Pain or Suffering - An Intelligent Choice

“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding / and you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief” wrote Kahlil Gibran in “The Prophet”

We see many around us in pain; we see many around us suffering. What we often fail to see is the difference between the pain they endure as a natural phenomenon of existence and the suffering they chose as a conscious choice in life.

Pain is inevitable; many things we face in life can inflict pain on us – either influenced through a foreign substance disturbing the status-quo of our body or an internal imbalance causing a disturbance to the functioning of our system. A thorn piercing our feet cause pain; on a fine morning as we wake up we might realize our eyes are swollen and it’s causing pain too. These fluctuations in sensation that we call pain are a truth of life – inevitable.

Suffering is a choice; to suffer is to feel or bear with disagreeable effects; dictionary has in it another definition of ‘to allow’; it is an allowance we give ourselves through a decision we make, a choice from a basket of options we have in life, an unnecessary allowance. How a friend treated you a few years back or a loss of share in the stock-market or a twist in your career might have caused ‘pain’ at that moment. That pain is inevitable to the nature of cause – a normal response of our system to an incident of that kind from a person you trust or a possession you held so dear or a dream you kept so high. Thinking about it years after, today, and feeling painful transforms that sensation to a different dimension – that’s suffering. That suffering is a choice. You are oscillating to a dead moment in the past and breathing life to it, inhaling its toxic emotions and becoming intoxicated and derailing from your path that otherwise leads otherwise to success.

Acceptance leads us to the liberation. If you are wearing a suit and it suddenly happened to rain, raindrops falling on your suit, you suffer from the awareness that your suit will be damaged and with the thoughts of how you will get to a shade! The friction causes suffering, and the after-thoughts that follows. A child playing in that rain, or a young couple in the beach walking in the rain ‘accepted’ that moment as inevitable, and they do not go through that friction, but in that acceptance they rather enjoy the pleasantness of that moment. Should you in a flip of time decide to walk in that rain and not allow the thoughts of damaging your suit or possible illness infiltrate your logic, perhaps you too would have enjoyed it the same manner, attain that liberation. In acceptance, we are liberating the friction of battle that take place in our mind caused by the discrepancy of reality and expectations – or our perception of what life should be, than what it is.

Our pain is in this moment – a cut, a bruise, a headache, a heart-break! That’s inevitable. But our sufferings are connected to a glorious moment in the past or a dream of the future, or a dark moment in the yesteryears or a bright hope in an uncertain future. Most of what we suffer is the pain of leaving behind something in the past or the friction of designing the skeleton of an uncertain future – a future that can’t be reached if ‘now’ is not lived to its fullest!

In a world where the powerful and the manipulative minds and hands rule the roost, in a world where the formal mechanisms of governance itself water the roots of terrorism in different disguise, we are offered with reasons in abundance to suffer – the news we watch, the stories that unfold, the helplessness we live with to influence, so on and so forth. It becomes only an intelligent choice before us then to have an awareness of the ‘now’ and accept its inevitability, that, in that acceptance we realize that this is all what it can be, a thought that will fail to disturb the inner peace and the balance.

Shahir

Summer Parenting When The Heat Is On!

Summer Holidays! Most parents are equally puzzled and excited too when faced with engaging their children productively during summer holidays! Sensing the opportunity, the trainers and others alike in the city pull their sleeves to organize various summer camps and parents rush to enroll them in the pretext of character development, though in some cases it’s just an outsourced parenting!

While summer camps are indeed a good platform for children to develop a holistic approach towards life if organized well with an appropriate ratio of facilitators and participants, there are many activities parents can think of and drive at home too, which will also enrich their bonding. Just as in the corporate world you adjust the operation to the climatic changes of the market, it is inevitable that we see this ‘summer holidays’ as a climatic change at home and adjust our parenting style according to its demands.

