The only way to go was .... Up!

The only choice to make was to go ...Up!

This is not the end. This is the beginning. 

In life we get to make all kinds of choices. Even when we hit a dead end against a wall, there's a choice to be made - to turn around, to sit down, to stand and wait or to go up! I have taken the last one. UP. 

For me life is not a battle to be won or victory to be written about. It's life. Simple life. Life is the only thing that has no template or warning system to work with. The day we are born it begins and only ends when we end. Rest all are our stories. There are no breaks or self help manuals. It just goes on and on. The syllabus is ever expanding and upgrading. Most of the times things we face are out of syllabus. I am sure you would agree to this. The hiccups that we experience on the way of living are our own. No two life mishaps or joys are same. Life has absolutely no role to play. We role play. Each and every action or reactions are responsible for the subsequent ones. We create, we experience and then we destroy it in want of something better. Then why do we blame others or even destiny for that matter? The outside world anyway is not meant to be controlled by us - as a sole proprietors business. It's all in partnership - with other beings. Even if we decide to inhabit an island all by our self - it's nature we would be partnering with! So what is my individual property? Nothing actually. Not even this physical body because that too is made up of food and is covered by clothes and sheltered with materials coming from other living beings. So what are we fighting and running for everyday? Material things or inner peace? Name, career, fame or status? Family, car, house and kids? Holidays? The only thing that stays with you is you! Not very difficult to understand. All i need is the air. That's also being shared with others! Can we stop inhaling and exhaling? No. To be or not to be. It’s never a choice. We have ‘to be.’ Then what are we hankering after? This is not pessimism. It’s called living. 

Childhood must have been good, I am sure. However, all my grown up years I had been just subsisting - one day at a time - for achieving that 'good' - doing good, eating good, studying good, behaving good, wearing good, living good, talking good and all in all "looking good". Always concerned about what will look and feel good in other people's eyes. My esteem and social standing was always defined by some external benchmark in which I had no say. So like all experiments, I had good theories and a framework to work with but had not been part of creating that framework. So how was I supposed to succeed while doing practicals. It’s the same mistake we make as a generation. Hand down everything and then blame the generation before. We forget as grown ups. We too were child rebels for things we did not understand or wanted to do. We have to fine tune all that comes as a legacy. That will be our legacy! We need to release our children from our hopes and fears. Share all the stories but let each one figure out how they want or what they want. Each one of us must have experienced that while we all read the same recipe and cook from it, no two dishes are ever identical. There's always a difference - even if fine, but there is.

Nothing in this universe is supposed to be identical. Otherwise the spread and the flavours would all be the same. No nine planets. No billion stars. No flora. No fauna. No landscape. No humans in all their shades and shapes. Everything would look and feel the same. We experience ecstasy because we know how it’s different from being in dumps. We love walking, dancing and running because we know how it’s different from being confined in a space. We have a colourful life because we know how it’s different from living a monochromatic life. Balance in life is welcomed because we know what a one-sided narrative is capable of doing to humanity. I have never ever come across an apple tree wanting to bear mangoes in the season of mangoes. It decides not to bear any fruit! I have never heard of an orange tree which has pears or plums growing on it’s lower branches. I have never seen any predators wanting to adopt mannerisms of their prey in order to have food on their plate everyday! Examples are infinite. There’s no greater guru than nature in its entirety. Why then we humans have ruined our hardwired happiness into misery for wanting to be someone or something that’s born different from us? We have to learn to grow bigger or taller or move up in being who we are. That’s the whole story. Not metamorphose into something different and in the process wipe out the inherent uniqueness and inbuilt happiness.

Many a times I have contemplated calling myself the heroine of my life. Why not after all I am the producer, director, protagonist as well as all the character actors supporting me. I came to realise that the day we start owning our script with all it’s glory, loopholes, surface level and over-the-top situations. We have created a box office hit!  At the end of the day we have to take responsibility for all that we live. We have countless examples of people making through adversity and down-the-dump  situations but very few realise that this story could be mine too. We need to do away with changing glasses to look outside, to try force fit myself in irrelevant situations. Please look within - it’s what we were born with and is 100% indigenous. I was taught in my childhood - if you want to be happy don’t look at the missed opportunities. Look at all the ones you made use of. We have a very small fist. Something or the other is bound to slip through them. Haven’t we heard story of King Midas? You cannot have everything. and even when you are blessed, happiness could still evade you. If all our wishes were to come true, there would be stampede in the “great heaven-like life in La La land”. I have yet to come across someone who wants to live in the dumps or experience a ‘hellish’ life. We want something better or in vogue all the time and which is perfectly fine. Do so by loving your life experience by working on yourself. So the bottom line is - Life is meant to be lived, not perfected. There’s no higher level meaning to it. Life purpose is not cast in stone. It’s ever changing. A lesson I learn everyday and try to remember on every other day! It’s worth it.

