what do I know
about time but that
she’s a live wire
running through
all the lives that ever live
their voices
a low hum within.
I sat still one day.
“listen to yourself,”
she whispered
“listen deep”
“your voice
isn’t wholly yours
it is the hum
of those around
and beyond
it is what you pull
out of yourself
in response
their harshness
—your anger
their kindness
—your love
it is
what you pass on.
be still, love,”
she whispers,
“be still.”
Does the frangipani
remain calm—
safe in the knowledge
she won’t absorb the dust
lain on her ivory self?
Does she know in her brief life
—the wind will blow away
the motes it had blown in?
Does she know already
—she need only dance
with the raindrop
before she rises
free of the dust?
Does she have the wisdom
to let the mote
rest light on her,
not weigh her down?
Is that why
the frangipani can turn
her golden heart inside out
to the skies and the world?
or does her calm arrive softly
as she resolves
—that not a wink of her week’s life
she must waste wallowing in the motes?
—that so long as she doesn’t take them in,
they do not become hers?
—that so long as she doesn’t make them hers,
they can’t weigh her down?
Really, is there a difference
between knowing and resolving?
as the frangipani drops
quiet as she arrives,
unfurling her heart.
Property disputes constitute sixty-six percent of the cases before the Indian civil courts. Cases languish in courts well over a couple of decades. It seems you can’t escape them unless you step away from the dispute, which means you give up some or all your share.
Amidst these disputes, I’ve had the experience of uncle and dad who readily set up a share of their life’s work for their nieces. I could’ve thought I’m unlikely to experience it again.
Then I met a gentleman who combines his family’s share with the sibling’s and makes it halves even after he learns his family would lose in the bargain. Not once, but twice.
I’m grateful for knowing him and his family.
We look towards a partnership, a marriage, a relationship to enhance our lives. They enable us to do more than we could by ourselves. They stand with us to share a laugh or a cry. It’s great when that happens.
Sometimes, they offer very little. They’re just a habit that coasts along. No problem with that though. We can coast along with it, because change takes effort. And it should be worth the effort.
Sometimes, they cause slow harm. A business partner who doesn’t value our ideas, a client who goes back on a promise, a boss who burdens you every day, a spouse whom you can’t please, an employee who procrastinates… these diminish our lives.
They’re a burr in our minds, scraping against our peace and happiness. Over time, these scrapes cause a bleeding wound. Eventually, we do need to act on them, but the wait doesn’t cause irretrievable harm. Not always. And the action isn’t always to sever the relationship.
Sometimes though, our relationships wield a knife and slice through us. An abusive spouse, a business partner on the wrong side of the law, a client who blackens our name.
These kill us—some murder us, some kill our sanity, some, our financial stability. Many other ways, in fact.
With these relationships, we need to act immediately. We need to sever them.
In continuation to my previous post..
What are Rules? My daughter asked,
“What about when what we speak can’t hurt someone
because they don’t know?”
I had to think a moment for the answer.
In thought, word or deed, if you do a wrong, you hurt yourself.
Whether people know your thought, word or deed or not is irrelevant.
That you have hurt yourself implies you need to give it up.
So, what is relevant is what you do.
Not whether the world sees it
Or how the world sees it.
I did without for so long that I don’t know what to do with…
Figure a Human
There are two opposite ends at which you can figure the nature of a human with clarity.
Pushed to a Corner —————————————- Complete Freedom of Choice
When they are pushed to a corner
Do they lash out at those around?
Do they find it hard to wish well for others?
Do they trample over others to find their survival?
When they have freedom of choice
Do they choose to throw only crumbs for others?
Do they choose to meet their own needs that take away others’ freedom?
Do they choose to see the dark stuff in others whether it exists or not?
All of us are pushed to a corner at some time. We have great freedom of choice many times.
What we choose to do during these times is what defines our character. Each such act sets the direction of our character.
Peace and happiness lie in the Mastery of Self and Undying Love for All.
We have successfully reversed this truth.
In living with Undying Love for Self and seeking Mastery over All,
We create angst, pain and unhappiness.
If we can set aside our need for praise, we’d appreciate others more.
If we can set aside our need for praise, we’d denigrate others less.
