Go on….

Yesterday I saw an image of a young man hugging the coffin of his dead brother.

Unseeing eyes, drawn face and unfathomable pain in every fibre of his being.

The very same emotions which hordes of others felt on seeing the lifeless body of a 3 year old Syrian child on the beach or that of some other dead body or a living relative with pained, dead eyes or more recently, with all the brutality being done in Ukraine.

But…

Does the insurmountable pain of one or the abject misery of someone else cause even a second’s delay in the whole working of the universe?

Do angst and tears hold the same intensity for everyone who witnesses them?

Does pain render anyone speechless or rivet them towards any life-altering reforms??

Lord  Buddha saw sufferings and death and he changed….not physically, but internally there was a revolution, a reform. He wasn’t the same Prince Siddharth again. 

But that level of consciousness, that level of empathy and that level of Love is rare. When the pain and misery of each living being becomes one’s own, when every scream makes a person shudder and weep.

 

Most of the times, we see, we feel bad and we move on, to other more important things in life….

A family, a job, an appointment, a vacation, a movie or just towards the sanctity of our homes, where we feel safe and protected from all worldly issues.

Isn’t there a reason that all the cemetaries and crematoriums are situated outside the densely populated areas??

Isn’t it to not make people think about death every day?

But isn’t the opposite advisable?

Most misery in life is because of our attachments and the belief in a forever. A cemetary is the very example that nothing is forever.

Everything runs it’s course,

Everything ends,

Everything diminishes….

The more profound this feeling, the less misery there would be in the heart. Then maybe, like Lord Buddha, the soul would search for something that will never end…

Choosing the one!

Just yesterday, I was watching the new installment of the movie “Wonder Woman”. What struck a chord and stayed with me long after the movie was over, was the final scenes between her and her love, Steve. She knows she has to lose him if she wishes to save the world; that is, her mind knows; but her treacherous heart just doesn’t want to comply. It’s solely her choice, the truth and the right on one hand, and the only person shehas ever loved, ever wanted, ever dreamed of on the other…

This can be our story, isn’t it?? Almost everyday in life, we are faced with a forked path. Every path of our choice leads us to another fork in the road, and this goes on and on.

Edwin Markham says ” Choices are the hinges of destiny”

There are so many bumpy roads down the ride of our being alive and so many curves, that sometimes it becomes difficult to even breathe. 

Choice between career and hobby,

Choice between parents and dreams,

Choice between whom we love and who loves us,

Choice between riches or position,

Choice between spending time with kids or working more hours,

Choice between taste buds or healthy bites…

And then the most difficult choice of all…like Wonder Woman, we too sometimes find ourselves standing at the crossroads…

One leads to our ultimate joy, our ultimate yearning, our ultimate dream; be it riches, power, position, academics or like her, love…

The other leads us towards the truth, the right and the correct way of things… 

It’s the hardest of all….

To pull out the plug of the respiratory machine and let a brain dead loved one go…

To send our kids on the battlefield without a trace of tears in the eyes, knowing that they might not come back ever…

To release the one person we want to keep bonded to us forever, as that person loves someone else…

To let go of our best friend, our pet, in the wilderness, in order to release it from captivity and allow it to mingle among its own…

Letting go is the hardest choice any human being has to make. The absence of something that becomes a part of life, pricks like a thousand needles with every breath that we take. To imagine living on, doing all the daily chores, breathing, smiling, walking along the embankment all alone… without that one person whom we desire to be by our sides at all time; is heart wrenching…

And it becomes more so when the choice of cutting off the cords rests in our hands…when it is up to us to hold on or to let go, to tighten our fists or to let it slide away…

J.K Rowling says “It is our choices…that shows what we truly are, far more than our abilities”

Choice is the most powerful tool we have. Everything boils down to choice. We exist in a field of infinite possibilities. Every choice we make shuts an infinite number of doors and opens an infinite number of others. At any point, we can change the direction of our lives by making a choice, however difficult it might be. It’s all in our hands, our hearts and our minds.