After more than 4 decades of breathing and living, I finally hit a dead end. I too am faced with the same choices. It's been a omnipresent part of this lifetime but finally I got around to accepting my own limitations. The choices could be finite but not responses. The choices that I have were not easy to acknowledge and believe. It took me more than two decades to just come around and see what was staring at my face all these years. I have limitations not life choices. I am the only one who can make choices for me. If life gives me lemons. It’s not necessary to make lemonade out of it. I can just have the lemons the way it is. I don’t have to look for meaning in everything or everyone. I don’t have to please anyone. Just be there to accept the consequences. The purpose is to live. Simply live. Not every moment is supposed to be a blockbuster. All moments have greatness embedded in them. It’s called being ALIVE! This was actually the first step and I stopped at that. I just can't bring myself to take the next step. 

When you know you are not who you want to be or thought were, what do you do? Where do you start? At the beginning or do you make a fresh beginning? Seriously, I don't know. We are not supposed to be knowing everything otherwise we would have been born with memories of all past lives and remember every moment we have lived so far. Isn’t it?

In all honesty, whatever I have read, observed, experienced or listened to - no one actually has the correct answer to any of the questions that life gives us everyday. We all fail everyday. No one gets full marks on all days. The ones who call themselves successful are people who either don't take that question or ignore it all together and continue doing what they got to do. Which actually doesn't seem like bad a option. After all why are we born? We don't have any say in the very reason why we are in this world the way we are. My religion tells me its my past deed "karma's." I too believe the same but what do I do? This existential question has been plaguing me day in - day out.   

So I have decided to pick up from where I stopped. The second step has to be 'Up'. Below is a bottomless pit. If I don't stretch my hands to break the speed or prepare my feet to find a crack in the walls to halt - I will keep on going down. Now I am going up. Past is something that all of us are recommended to forget and keep it where it's meant to be - in the past. If you come to think what else is real except past? I understand that its only present over which you have control to create but its only past which is the testimony to who and what I am today, in this very present moment. I cannot forget all my past otherwise what will I be left with? What will I cherish or learn from or ignore or forgive? Do we really have the strength to just leave the past and move on without looking back? I am sure people who renounce the world can do it.  But what about people who decide to live in this world? In this world we have to accept it because trying to forget or erase will start an unending struggle which will not let me forget it. It’s a never ending loop! We all have choices but do we have the strength to make one and live with them? It's easier said than done. I am talking from experience. I gave up 8 out of 10 choices just because I lacked the strength or conviction to live with them. Silence requires sacrifice and patience. Do I have it? I didn't. So I suffered...still do. But then that's the choice I make. Every second. I fail and then I start again.    

The way I have understood about going 'up' is - I rise to a level 'up' from where I have a good view of all that's gone and lived. The past does exist - even if in my memory or may be other people's memory but it does exist. Being 'Up' has definitely given me what is called the helicopter view - complete view - in its entirety. How one thing fits into another, how one memory relates to another, how one relationship metamorphoses into another - the complete picture so to say. Believe me it does make a fantastic view to feast on. Even if I decide to blackout or leave some parts to complete my picture, make it real enough to rejoice, its worth the effort. I learnt the power of silence. I can share from personal experience that you can hear yourself the loudest and most clearly when you are silent. Physically silent. I don't mean the meditation or mindfulness stuff. I was able to achieve silence by learning to recognize my own inner voice in the cacophony that's non-stop going on within oneself. It's been there in all that I went through. It has been my wisest cousel. My very own curated GPS. This inner voice is the most balanced one since its taking birth from you. It's the only voice we are born with. Unadulterated and pure. No external influence or bespoke. What we learn to speak later in life is all acquired. Don't waste energy in shutting out the other voices. Learn to concentrate on that 'original sound' so as to filter it out amid all the others. Our senses could be it's support system to provide data but the decision should come from within, from that voice.

In the last 5 years I had the opportunity of spending week after week in silence with minimum interactions and interruptions in a day. That's when I realized. When in attention - all that you read, observe, watch or hear, nothing is erased. All is registered. It will help your inner self when its time has come. So build your own library to take reference from. Be with yourself most of the times without the external noises or media. I am sure you too will see that the only choice to make is always to go ...Up!