I walk a lonely road

I remember the days when I was in school, when I was young, when I was happy. 24 hours went by in a jiffy. Before you knew it was already night and time to sleep. Things around us kept us on our toes so much so that we dint have the time and inclination to reflect within. And thank god we dint. The world that we were a part of was so small. My world was confined within my colony. School, home and play ground. That’s it. That was all I knew. Sadly then I grew up and my borders began to expand. My world grew bigger and bigger until I was done with my graduation. Ostensibly growth of borders with respect to happiness was a forward exponential graph. And therefore happiness also descends when borders starts shrinking. That was a revelation for which I was not prepared and had to face its consequences. As my world started narrowing, my inner antennas were alerted and gave me a heck of a time within. I slept every night with millions of questions unanswered and billions of random nasty thoughts that haunted. I was tired, I was exhausted and after a day’s work all I wanted was a good sleep and here I was barred from it. 

I decided to take a week off and go somewhere alone and sought things out with myself and then begin my process fervently and hope for peace. With immense resolve, I discovered that the root of all that I was feeling was the thread I tied to different people and circumstances knowingly and unknowingly. Either the thread was complexly entangled or tied to a wrong person all together. Both are equally hazardous to one’s life. And then in one of those nights in solitude I accidentally went through this poem by William Blake named poison tree and the doors of my deluded mind opened for good.

A poison tree is a very basic message for maintaining loving relationship through communication. The key is to communicate. The poem’s first lines goes “I was angry with my friend; I told my wrath, my wrath did end …I was angry with my foe; I told it not, my wrath did grow”. Such a simple way to express a profound truth. When you feel something and you have the common sense and the courage to express that feeling to our loved ones, the rage and the fury disappear, almost as if by magic.

My inclination in the past has often been to stay silent when I feel angry. I admit to wanting to stew about it, play it over and over in my mind, where I have extended dialogues with the person I feel angry towards. As long as I take this position of freezing out my loved ones or friends, the wrath persists. Yet when it finally does come out and we are able to communicate about it, expressing our authentic feelings, regardless of how absurd they may sound to the other person, magically and almost instantaneously the fury subsides. “Was angry with my foe, told not and wrath did grow” this is precisely the lesson that I have had to learn, I admit to still working on it each and every day. 

In past relationships I created foes out of those I loved the most. The moment I made them foes, I kept my wrath inside, playing intellectual games with myself, and creating an unbelievably complex scenario that only I was privy to. Thus the inclination to keep my wrath within, unexpressed, allowed me to create the poison tree. I would rather water it with my tears and sun it with my deceitful smiles. And the result? It would continue to grow it and bear fruits. And the fruits are definitely poisonous. It does not only apply to personal relationships, but in dealing with everyone in your life. Anytime you feel that spark go off inside you, and your wrath begins to grow, you are headed to a potential morass. The way out of that potential morass is to stop and make that person a friend rather than a foe. I think honesty and no nonsense statement will put the wrath aside and inhibit the growth of a poison tree that will ultimately destroy you.

Similarly in close relationships, when you feel something like anger, practice mustering up the courage to say how you feel without being abusive or loud. I have found that when I give the silent treatment the anger doesn’t subside. In fact, it grows worse because both of us are growing our own poison tree inside because we have made foes of each other. When we sit down and express how am feeling and what exactly my disappointments are, it generally leads to an open discussion in which we both get to express ourselves and ends with a hug. I don’t believe in the world famous statement that everyone use to console themselves “time will heal”. By not communicating we only nurture the wrath rather than killing it. 

The initial steps would be difficult, could be weird as well, probably the other person won’t like it and perhaps the relation could go worse. Thinking rationally about a problem will make you silent and passive and indifferent, and with distorted peace. In a relationship it’s not about of who is right or wrong, rational or irrational, it’s about who’s life and peace.  Rationality at the cost of one’s peace makes absolutely no sense. Especially with such a complex and difficult domain of life called relationship where there is no thumb rule or fixed check points to cross. Each one has his own race to run. It is a paradox. I am sure it takes courage to take the first step, but the point is you have nothing to lose, the worst that can happen has already happened. What more are you afraid to lose?

It is inevitable in any partnership for two people to have conflict. I often express my feeling that in any relationship in which two people agree on everything, one of them is unnecessary. Your soul mate is often a person who is most unlike you, the one who can push the buttons that send you into frenzy. That person is your soul mate precisely because of this power. When you find yourself in a fury, the person you perceive as causing it is your greatest teacher at that moment. That person is teaching you something that you have not yet mastered yourself, that you still do not know how to choose peace as that button is being pushed. 

The way to that absolute peace is to tell your friend or your lover or your child or your parent or your mother in law exactly how you feel. Do this from a position of being detached and honest and watch how your wrath disappears. You will have removed entirely the possibility of nurturing and producing a poison tree. The more you can create an atmosphere of open honesty, particularly regarding areas of disagreement, the less likely disagreements will become disagreeable. It is in the time of being disagreeable that a seedling sprouts and eventually nourishes a poison tree.

