Getting away

I am always amused by the fact that when i am away on a holiday, i am awake bright and early, but in the daily grind, when i am required to do so, i toss and turn, and require an external ring to jolt me awake! I finished my stretches looking out at the sea, waiting for the sun to rise. All i can hear around me, when i am sitting at the balcony looking out at the sea in the distance is the chirping of the birds, the wind through the cashew trees. The bumble bee seemed to be very choosy, taking its time to settle on a flower, and i could also hear the buzzing of its wings, the absence of which was noticeable when it finally did so I never knew sounds could be so palpable; or was it so because i am so aware, so tuned in to all my senses, that i am able to experience everything going on around me ? In the daily humdrum of existence we are living parallel lives i guess. While we are up and running, we do not have time to listen to the subtle nuances of our lives, and we seem to need to tune in consciously before we can experience the calm stillness that i am doing so now. Yet i am not fully unwound. The stillness around me denoted a sense of calmness, while the noise of my thoughts was almost deafening. A result of habit i guess. They flit from one thought to the other, like the bumblebee. But the bee flitting seems to have a sense of purpose; it seemed to be its nature to do so. My thoughts seemed purposeless, and did not seem to offer any nectar when they did rest on one particular subject ! Living with the present moment awareness i guess is just that... Let your thoughts rest. The sound of swishing water made me look around... A little boy was clearing the dead leaves from the swimming pool, which had a quaint tree right in the centre of the pool! The birds sitting on the tree flew away, annoyed perhaps at someone having intruding into their morning litany. Much as i would have loved to sit around and gaze out of the balcony, the clearing of the pool denoted the fact that nature would have to step aside for the order of civilization, where we humans intrude on the privacy of the squirrels chasing each other on the branches and on the parapets and drown the sounds of birds, with the roars or vehicles, and the ringing of the telephone ordering for room service! Maybe that is also why the sun, which looked so beautiful and serene just a while ago, is now beating down my face even glaring at me.... The heat is on ! Mohana Narayanan May 5, 2012

Words,words,words...

How difficult it is to get your point of view across to someone who insists on personalizing everything you tell them as darts thrown at them? My client's daughter was due for her driving license renewal, and she was too close to the expiry date for her to go for the test. What started off as a discussion on the subject turned out to be quite an ugly debate on who is to take the blame for this delay. My client insisted on substituting the word blame with the word responsibility. When her daughter tearfully said that she felt nervous when her father sat near her when she was driving, he started a long-winded explanation of how he has always encouraged her and how could she accuse him of discouraging her. Her trying to tell him that feeling nervous and feeling nervous were two separate feelings, did not seem to get across. He kept insisting that he had no part to play in the situation that existed, while her exercise was to try and identify each one's contribution to the current state of affairs. There were two points she said she wanted to clarify. The first was that it was not an exercise at blame game. She stated she took the responsibility of not following up for getting enough practice classes for her. She also took the responsibility of not making sure she realized the importance of doing this at the right time so that she does not work on a crisis management system. She was also specific that her daughter owns up to her share of not doing what she had to : her taking onus of making sure she was ready for the test. Being a very responsible person, capable of being trusted to do her own thing, it was definitely a lapse on her part, especially since it was happening the second time. This was the learning for her, and the reason for this insistence was that she wanted to be sure the child understood that. It takes a lot to do that : own up to your shortcomings. My client was ready to label herself a nag, as she tends to continue reminding people to do something they are supposed to; She also apologized for not having followed up, as she could have, even at the cost of reinforcing that label, avoided this situation ; and ended the discussion by again apologizing for any hurts that may have been caused during the confrontation. But the father refused to be compliant. He insisted on believing that when she said she was nervous, he was discouraging her. He also insisted on believing that there was absolutely nothing he could have done to salvage the situation, and went off on a tangent of how he cannot do anything, without feeling he is being targeted. My client just gave up. And realized that when we are faced with any set of situation, rather than learning from what happened, all we do is resort to fault finding and digging into our deep boxes of revenge and start hurling the darts at each other. What kind of conflict resolution is that ? And then we blame the universe for sending us lessons again and again, when we do not learn the first time over! I guess that was my learning ! Mohana Narayanan May 17,2012

Coping by avoidance

Today a friend of mine told me that she would avoid all those discussions with me which would cause me to hurt from inside, meaning,reporting those incidents or episodes where she feels I have had an unfair deal and she would not have had the power to stop it happening. It set me thinking: is that the method I would employ to deal with my hurts ... Not talking about it? Was it not her way of coping with her hurt which stemmed from her feeling of being helpless in mending the situation? I would not like to be protected from hurts by well-meaning friends building a wall of protection, consciously not allowing me to be privy to any information which would cause hurt. I would rather have the brickbats and develop my resilience against them. Agreed, the process may be extremely painful, it may appear to some as being masochistic! But that is what life is all about I feel, growing from pain, either dulling yourself to it, or desensitizing yourself to it, or evolving a stronger person from it. How else do you explain evolution? I also feel certain amount of artificiality would creep into the relationship if we start this process of information filtration, simply because we doubt the person's ability or emotional quotient to deal with the information. I do not subscribe to the fact that what you do not know, does not hurt you. Facts have a strange way of getting to you, and I have found this happening once too many times in my life ! I'd rather have them from my friends, than them reaching me from the bulletin board! But again, these friends feel discomfort for being the bearer of unpleasant tidings, and so would like to avoid the topic altogether. I understand where they are coming from, and somewhere they may even hold themselves responsible for the pain they are causing me. Well, it would look like how in the olden times, some kings would behead the messenger who would bring bad news to court! That surely is not the case right? The bearer of badness not responsible for them... MOHANA NARAYANAN