If we can set aside our need for praise, we’d feel less hurt when someone else is praised.
If we can set aside our need for praise, we’d be truly happy for others.
If we can set aside our need for praise, we’d see the good in others more often.
If we can set aside our need for praise, we’d feel less threatened by others.
If we can set aside our need for praise, we’d be more content and less acquisitive.
If we can set aside our need for praise, we’d need less importance.
If we can set aside our need for praise, we’d be more discerning of true value.
If we can set aside our need for praise, we’d let go of the unimportant things in life.
If we can set aside our need for praise, we’d smile more often.
If we can set aside our need for praise, we’d walk with a swing in our step.
If we can set aside our need for praise, we’d love others more.
If we can set aside our need for praise, we’d love ourselves more.
If we can set aside our need for praise, we’d live our lives more.
Childhood’s a time when we learn extensively, picking up enormous amounts of information, learning from our parents, teachers, our environment.
We carry no limitations of who we can learn from, and who we cannot. Nor of consciously hoarding information and not letting on. We have an intense desire to learn. Of course our tendency towards indiscriminate learning makes some restraint and guidance necessary.
And then we grow up.
We lose a lot of things on our way from childhood to adulthood. We lose the 3 most important things that can help us learn at our peak.
1. Humility allows us to admit to ourselves that there is something to learn from others. The day we believe that we know more than our neighbour, our learning slows down. Humility means respecting the other – peers, superiors, juniors, strangers – irrespective of their station in life, and there’s plenty to learn from all.
Secondly, when we are more ready to speak than to listen, we aren’t trying to learn. We are posing. We are taking pride in the little that we know. And we pay less attention to the vast amount that we don’t know.
Why do we lose the humility to learn?
Maybe to a lot of us, to admit that we have something to learn is to admit to a weakness – our mistakes, our shortcomings, the gaps in our knowledge or performance. A weakness in our world is not looked upon with favour. It’s a brave few who do it; they are the ones who benefit enormously by admitting that they have more to learn.
2. Openness is the readiness to share our thoughts, our ideas without hoarding them. Of accepting others’ ideas without prejudice and in turn giving our own to help others. Neither money nor knowledge ever grew with hoarding. It grows with opening it to others – with allowing others to add to it.
Openness means that we do not become acquisitive with our space, time and ideas. It also means that we are open to feedback. The sad part is that we define ourselves through our work. And a feedback for correction shows the gaps in our work. We can embrace it with openness. Or we can fight it, believing that it belittles us.
What works against openness?
When we look for praise, and when we look for personal acquisitive gain, we work against openness. When we look for praise we are looking outward for our sense of worth, we aren’t looking for intrinsic self-worth. When that happens, the community and the public become the judge of what we do and what we don’t. And hence, how we learn. And how we share.
There isn’t much wrong with personal gain. In fact, it’s the cornerstone of private initiative. But when the gain – fame, money, power or any number of such derived attributes – becomes the primary focus, the importance we give to the essential things in life gets sidelined.
In both cases, we hoard learning wanting it to benefit us and us alone. In doing so, we minimize our learning and lose the chance to maximize it.
3. The Desire to Learn is the most basic requirement, so much so that without it there is no learning. Somewhere along our growing years, we lose our desire for active learning and we lose our inquisitive minds. The millions of questions of our childhood drop to a handful.
Why do we lose the desire to learn?
Because learning requires active work. Choosing not to learn is in some, a reflection of laziness. In others, it is an indication of comfort with the status quo.
Learning forces us to constantly sift through our beliefs and knowledge and make continual adjustments based on new facts and observations; to admit that what we believed yesterday could be wrong or at best, may no longer hold good today. With time, we seem to lose our flexibility and our readiness to change. What’s easier than to live as we are, where we are, with whatever knowledge and belief systems we have – it looks solid. While change looks like the shifting sands.
But why should we learn?
Because learning was what helped us adapt to our surroundings and our advancement across millions of years. Of moving from the sea to land, to moving from early humans to the current civilizations and more.
We wouldn’t be where we are without learning. We would be where we are without learning.
Now, that’s a depressing scenario.
Poetry in Life 