Delusion !

We spend our whole lives worrying about the future, planning for the future, trying to predict the future. As figuring it out will somehow cushion the blow. But the future is always changing. The future is the home of our deepest fears, our wildest hopes. But one thing is certain; when it finally reveals itself, the future is never the way we ever imagined it. Sooner or later, if intelligent one realizes that all the wealth acquired, all the objects of pleasure procured, all the relationships maintained, name and fame gained, work done, achievements accomplished, none of them has any relevance to the inner actual peace and joy lived. The entire life then seems an empty struggle a futile exertion, a meaningless mission. No one really can describe or be sure as to what that inner peace is. It has to be experienced, it is something very personal, and something that is so short lived and still has the capacity to cure a disease. It had been a long time since I had tasted it; I almost forgot something like that ever existed. An outright attempt to search capture that peace began and this part of my life is called ‘taking blows’, the time when endurance gets tested, the same time when one knows his real self. This is that phase in life which is very common and I presume it’s extremely essential too. I was internally annihilated; every positive emotion that my skin had to display to the conventional world outside had a deep root of defiled chaos within. It was terrible. It was as if life told me “sorry boss! You do what you want; I have nothing good for you”. It was gloomy.

Amidst all succeeding people around in their own way it was even more difficult to carry myself through. I desperately wanted to shield my inner self, and at the same time on the other side I wanted to shout what I am actually feeling but somehow controlled every nerve. During this contemplative period I reckoned how different human beings are and how the hell did god or someone design it? No two thoughts between us ever match (unless you pretend to), still there exist harmony and understanding and compatibility amongst us. The very nature of humans to find a complete set structure in between extensive chaos is a miracle in its own sense. No explanation. It is.

I was terribly rejected by everyone. I was opposed for every thought raised. I was denied for every wish asked. I was ignored for every idea shared. In short I was eliminated. I obviously didn’t intend to give up and run away to eternity, which was not going to get me anywhere but into more misery. So I thought of giving it another shot, a shot that will be taken seriously, a shot that will be respected, a shot that may be in retrospect that would make some sense and might amount to something.

Life around is too complicated. Every single opinion in any context were turned and twisted to satisfy emotions and self esteem and respect and I don’t know what not is required for ones contentment. This complication has another consequence apart from an illusion called contentment which is called ‘chaos’ which in reality has a much higher probability of occurrence than the former. Why to resort for a long route when there is a small and simple one.  Missing somebody?? Call, Want to meet up?? Invite, Want to be understood? Explain, Have questions??Ask, don’t like something?? Say it, like something?   State it, Want something?  Ask for it, Have doubts? Clarify, Love someone??  Tell it. How difficult is it to put these into actual realistic practice. Why the unnecessary complications and chaos. Confrontation always helps.

The other gloomy thing that made me reflect very easily unto myself is the unwavering indifference that suddenly radiated from people because of certain inexplicable reasons. An invisible hand just slaps on your face and runs away without looking back. The latest trend for indifference that one shows is when he ‘gets into a new relationship in the context of love’. Oh my god! Now the numerous complications that comes with it is bizarre. I really feel there shouldn’t be any personal relationships formed between 2 people amongst a bunch of good friends who flock together. It defeats the very purpose. If it s a third person altogether, then bang on. It will add a new flavor, a new aroma among others too. If it is someone amongst them, it brings sense of emotional separation; suddenly things get personal and confidential. Trust domain suddenly forms a new range. Pretence, superficiality, conventional rules etc suddenly becomes so important. It is all the more disturbing when you see such a couple make love before you. Sigh!! Plight! They are friends’ right, every time you see them again a wrong and disturbing picture forms in your head. Some friends are addictive by nature. The thing about addiction is that it never ends well. Because eventually, whatever it is that was getting us high stops feeling good, and starts to hurt. Still they say you don’t kick the habit until you hit rock bottom. But how do you know when you’re there? Because no matter how badly it hurts us, letting go hurts even worse. How does one get through then? A terrible war had to be fought with the self. But some wars are never over, some end in an uneasy truce. Some wars result incomplete and total victory. Some war end with peace offering and some war end in hope, but all these wars are nothing compared to the most frightening war of all, the one you yet have to fight. The ties that bind us are sometimes impossible to explain, they connect us even after it seems better to break off. Some defy distance, time and logic because some ties are simply meant to be.

There comes a point where it all becomes too much. When we get tired to fight anymore. So we give up. That’s when the real work begins, to find hope, where there seems to be absolutely nothing at all. We constantly come up with new ways to fix ourselves so we change, we adapt, and we create new versions of ourselves. We just need to make sure that this one is better than the last.

Thus when the world rejects you, its life’s way of asking you to be alert and get up from your slumber and act. Nothing in this world remains the same and hence no happiness is permanent. “Once upon a time”, “happily ever after”, the stories we tell and wish for ourselves are that of a dream. They don’t come true. Reality is much stormier, much murkier, and much scarier. It’s so much more interesting than living happily ever after.