At cross roads - Life goes on the same!

That was some time back when our friend Salma’s daughter Sharon asked me “Why you, ‘expiry dated’ speak about her?” The question had a meaning. I and Sharon’s father Suresh were talking about Aliath who is a colleague of my wife at the school. Aliath is much younger compared to Suresh and me. At cross roads in life we hear questions like this. Expiry is a milestone on time. Abraham Lincoln said – “In the end, it’s not the years in your LIFE that count. It’s the LIFE in your years”. Today 11th June Usha, my wife celebrates her birthday and I wrote a poem that mentioned “Ageless, Usha”. Age is a matter of time. Happiness is important for us, mortal beings. It’s all about harmony with creation. Harmony is all about accepting life as it unfolds and play with the orchestra. We need to change and Bernard Shaw said – “Those who cannot change their minds, cannot change anything “that includes being happy. Most of us seek happiness for ourselves and probably that’s the problem. It isn’t easy to find then. When we share happiness with others, happiness finds it ways back to us. Keshav, Attitudinal Consultant, told me once “When life changes to become harder, change your-self to become stronger”. Emotions are at play in our lives. We are, to a large extent, involved with emotions and those influence us both ways. Regret is one emotion that kills us more at times. Some of us may feel that we had the courage to live life on our own terms and not what others want us to be. Professionals may feel why they worked so hard so far? A few at least can think that they had the courage to express their feelings. About relationships some think that they should have kept those valuable ones alive as they moved on their path. A large number may feel that they should have let themselves happier. Happiness is making a choice by you, to be happy or not to be! “Contentment consists not in adding more fuel, but in taking away some fire.” - Thomas Fuller. When I see people with an urge to acquire I remember the words of Frances Burney – “A youthful mind is seldom totally free from ambition; to curb that, is the first step to contentment, since to diminish expectation is to increase enjoyment.” Isn’t it true that the gap between expectations and reality is the culprit for most of our sorrows? It was not so long that I attended a ceremony where bones of the deceased were collected after cremation. As many of the close relatives shed a tear from their eyes, I thought –“isn’t those bones like that of mine?” In fact we are that – part of earth panjaboothas. Arunima Sinha's journey from railway tracks to Mount Everest is a story that unfolded on May 21st 2013. After climbing Mount Everest she said – “There was a time when the gel in my leg had slipped out and there was blood but I could not dare to either remove my gloves or bare my leg as it could have led to severe frost bites. I took my time and fixed it up before starting to climb back again.” She achieved the world record feat of becoming the first woman amputee to conquer Mt. Everest. She was inspired also by Yuvraj Singh who fought with cancer some time ago. Adversity can, at times make changes in our lives … Julio a little Spanish boy had a dream. He wanted to play football for Real Madrid! He practiced hard and became a good goalkeeper but met with a terrible accident was paralyzed from the waist downwards. Doctors were sure he would never play football again! To lessen the pain, Julio took to writing poems at night, with a tear in his eye. A nurse gifted him a guitar. Soon Julio began strumming the guitar and also singing the songs that he wrote. He never played football again. But with a guitar in hand and a song on his lips, Julio Iglesias went on to become one of the top ten singers in the history of music, selling over 300 million albums. “imag-e-in” - if not for that accident, Julio Iglesias would have been a goalkeeper. What happened to Julio that evening in 1963 could happen to any of us. A setback or an accident or failure can often appear to be the end of the road. But if we really look at it we may be at cross roads. Learning to cope with failure is a critical step not regret – the way to happiness. Today as I pass through a cross road in our lives, I feel that we should focus on our own lives and enjoy the gifts of God and try less to satisfy others. We have only one life to live truly we should make the best of it, by living the way one feel. We can’t compare ourselves with others and if we do that we miss our train. Being ageless on time happens when we understand current – this moment that is precious and not regret on past or worry on what cannot be done tomorrow. “Many people lose the small joys in the hope for the big happiness.” - Pearl S. Buck. Swami Chinmayananda said “Don't put the key to your happiness in someone else's pocket” – Both these are words of wisdom. I wish Usha, my wife as she passes this step on her milestone, best wishes. She has always been simple, content and happy with what she has and moved on … including the testing times when she had a tubular pregnancy and I was in the hospital with transverse myelitis, cases that could have lost our lives. Her calm and composure illustrate at times, the way to look at life, patiently and move on, as life goes on the same, irrespective of the window through which you view it!

