Space Available!

It is said that the permanent place that we can ever claim for ourselves is the six feet of earth that we would be lain on; in fact, it cannot be considered permanent because soon after our bodies are decayed, and when there is a need to bury someone else in the same place, they would dig up the very place, and if they are considerate bury our bones in another place, this time maybe just a foot long pit. But what a racket we see in our cities and towns, people pawning all their possessions to purchase land! The land price has escalated in the recent years, thanks to the realtors who know how to incite the hearts of people to seek after the space they can never carry with them.

But the tragedy is it is the land that had been hitting the front page of newspapers in this part of the country over the past few years : be it Nandigram or Singur or Lalgarh, it is fight for space. There are political parties who have joined the innocent peasants to make the fight for space a political issue, and there are people who are reaping a very high dividend, thanks to their involvement in the struggles of the landless farmers of these places. That for sure is the one that deals with geographical space. But there are other spaces we may need to look into, in order to really find the significance of space.

Psychological space deals with the attitude which says how much do we allow other people to enter into our lives, our hearts. There are many people, who cannot confide with anyone, and will not easily open their hearts for others to enter in. They are careful, cautious, and calculative in all human relations. They may even look for what benefit they would get as a result of permitting a person to enter into their hearts, lives. Our lives will be enriched in the same proportion as we let other people occupy our heart and lives.

Social space is the one which deals with the familiarity we exercise with the people around us; how much do we allow other people to come close to us. Are we anthropophobic, experiencing certain amount of fear for human persons, and therefore do not let ourselves freely mingle with others? In a crowd, do I allow myself to remain alone, or do I allow myself to mingle with the people, even strangers and make them my own at the end? The longer the distance I keep with the people I live with, the more difficult it will be for me to experience human cooperation.

Spiritual space is the one I create between me and the power beyond me; in other words, it is the meeting place of my inner being and the cosmic being. It is the place where I find myself as the true image and likeness of the creator, and can experience, even if it is just for a fraction of a second, union with God, cosmos, or nature. It is a moment when I can forget the world around me, and be in peace (ananda). Until I create this space for me, I may continue to be a wo/man restless, anxious, fearful, seeking the one which alone can reach me to a place of all solace and consolation.