How to name it?

Often I hear a complaint that I don’t know how to talk, but very seldom does anyone tell me how I should talk; I have taken for granted that I know how to respond to people, especially when their temper runs high, or when their spirits are low, or when they find it hard to contain themselves, but of late I have heard the complaint that I really don’t know how to talk. Unfortunately often in life we depend on words to express our innermost feelings and sentiments, and this is all the more true if we are to use external media to convey our feelings. Often when talking over telephone, I become so insensitive to the feelings of others that I leave them more pained and hurt than before.

It is possible I have learned the art of meaningful responding, or that I have learnt it all wrong, and it may be hard for me to learn everything from the scratch. I don’t know if this old horse can learn new tricks, but I am ready to give it a try. The problem now is, who will bell the cat. My friends all these years have taken for granted not to hurt me by telling me how I should respond to people when they are in pain, and how my words at those moments were hurting them. It is not that I am entirely blind to the pain my friends go through, but I find helpless to find a way of consoling them. Anything I tell them sound as if I am indifferent to their pain.

When I am hurt by the words of my friends, I do not hesitate to tell them to think twice before they tell something to me, and I may have to take the same advice for myself and put it into practice. At a couple of times, I have tried to practice it, and realized that if I think seriously before speaking, I do not get proper words, and recently one of my friends suggested that if I do not get proper words, it would be better to keep mum, instead of saying something which may only add fuel to the fire. I realize that one of the most dangerous words that I have been using rather casually, not only with my friends, but with all, is “OK”; the irony of my usage is that I use the word OK, even when things are not OK.

Sadly it had taken several years for me to come to this realization, that a so-called innocent word can infuse so much of pain and suffering in others. The expression in itself is harmless and innocuous, but when I began to use it out of context, it had become a dangerous one. It would take me quite a while to find a less dangerous expression to replace OK. If I were to watch carefully how others respond to my pouring out, my sharing and exchange, I would find more meaningful and helpful words and expressions. This brings me to yet another broader area of my interaction with people around. Do I listen sufficiently to others? Especially if they are pouring out their pain and agony to me?

There is yet another important area I need to spend time on; I am so preoccupied with my own feelings and sentiments that I do not pay attention to what others wish to convey to me, or what they want me to take note of. Due to this lack of listening to others, I fail to respond to them positively; though I hear their words, they do not enter into my inner self, and remains only at the level of my head. If only I begin to listen with my heart, then probably I would be in a better position to respond to them meaningfully, without uttering the meaningless OK for each and every sentence of theirs and thus annoy them more and more. But there is something I have to do, in order to listen meaningfully to what others communicate to me.

Why I love you…

The human beings seem to have a reason for everything they do; there is hardly anything that is done by an adult which cannot be easily explained. Most often the children, say below the age of five, do things spontaneously, and if you were to ask them they might say because his/her mother did so, or the father did so. In some other cases, s/he may just shrug, meaning there is no reason. That is the stage of spontaneity; the leaves of a tree will bend towards the direction of the wind, and that is very natural and spontaneous. But if we were to ask a tree why it is bending towards the direction of the wind, it might just shrug.

Reasoning is considered as the sixth sense, which is so very unique to the human beings; but have the animals failed to live a happy and contended life without the sense of reason? They are jolly well happy without the sense of reason, and then why should the human beings be so very obsessed with reason, and in all the fields seek satisfactory reasons for their actions and reactions? If one were to watch some of the programs telecast in the Animal Planet television channel, one would realize that the animals have a sense which is not very common with the human beings : the sense of intuition. The birds of the air know how to protect their eggs from the prying eyes of eagles; the reptiles know how to take care of their young and initiate them to adulthood.

If our lives are often crippled and out of shape, it is because we are overly obsessed with reasons. If there is anything that we do, for which we do not have adequate and satisfactory answer, then we find it hard to do it. We have some major crimes committed, for which the culprits had no reason, and they claim that they did not do the crime consciously. Crimes such as rape, murder, arson are often committed when persons are unaware of their own situation. But in that case, can we take them as criminals, though objectively speaking they had committed the act? For me, it looks there is yet another level of consciousness, where we may find an answer to these kind of questions.

Some of the most profound actions of human persons cannot be explained reasonably. Any attempt to reason them out and explain them in human language may end up in disaster. For instance, why does a mother loves her child, or why should a father give his blood in order to save his son, and in the process give up his life? What makes some people to lay down their lives at the interest of the wider society or humanity? Or why do I love a person wholeheartedly, knowing well that our love may remain to a large extent going beyond time and space? If I begin to explain why I love a person, then I should know that it is not love that I have for that person, for true love cannot be reasoned out or explained. It takes me and the person I love to an altogether different realm, where reason are absurd and obsolete!

True love goes beyond all calculations and measurements; that is why love is often considered an absurdity, and the popular notion that love is blind is a reality! When two persons are in love with each other, they go beyond all reason and season. Recently I heard about the marriage between a beautiful young girl and a polio-affected young man, who had become a cripple. The young woman was determined to marry only this young, much against the wish of her friends and relatives. Such is the absurdity of love, and we know that it is this absurdity which gives meaning and significance to the lives of millions of men and women in this world.

Taste of Freedom

Freedom, some say, is to do with the mind, and not so much an external reality, and sometimes one cannot help but agree to such a proposition. Whatever be the claims and counterclaims of existentialists and essentialists, regarding the absolute freedom that is accessible to human beings, one thing is for certain: it would be beyond the capacity of human beings to behold absolute freedom, because with a moral body and a limited earthly reality, we cannot think of coming in touch with freedom, which by its very nature is eternal and is a continuation of timelessness.

One of the biggest ironies of human existence is that the more we try to free ourselves from the shackles of time and space and dozens of limitations that life on earth imposes on us, the more we become conscious of the lack of freedom. In fact, it is this tension, on the one hand desiring to be freer, and on the other confined to narrower lanes of freedom, that we can live a healthy life. A leaning towards one side or the other is sure to create imbalance in our lives. Either the excess of freedom or the complete lack of it is contrary to healthy human existence.

The more we are free, the more we become unfree too; freedom from one thing does not include freedom from everything; freedom from a certain attachment or an evil tendency may draw me closer to another binding force, sometimes worse than the former. Therefore it is unreasonable to think that all freedom is positive; unbridled freedom is sure to cause negative effects in persons is a lesson that human history is full of. But how would I know how much freedom I require in order to live a happy and contended life?

Restrictions from social, cultural and religious spheres are there to help me make use of the limited freedom I enjoy, so that my life becomes meaningful. Let me cite an example. Look at a bird inside a cage! Is it free or is it not? We might be tempted to jump too fast and say that it is not free like a bird in the sky; but if a caged bird were to speak, it might tell us how happy it is inside the cage, enjoying the safety and security of a protected life; all its meals assured, the human company, and the outpouring of affection from the younger ones… Who says that it is not free inside a cage? Therefore freedom depends largely on whose perspective we take.

There is a modern verse, entitled Prisoner, which reads : Freeing from freedom, he freed himself! Is that not so meaningful? Actual freedom for this prisoner is to freeing himself from the thirst for freedom. One can find the most free person even in the most limiting situations, and the reverse too is true; one may feel suffocating even in the most free situations. Therefore one thing is certain: it is not the external situations, persons or things which make me really free or limit me; it is I who make myself free or bind myself to external realities. After all, in most of the cases, human beings are masters of the situations!