The breath we take; and limits & boundaries in between

26th February 2013, reflected in me as a close friend and a companion in deserts where we worked later. Mohan Mathew whom any one will like was at the terminal of his moment with destiny. A friend called to say this condition and one from Saudi sent a mail. As I traveled to meet him, memoirs continuously attacked me with the times we shared as college mates. Memories never fade - good ones for sure. His wife Santha had her smile slightly distorted, but brave when we witnessed his breath took longer with struggle. His eyes, closed, without food and water for a few days we are waiting in prayers for a miracle. Our breath also had silence in between. His children had come from US and from nearby. Pausing and engaged with thoughts in prayers we returned and on the way back, I thought of the limits and boundaries we have with destiny. There exists a “Lakshman Rekha” a very thin line between the limit and the boundary. This idea evolved from my past experiences and encounters and is food for thought set on your table - provoking and at the same time tempting. There are few things hemmed by boundaries. Boundaries do not bind rather they set limits. We imprison our minds and create a YOU that you are not. Thoughts have hardly any boundaries – they move around in the neighborhood as well beyond. Space and the outer-space have no set boundaries and are in balance. Cosmos is in existence is with attraction and repulsion forces but co-exist and move on. Friendships are love affairs to some extent. Limits are set by mind and not anything else. Between birth and death there exists a thin boundary called breath and between thought and speech there exists a thin line of silence? Our minds construct the world we live in. The perception and concepts we hold determine and create the way we see. Patterns of thought, limitations and boundaries in understanding influence how we interact with and shape reality. Such limits and boundaries define the parameters of friendships and existence. As a child we are dependent, we grow and become independent and in a social and professional concept become interdependent. Friendships are everlasting especially that incarnate during school and college times that makes us interdependent. As I traveled back, I went past my own history of an encounter with death with a disease named Transverse Myelitis about 12 years ago. I was invited to depart and pack my baggage to enter the world unknown. Transverse myelitis is a neurological disorder caused by inflammation of the spinal cord. The term myelitis refers to inflammation of the spinal cord; transverse simply describes the position of the inflammation that interrupts communications between the nerves in the spinal cord and the rest of the body. What began as a sudden lower back pain, rapidly progressed to more severe symptoms and I was paralyzed from below naval, urine retention, and loss of bowel control. The attack was on a fine Saturday afternoon with a heavy back pain and the resident doctor advised me to take pain killer for the night. My breath with death was that night. It was at Hinduja where I was diagnosed and I was in the MRI scanning machine for more than an hour and a half. Lucky I am to have come and tell this story, and live to see my friend Mohan Mathew. What I missed was my breath when the consulting mentioned that I may have a few days ahead to have continued breaths and as per statistics the case is so. When an alumni friend requested to know Mohan’s status with a sob in his heart, I felt the breath in him holding for a moment and I spoke on his terrible condition and his encounter with the “Lakshman Rekha”. Pain has limitations and his son told us he does not experience pain in his condition. But pain inflict in those in love with him. This afternoon I was with a doctor who explained a condition like that of mine that caused tragedy to his father in law recently. This is termed - Guillain-Barre (say "ghee-YAN bah-RAY") syndrome. This is a serious disorder that occurs when the body's defense (immune) system mistakenly attacks part of the nervous system. This leads to nerve inflammation that causes muscle weakness and other symptoms. This is an autoimmune disorder (the body's immune system attacks itself) and damages parts of nerves. This nerve damage causes tingling, muscle weakness, and paralysis. This can cause paralysis and lead to death. The doctor informed me that his father in law whom I met a few months back came back to life after stretched limits of encounters with destiny. We have beliefs and the times I had are experiences to seek from the ultimate to give chances. Those whom I informed about Mohan were in a spontaneous feeling for one another. We reached the zenith of our friendships in conversation – beyond the limits and boundaries that set apart positions, ideologies and beliefs. Love dominates at such instances. Lao Tzu make us think with his words – “Be content with what you have, rejoice in the way things are and when you realize nothing lacking, world belongs to you. When you are content, with what you have and become simply yourself - respect comes”. We then think differently about life and its manifestations, sufferings, pain and joy. The breath I lost in witnessing Mohan’s breath made me understand that death is a necessary phase that transgresses from one to the other. I learnt more within the thin limits of time existed on the 13th floor at Hinduja hospital twelve years ago and as my colleague Ravinder Singh said sitting close to me – ‘Amar, I am reminded of a joke and that will make you laugh and feel good’ – really so, I enjoyed his wits and fun more than the sympathetic looks I used to receive in the visiting hours those days. “Life is not about how many breaths you take but about how many moments in life that take your breath away”.