Who wouldn’t want a bicycle, or a teddy bear, or a ticket to an IPL match? Motivating children to work towards an incentive is perhaps one of the first steps in engaging them in productive activities that will reshape them. Naturally, incentives that ‘you’ offer them may be less valued than the incentives that you agree after a discussion ‘with them’ for what they value most. Making them feel they are the winners is by itself a motivator.

The incentive will turn out to be an investment if the child indeed qualifies and earn his reward, for, in the process of earning that incentive during this period, the child would have registered in his subconscious mind many habits that will at some point in his life serve him good. Once you have set up an incentive that you know the child would jump at, we then set some goals with clear milestones. Imagine a big chart put up on the wall that highlights the different goals in colour, the weekly milestones that you and the child together will discuss on a daily basis! It is an opportunity to celebrate little successes every time they are getting closer to their milestones, and an opportunity to visually coach and guide when he is falling short. The child may not correct immediately, nonetheless, the achievements and shortfalls are inevitably registered in his subconscious mind and it will process on its own over a period of time.

In setting goals, it is important that the children are involved fully, and as parents our role is to guide, and bring to their conscious surface the kind of goals that you are expecting – subtly aimed at the areas you know he needs improvement. Is it discipline, is it time management, is it ability to talk to visitors at home – you decide. It must be clear to the child that this project is not an option and this is how the summer will be, however there could be a basket of options of activities they could choose from, or of their own if you are convinced it could yield results. The discussions on the project should not be sidelined to a marginal conversation over dinner or in between attending your business calls or reading newspaper, and must be a meeting as important as the meeting you chaired your office on the twenty-second floor with the CEO. It has to be a conscious discussion.

These activities doesn’t have to be big and glamorous; it could be a few action metaphors that would imbibe in him certain qualities and values qualifying for a score for each activity, as simple as assigning him duty to fold his blanket every morning, stacking away the newspapers and magazines in its designated areas, so on and so forth. Get them write a Summer Diary – a journal to document their activities in summer, or the least, have them write the qualities they observed in the IPL players they are closely following. Have them learn ‘shloka’s or verses from your holy books connecting with spiritual values and write how it relates to their friends or neighbourhood, as enthusiastic as you were to send him for guitar classes!

While summer camps may teach him to swim well in a pool, these camps that you organize at home will help him swim through the tides of life.

The Contrast

I attended a funeral the other day – funeral of a man, like many others whose hands are briskly held and pulled behind the curtain of life by the extended reach of death, who had a few more unfinished patches of half sewn hopes.

Sitting down in a corner, observing the expressions in the face of people who visited the house on that day, I had many things to write and share; my thoughts seem to have fallen down and lost under the dead leaves of time, such that I am now unable to write what I then wanted to write.

I am not getting the beginning to write about that sad ending!

When the priest was waited for, I heard someone inquire ‘did he arrive yet’?

When the ambulance was waited for, I heard many inquiring ‘did they bring ‘the body’ yet’?

Validity of his name is expired. His name was of no use anymore. He was referred to as ‘the body’.

Death is not as much a concern for the dying or the dead than it is for those who are left behind; men stood silently with men whom they knew. Men stood staring at ‘death’ leaning against the wall, or they searched for life on the floor as they stood looking down, plunged in thoughts of what is inevitable! The old among them – what must have been going on in their minds? The young, they were aware too in the attributes of death that doesn’t discriminate the old and the young.

Time chose to slow down; is it the fear of death or the respect for the dead that the men in waiting had lost their voice as they spoke to each other, that I could only hear whispers that failed to beat the tick-tock of the clock’s pendulum that oscillated between the two ends of now and then.

Which one of my word is perhaps the last I will speak? Which one of my deeds is perhaps the last I will act?

Faith in the plans I draw for the time to come is lost when I see the heap of dreams lying scattered in the silence of his wife and children. Yet I know that it is in that faith and in the actions that follows that you build and leave a legacy for those you will leave behind, though life never fails to throw at you examples of stark realities as this that instantaneously ripped away through the center a piece of dream that was core to the existence of that family.

