile. What kept me in one piece was a deep seated belief — “I am my own support and my life is a divine gift”. Strength has to come from within. And it does, if you focus enough.
3. Selfishness is as much a virtue as altruism
   The deeper layers of the moral discourse of ‘do good to others’ and that ‘selfishness’ is a vice, is something Indian scriptures understood thousands of years back. It is the ‘self’ rules supreme. The Yajnyavalkya and Maitreyi discussion in the Upanishads were an eye opener for me when it called out, “Husband does not love the wife for the sake of the wife; but it is because he loves the Self that he loves the wife. Mother does not love the children for the children; but because she loves the Self, therefore she loves the children.” Selfishness is not one dark deal. It has greys. Take favours and do favours. Finally everyone is feeding to the fire of self. Those who donate half their wealth, do so because there is no other way for them. They would sleep better after donating. Those who don’t donate are as good. No difference.
4. Work your way to the miracle
   It is all great to hear — “one should always choose the work one likes to do; or when your passion becomes your work, you don’t have to work a day” etc. There comes a time in every such passion-story, where things are not moving despite the best efforts. You put your heart and soul into a task or a goal and it appears to end up in a treadmill run. Your heart sinks and you start researching your ‘luck’ and ‘stars’. It takes longer than our patience would allow at times, but miracles happen. Hidden from the view is ‘timing’. External factors needs to be positively disposed towards the efforts and that is what we usually fail to read in the game of passion. One has to get better in timing things apart from the hard work that one puts in (exactly opposite of ‘time in the market, rather than timing the market’ adage in the stock market).
   Work is a great reality of human life. Work that one likes to do and if also helps sustaining the body, is our greatest blessing on this planet. Here is my detailed post on this.
   Late in my life I learnt that in Hinduism, ‘dharma’ actually means, the knowledge that takes you to ‘right karma’, which takes you to ‘moksha’. Karma is the first step on the ladder to moksha.
5. History has a limited use
   These are disruptive times. Previous formulae dished out by the wise do not hold. Forget about the business, technology and formalities of the world, even for the instincts, handling natural forces in everyday life, understanding human behaviour and emotions, history has a limited value. If we had to learn from history, the wars would never happen; heart breaks would be rare and equitable distribution would be a reality. But things are different in life. This does not write off the advice from the ancient. But it does make us rethink the ‘interpretations’. I am lucky to be initiated into a field called ‘Design’ and ‘Design Thinking’ which kept my questioning nerve alive, despite my ‘small city and middle-class lad’ tag and helped me break societal mould that shapes an individual perspective on things. In this life, one has a chance, every moment, to stand at a distance, from friends, family, colleagues, social media and ‘defacto-influences’— to see things in their true nature; naked.
6. Obfuscation just below the peak
   Those of us used to trekking, know that one can see the peak clearly from the base. But when you are right below the peak, all you see is a maze of twisted pathways and tall trees/boulders. Tired with the long stretch of walking, this cognitive obfuscation is a double whammy. Low intensity effort must continue in that phase when the hope of finding the peak appear dim. All our relationships, our mettle and our karma is out to test us then. That is the time to take a while and let the mind settle down (not sleep). Path emerges soon.
7. Nothing matters in the end
   Finally we are all a piece of star dust. All the anxieties over trifles and all the racing of heart over stuff would appear puny when we are done with this life. In futurology, there is a method called ‘back-casting’. This is used to project a scenario a few years ahead and then projecting it backwards to decide the current course of action. I think, back-casting can help us make better decisions as far as relationships go. Love, hate or be indifferent — nothing matters in the end- just own the decision.
8. It is the biology, idiot
   Many times we blame ourselves for the events around us. Sometimes we walk decades with the load of the events without realising that it is just biology — the way we are constructed in the basic genetic code — that we responded in certain way to the situation. Deep underlying connection between genetics, brain, body and mind is intriguing to the scientist and helps getting over issues that otherwise occupy a lot of real estate in our head. Interesting to read Cotard’s delusion.