H A N D S

imag-e-in: Take a turn at right angle from your path . . .

imag-e-in: Take a turn at right angle from your path . . .: The fondness for nostalgia intimidate at times with thoughts that ignite, especially if such memoirs are familiar to failures and weaknesses...

Take a turn at right angle from your path . . .

The fondness for nostalgia intimidate at times with thoughts that ignite, especially if such memoirs are familiar to failures and weaknesses. I was requested as I alighted from a train that halted at Mangalore railway station by a co-passenger to help guide a person who was blind. Leading him through the platform till the auto-rickshaw stand I enquired whether he was blind from birth and he said yes. I made an enquiry whether he was missing something by not being able to see like others. He answered saying he do, as he has all other faculties functioning well and miss that link of picturing the whole world. He traveled from Chennai to attend a friend’s wedding and as I made him sit in the auto rickshaw, he thanked me and said – “I will find the rest of my way to the wedding hall”. He came to part in a wedding of his old friend’s daughter. I wondered then what my relative had asked me “why I undertake that journey after an accidental fall that injured me?” Hearing the blind man’s story made me realize how purpose defines path. I use a video clipping posted on You Tube on Nick Vujicic during training sessions to demonstrate how obstacles can be visualized as challenges. Most of those who watched the video got charged. We all are luckier than many others. Another man, a double leg amputee made history recently by competing in an athletic event in Olympics with carbon fiber blades and thanked his mother Sheila for instilling values in him. The South African Pistorius watched his 89 year old grandmother flying the national flag as he ran. Sheila never took NO for an answer – “Looser is not a person who gets involved and comes last; but one who don’t get involved”. The nature of habit is an automatic compulsion to do what one has become accustomed to. Habits want to repeat old patterns to stay within comfort zones. Edward de Bono is one who spoke about parallel thinking to find deviations in our life’s journey. Tension can be classified in four type viz. of task, relationship, surprise and mystery. With demanding life styles we try to cope with tension as we are in confrontation with situations and yield in defeat, procrastination or surrender. This is where the familiarity of failure disallows parallel thoughts for improvised action to grow and sustain. As a student of engineering, I studied surface tension and it is termed as the pressure difference between the inside and outside of a BUBBLE. Water strider an insect can freely run along the surface of a quiet pond. There is something we need to learn from the insect – to utilize the tension and move forward! Surface tension in simple terms is the balance between the inner and outer chores. And in a different concept it may be applied as our inner thoughts and environment we live. When the few of us who returned as NRI’s met at Wayanad for a picnic, Vijay Menon had lots of games in stock and if you click You Tube video you will understand his question “how many coins can that glass of water accept without water spilling over?” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2mKpZHnEzw Fact is that human resilience to motor through un-known terrains is huge, and we need to appreciate this as we encounter ups and downs of lives. Most of us won't approach problems, but we seek peace of mind. It’s written on Facebook’s walls – “done” is better than “perfect”. Our lives today place enormous demands on time and energy and these demands exceed our capacity to deal with them. We try to align and attempt to function. Too often, this underlying tension surfaces at slightest provocation, and we find ourselves in conflict. Our responses shift to tensions reflecting conflicts. We need to progress through change of beliefs. I believe tension is a need to vibe to the music in our lives. Guitar makes wonderful sounds with tension in the strings. Like in a symphony, we need to learn and adapt to situations, to avoid tension. Happiness is all about harmony with creation; harmony is all about accepting life as it unfolds. Stretch is the elasticity of comfort zones that can redefine our identity bringing out hidden capabilities. Look at a child – he moves on and on. We should not allow the child in us to grow. Then we can participate in that grand orchestra of life. Essentially, to turn sideways with parallel thinking is to reject mental blocks of conflict management. For most of us, we are so programmed either to submission or aggression. When in the journey of lives, the path is a dim and uncertain we need to take a right angle and yet reach the same goal; and get onto move ahead with life. At times behind a hidden door, the key to that door may have been temporarily misplaced but finding it by wisdom, compassion and enlightened thoughts makes it possible. It’s possible with matured, balanced thoughts without breaking the envelope of water bubble that holds the phenomena of surface tension - Longing to seek peace result in belonging.

