“Let it be foolish, if foolishness is my best today, and let someone hit me hard. That I may be a little less foolish next time… there is too much of the closed heart.” –Kahlil Gibran
How does one protect oneself from being hurt? How to stop making the same mistakes? How to learn when and whom to trust, that too from the very beginning? It’s easy to remind oneself to remember the past and learn from it and yet we teach ourselves- ‘forgive and forget’. Ironic isn’t it? For to truly forgive means to forget or for it not to mean anything at all…yet the lessons we commit to memory are the ones where there has been utmost pain, hurt or bitterness.
When the heart bleeds, the soul cannot watch untainted. For the heart provides elixir to the soul. When deeply hurt, the soul feels crushed, as if someone sucked the air from it. It is like watching yourself trapped in a vacuum, thinking you would never be able to come out of it.
Time heals, and lo! Behold another paradox- time is relative. It is just a concept of the mind. What diminishes our sadness, joys and memories then? What really heals then?
I think it is realisation…that at each moment we have the choice- to live the way we want to. We create our own worlds- of happiness or sadness, our own destiny, by choosing what we want to be, at that moment. There are many tools to happiness today- from meditations to exercise, yoga, therapy, etc. But these can only distract the mind for a while. How easily the so called intellectual man has defined, planned and programmed- one policy after another, one back up plan after the other. However, always all the events we safeguard ourselves against almost never occur, that too in order. Yet we constantly try to beat nature’s ways, making it a measure of our success. Creating one’s own destiny has been replaced by attempting to predict it and then blame it for our woes or the way we are.
Somehow I feel all these patterns curtail freedom of the spirit…not at one go, but slowly, without one’s spirit realising the change, the chasm.
The heart learns to let go at its own pace, which is heightened only when the soul can watch- each thought, each action…without judgement, fear or emotion. It is definitely easier said than done, yet not impossible or too difficult.
There are some who will stand by and comfort, who will help as well as heal. Yet that is only if we allow it. And still, the greatest another can do is to listen- deeply and silently…for they will never be able to witness what we can or could have. A person can serve as a mirror, to reflect and understand, but just like how one cannot penetrate the glass that it is made up of, another can only accompany or guide us in our journey and growth. In the end we go alone, to where we came from.
I feel- at times a rebel, at times devil’s advocate. Many a time I feel alone, and then I feel as if I don’t exist at all. Sometimes others matter, sometimes they don’t. My aloneness, my innermost core is my refuge. My worship lies in each moment, so does my thankfulness and sheer amazement.
The choice is always with me-
To keep on hurting or to acknowledge the hurt and see what can be done thereafter
To keep on waiting for the end or to realise that each moment is complete in itself.
To keep on guarding, doubting, and complaining or to trust that existence will teach me what I have not yet learnt.
To be alive to all the life that is in me, each moment or to let life pass, wondering how best I could live it.
