Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Making Peace

The last 10 years have been very difficult for me (and my family).My father;s illness(severe complications of diabetes) has traumatised my family making each one of the affected parties more fragile.The first thing which such illness brings to any family is fear.At a very young age, I had to come to terms with painful topics such as blindness,disability and death.Every time the phone rang, I was scared to answer it.So many nights have I spent, researching medical journals for a miracle cure.My mother's worried voice,my brother's brave sacrifice has made my own journey of fear look so infinitesimally small.The psychosomatic pains which throng my body in grief have slowly vanished away.My own experiments of trying to mimic my father's disability has also reduced.Slowly we have accepted nature's way.It seems in the best interest to let go of past grief of broken lives.Some desires may never be fulfilled.Some desires may remain hidden deep within each of us.One of the biggest problems I faced with relating to these major pitfalls of life,was I never could find anyone to relate to,in my own age group.Everyone around me were merrying their new found youth and building away castles of sand on rocky beaches.I was busy searching for answers....
Why bad things happen to good people???That was one of the books I read(one of the hundreds of books I read).It was written by a Jewish Rabbi who had lost his son to a illness.I scoured through every science and philosphical book I could find, searching for answers.I made millions of comparisons with others...and found them far more luckier than me.Slowly as I travelled through the difficult phase...all comparisons stopped.My own self worth shined brightly sometimes and my depressive spells vanished completely.I do go though a "pity party" every now and then,but who can have a constant blazing positive life.I dont know whether the results can be completely tied to meditation or a spiritual yearning.May be I am ignorant of the vicissitudes of life.
But I am thankful for the journey and the wisdom which was obtained along the way...
The Zen way of saying it would be " I appreciate the beauty of the flower and the peace of the still lake"
The flowers exist not in comparison and the lake never allows any of its ripples, to destroy its stillness...

As I write this,I find within myself an emotion. which is like peace or may be acceptance.But I think this feeling, may also mean that the journey was not to find answers but to fully absorb the question itself.I am very appreciative of the human contacts that are important in my life.The many things that we would take for granted,may be the one thing which others will lack.I have come to understand the power of love and also the gift of hope.
In hope we live...In hope do we die...That one day the sun would shine .... life would reveal its mysteries..

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks and looking forward for more. Books are getting replaced today by internet soft documents and documentary video materials in library. Infact, we should move away from books and start to embrace new robust, less problematic technologies. For examplee, this video material is meant for begginners:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2afuTvUzBQ

Its the animated version of platos cave allegory. As plato was influenced by wise men of the east, so were eastern philosophers benefited by plato. Any one who understands plato very well, who takes time in knowing the problem definition will find that most of their understanding of spirituality to be founded in wrong way. This is true, when I meet spiritual seeks who are more inclined to eastern philosophy alone. Plato, when he lays the set of problems in us, then we can visualize how many schools of thought the ancient geography where india is now, produced and the reasons for emergence of different schools of thought, which includes science also.

But I am sure, you would be familiar with those problems. The only difference is that with time, problem definition will change in you. Plato himself has lot of eastern philosophy overlaps...including the "problem of self"....ofcourse they call it problem...most of them except a few who saw solution in disappearance of the problems