The Fire-brands

I am amazed to see how some people are full of energy and vitality even when they have crossed the threshold of a successful career. Some used to say there is no retirement for the people with a zest! They might be tinkering the coffin, even after being buried, because they cannot keep quiet even for a minute! It is a joy to come across people of this category. Mind you, I am not talking about workaholics, who believe in working for the sake of it, but am referring to the people who enjoy the work they do. They are, as it were, married to their job, and would forego a meal or even biological need in order to get something done!

We often come across the people of the other category too, people who do not believe in giving their best, but be satisfied with the minimum they are expected to give. These are the dead bodies, walking on our streets, they have neither life nor vitality. They would delight in eating, sleeping, gossiping and indulge in everything that is unhealthy and harmful to oneself and the wider society. These people are the one's who become a pain in the neck of the people of the former category, and alas, if you get one of this type as your partner! Your life will be ruined within weeks or months. Before you change them, they would have converted you to their company!

Life can be a lot of fun only when we get into what we are busy with; it may be a silly routine job, or a highly creative process. It is the same with people who know how to turn each moment a magical memory! Some of the modern day messiah's have proposed one way of getting the best out of life. Take for instance, Eckhart Tolle, while proposing the Power of Now, has invited us to dissociate ourselves from the mind by savoring the present moment. Being present to the every moment can make us realize that life is not just a fleeting instance, but one which can make a dry stick bloom with a thousand blossoms! For these people, even deserts will be covered with oasis all the stretches!

The universe still has a breed of men and women who can defy nature and time, and contribute their little mite for the benefit of the world. These are the people who stop aging, and their biological clock as a matter of fact, moves in reverse. To come in touch with even one such person is like a piece of iron coming into the presence of a powerful magnetic field. You get drawn to, and it might be too hard for the iron piece to get out of the magnetic field. While being in touch with magnetic field, the iron too is magnetised, and when it leaves the magnetic field, it carries with it powerful magnetic current, and that can change the world around!

I call such men and women modern day sages and saints, who have the potentiality to change the face of the earth. It is possible that the world can boast of only a negligible per centage of men and women, who can ignite the lives of others, who can set the world on fire. The men and women with zest for life, are the treasure house of any society. It is not what they do, which nourishes the society at large, but their very presence is enough to inject new life and vitality to all around them. Such people never experience death; they only pass from one phase in life to another, and even their memories are sure to spread the magnetic field far and wide. The aura of their sanctity is the food for the world today!

Work out for Workaholics

Some of my friends often tell me that they have no time to think about their near and dear ones, no time to say hello to a dear friend, or no time to scribble a few lines to the one who is deprived of the pleasure of email... No time. I am busy! I get annoyed when people say they are too busy, that they cannot spare a few minutes. We have conveniently given such people a honourific title, 'workaholics', and many are happy to be branded so. The logical conclusion of these people is they end up burn outs. They get absorbed so much with what they do, that they forget their true identity; they think they are what they do! This identification is dangerous and in fact if one starts to identify oneself with what one does, that is the starting point of burnt out...

Maybe it is only the human beings who are endowed with that fifth sense (rationality) or the sixth sense (intuition) to dissociate ourselves from what we do. Being and doing are two completely two different states of existence. The workaholics live the existence of "doing" and they hardly ever "be". Can there be a unsurmountable work which will block a person completely from being what he/she truly is? In reality it cannot be; but then where is the problem? It is in the human mind which wishes to project itself as the busiest person in the world, a thing that he/she can be proud of. People may think that the person was really enterprising, and hardworking... faking is so easy for them.

But there is another way of being while doing the job I am involved with... If I begin to enjoy the job I am busy with, then I am truly being to myself; my whole person is involved with the work; it is pleasure for me to be involved in that job, and no more a burden. But take the case of workaholics, they seldom enjoy their jobs, and that is evident from the fact that they may spend more time complaining how difficult their job is, rather than doing something about it. That is what makes me to think that most of the people who say they are busy are basically faking. In order to hide their idleness, they have to pose as if they are busy with some work or other.

Am I then telling that there cannot be situations where a person has so much of work than he/she can digest? Such a situations are always possible. One can either be or do in the way one approaches the work. You may look at the job as something that needs to be done, and you may do it passively without allowing yourself enter into the work, and you count the hours passed, and look at the clock at every five minutes. On the other hand one may like the job so much that he/she has not realised how the time has passed, and there is no grudge on their part. The latter are not workaholics, they are normal, healthy human persons.

There are times when my work takes precedence over people, and I may become so inhuman to the very people who care for me; such are dangerous symptoms of becoming addicts to the job. What happens when their job comes to an end, and where do they turn to? We need to do our work to the best of our ability, but our work cannot come in the way of our being... however important that work be, it is only next to our being. Today I will pause for a few times during my work, and ask myself, am I a passive workaholic, or do I draw immense pleasure in doing the work I am assigned to. Maybe when I begin to enjoy the job, I may begin to see the world with different eyes, different vision... I may see there is beauty in the work too, and such a realization is sure to take me to the beauty that is within me; that maybe the beginning of my encounter with the Antaryamin, the Lord of my heart!