An Internal dialogue – between me and I

That was after a few years since I drove on that road in front of Christian College on the East side that takes to Mavoor Road, a bye-lane those days that now is a busy lane. I followed a huge Volvo bus that steered in front of me all the way up. I felt it was almost difficult for me to overtake as vehicles moved this side as well with attention and difficulty to pass through. I then thought of the “Just Do It” slogan of Nike shoes, that I am glued with at my native place, Calicut. With the passage of time, the social system has undergone changes. We are experiencing new things or at least hearing about such things frequently and getting used to it. New freedom has given way to new frontiers. We begin with big dreams and high ambitions. Some of us achieve them and others don’t – but both sets are either happy or unhappy. “I love you” that used to be a murmur those days have given way to “I love ME” in loud terms. Commercially every possible item is on sale at a discount and the affordability to buy is also high. Lifestyle has undergone a variety of changes and people accept the New Paradigm easily as the group or peer pressure is allowing them to adapt and acquire at a rate that supersede thought processes. When our desires or ambitions manifest it creates a momentum of action in us. The mistake may be, in our ignorance that we tend to believe that whatever we think or dream of, will come true if we work hard for it. When boundaries are reset, freedom provides new meanings. Culture – the so called – also amends to suit the need, based on young minds and their demand on themselves. When I was a student, the model of code was totally different from what I set for my children and what is set by my children on my grandchild on a transitional model of code of ethic. This is when I got tuned to a definition on how to fit a square plug in a round hole theory and find ways and means to deal with the aspirations and execution of ideas that make our future life. The authority of the social fabric has shifted many rotations and touched a limit that we appreciate now, and that is due to the economic freedom coupled with the knowledge base of the people. The opportunities that galore with the new dimensions of business, deal with technology that embraces today’s life style are another dimension. This context is important where the grandfather was recently told by the youngster that “Your retirement salary is what I earned last month” and that focus on the wealth creation by the opportunity from knowledge based work and skill. When we use the force of ego and power our action and then drop it before the momentum of action takes over we are making a sacrifice. This causes frustration. When this happen, with vested economic authority the old boundaries cannot make any sense and loses its sensibilities. The issue that we confront has a lot to do with old mind sets with enlarged freedom and the new paradigms that rule the world. “Just Do It” or “I know my way” are redefining self-confidence and if directed through right channels will bring in more confidence and new ideas to deal and challenge the un-known - that is future. The sense of RIGHT and WRONG are no more perfect whites or perfect blacks – it runs down to a kind of grey where majority traverse with their lives. For arriving at this grey, we need to have an internal dialogue among ourselves. Then we need to interpret these with the freedom quotient and redefine new frontiers of authority that weaves today’s social patterns that mature and blend with the modern times, as we progress. That will engrave a deeper and more enduring and sustainable reality into the social fabric. Modern in outlook and deep-rooted with value system; like they say the old wine in a new bottle. Then we move away from extremes in behavior nurtured with an attitude that keeps us in between, in balance, like the grey that we heard before, a path that governs respectful and tolerant patterns of understanding of human values. If the aspirations of a strong India have to become real, we also need to monitor and generate codes with extended freedom within a new set of boundaries – this is the challenge. We live here at present and need to design what’s ahead by renewed thought processes without any bias and mis-belief of the environment so that not the perfect, but a more desirable outcome is evidenced. “True North” is the way management experts talk about the path finder compass. Let all of us define the broader boundaries of behavior in our social system to suit in terms of progress and shifted authorities generated by economic freedom, and look at True North and focus our attention to set forth new codes of ethics framed in such a way, confrontation give way by compassion and love for each other. If in this process we find ourselves falling off the wagon, or we are struggling to stay on it, let’s reduce the challenge, let’s re-visit and stay course to the cause so that the New Year will end at a better note than what we anticipate.