The cultural camouflage is a “stay safe” strategy. One can blend in to be in the comfort zone of not being individually identified. The comfort brings with it the discomfort of losing one’s individual identity. The weaker ones in the social food chain use the camouflage for their survival. Move up higher in the chain, and the camouflage is used only to kill the prey.
I close my eyes and take a deep breath to fill myself with life. My inner most being alive, I am able to hear a feeble tune that prompts me to walk towards it. A tune that somehow resonates to the “me”. Not long have I moved towards the tune, I am already distracted. The distraction amplifies and I can’t hear the tune anymore.
Life moves at the speed of light and somehow we all tend to end up following the popular beat which might not resonate to our inner most being. If earnest to seek, one can still find the lost tune. Make an attempt, seek, and when found slowly start humming and moving to this distinct tune. The experience of resonance is magical.
This is my rhythm of life and I wish to sustain it!
Sometime back as me and my husband conversed, I asked him – just imagine we are recruited in the army and I am your comrade. We are fighting a war and moving forward with a bunch of other soldiers. I am shot and I get seriously wounded, what would you do? He thought for a while and said, if I was the one wounded, I would ask you to move forward because the cause for which we are fighting is bigger than my life. But he didn’t answer to what I had asked him :).
I was thinking about it lately – “cause”. We are so eager attaching ourselves to a bigger cause. It’s a way of getting away from the feel of “worthlessness” in human existence. We are not ready to accept that we are just one more species on earth, part of the food chain and like the rest have a life span to live and then die. Our lives are supposed to have more worth, and in search of this worth we are very likely to get stuck with a “cause”.
I have worn the tinted “cause” glass and life has a better shade. Everything else becomes insignificant and the “cause” is what matters to me most. Great accomplishments in this world are an effect of people’s passionate commitments towards a cause they took to heart. If I can sell a cause to someone, believe me I can ask for anything in return. People have used this tool for the right and many times for the wrong reasons. People have killed themselves and others without remorse for a “cause”.
Think about the intensity of buyer’s remorse if the person at a point of time finds that the “cause” wasn’t right, it was just a tinted glass. Now he is trapped in what he was for so long running away from – “worthlessness”.
To not have known and loved oneself is like being in the dark,
The experience is enlightening – like a beautiful journey embarked.
But then there is always the fear of being consumed by the fire of self love
Keeping one blinded from the beauty & sorrows of others near, far and above.
I do want the light in me shining bright,
But need to make sure I don’t burn myself and lose sight.
Oh Lord, lead me from the darkness but do keep me safe from the destructive fire.
I woke up to the quietness of the dawn,
Opened the window to see the crispness of my lawn.
Everything around me is still,
Took a deep breath, with freshness I fill.
The thin vapor of my inner being is awake,
I try touching it and it condenses into a little dew drop to take.
Let me kiss this sparkling pure drop, not long it would stay,
This “moment of being” might just evaporate in the heat of the day.
I conceptualize, visualize – I am already “there & then”. I just have to take everyone who are “here & now” to the “there and then”. My axis is here but the radius of my visualization makes me draw circles in time and space that’s yet to come. Is it a blessing or a curse? I am more in my visualized world of “there and then” and when the “there & then” turns to be “here and now” – I would have already moved on drawing conceptual circles beyond now!
(Dedicated to all the conceptualizers and visualizers – the small & big who keep inspiring everyone else around)
My life is my journey of self discovery. These notes are my way of staying in touch with me. I am left in a jungle of perceptions and perceptual errors, these notes are my bread crumbs that I leave behind as trails to make sure I don’t lose myself. The cottage built of cookies and cakes lures the Hansels and Gretels of the world including me. Hope the birds don’t eat up my bread crumbs, and then I am LOST.
How different are fashion trends from uniforms? We all need someone to tell us what to wear, what’s “in” and what isn’t. We love to be led and yet be convinced that we make our choices. We love to be part of a herd and yet feel we have chosen our own way. We blend in and yet like to feel we stand out. We just opt to chose which herd to follow or sometimes that also is not an option.
As we move towards the path of self discovery and try to answer the most obvious question – ” Who am I”. The more we try to separate the chaff from the rice, the more we would find that the rice and chaff are all part of us. The chaff is equally part of us as the rice. We have little bit of everyone who had been a part of our lives – knowingly, unknowingly – as part of nature and nurture, biological and emotional associations.
“I am the sum of the whole, a blend of them all but a unique blend.The blend is me …a signature blend ! “
My son talks to me about different worlds. the Sponge Bob’s world, Nemo’s world and at times I see him talking to the miniature Lego buddies from the Lego land that he creates . He wants me to be part of these worlds as he juggles between these worlds. Is it childish or have we just lost the ability to juggle between many lives as part of our growing up. Growing up also meant honing the ability to focus on one’s own life and achieve. I remember during school days how I used to be lost while reading poems and stories – travel places while reading geography chapters and traveling back in time being part of the kingdom, fighting battles while reading my history lessons. I loved it all.
Work of art still lets me cross my boundaries experience other lives and perspectives. Such pieces of art are an ultimate experience and these artists are revered for their ability to get me out of my boundaries. When my heart aches at people’s sorrows, rejoices at their joy, frowns at injustices done to someone, I have then blurred my boundaries to live many lives making the experience called “my life” richer.
The generation that is so focused on “focus” and “achievement”, empathy might seem like the characteristic of the fools or rather too emotional to be uttered. The experience of leaving the boundary of the self and accompanying the emotional journeys of many … expanding the boundary (or when the boundaries are blurred) of the self and feeling the joy and pain of the whole universe should be beautiful because – then I am the universe and the universe is me!
Daily Dose of Sanity 