There was a silent question that perhaps everyone asked in their minds un-doubtful of this inevitable touch of exhausting time, and perhaps a silent resolution in their hearts to make their life better, as they escorted ‘the body’ on its final journey!

Human race have grown its capability to annihilate races in pursuit of power and positions; yet, how humbled they become when they see reminders of that inevitable moment when you carry nothing that you fought for, rather, you are being carried to a place that you’ve been reminded all the while!

Shahir

Alternate Seasons!

Back home!!

In a few months of being away, how children change – growing up!

Their conversation has changed; the choice of words they learned to use, or not to use amuses me, and amazes too. When Naisha has become more logic and speaks of the little science she learned in school and relate it to the daily motion of life, Mariam has learned to express in words her emotions of heart more than before, and has become expressive of the little things that matters most to her.

Their expressions are different, changed!! They have hopes that they are able to communicate – Mariam do not want me to be with my laptop except when I have ‘homework’ as she put, and can’t understand why I have to be in Iraq when all her friends dad’s doesn’t have to!

What they laugh for, and why they become silent are all symbolic of their growth – the life I missed to experience! When did Mariam grew up to feel ‘shy’!

Physical expressions of love has become a matter of utmost importance to them, more than before; a hug is replenished every now and then with a heartfelt rhyming expression of ‘I love you Papa,’ and an affectionate kiss that fractures the cheek bone.

Whom we love, they love too. Whom we dislike, they dislike too – that’s how the solidarity is expressed, that we do not want what you do not want, and embrace what we embrace. Mariam’s typhoid has taken a toll on her, depriving her of the food she loves most and limiting her to the bare essentials! Our way of expressing our solidarity with her is to not have anything that she can’t, and wait till she will recover fully when she can then have all the chocolates and candies we bought! It tests Naisha’s patience, though perhaps it might also train her to be a person of values!

If I were to pray for one thing that I am sure of having granted as a boon, perhaps as any parent would, that would be to give me whatever illness and misfortunes that are destined for them, so that they are not tested by the brutality of life and are blessed to enjoy the spring and summer alike, for everything I endure is with their welfare alone in mind!

The soothing chants from the temple, the smell of spices and flowers in the air, the dynamic sound of life from the neighboring streets, Jaysree aunty's 'rasam' and all that and more, these alternate seasons of life is perhaps what life is all about - a constant experience of transition!!

Shahir

Where Did You Leave Her?

You may not want to read it, perhaps, it's also the story of your life!!

Should the excitement last forever? Does it? Or, should it? Of anything, for that matter!

Isn’t life a transformation, and should it always be what it was? How much of what it was should remain while it shed its old skin and new skins are formed?

I am talking about relationship, trying to plot the graph of growth in a chart of life!

Have you been through a stage of life where everything and anything that’s beautiful resembles the beauty and character of the person you love? Not just a dandelion or a bunch of jasmine or a garland of roses, but even the refreshing aroma from a coffee cup or and old melodious song played at a shop down the street are enough to lead your thoughts through till the avenue’s end where your beloved resides, waiting! There is a never ending ache, suffocation, clutching of ribs that you experience in the absence of the other, and the silent prayers that you whisper in mind to be the first to be taken away from this world than be left behind after your beloved is gone!

Where did all that thought lead you to, or where did you leave all those thoughts as you grew past the milestones of life and reached at the pavilion of time where you stand today!?

I remember the run up to our wedding! My wife use to – and I am sure she still does – sing very well, and I use to call her up on the phone when she return from work, and how lovable it was then to be listening to her singing of a few lines of what was then our favourite song from an old Hindi movie !

Why then did the sparrow stop singing! Or was it the woods that stopped listening! Where are the streams that once sung chorus to her songs?

I am wondering, in the recent years, how many pages of whatever I would have written – volumes on love, on relationship, on life, on the nostalgic moments from the past and the mesmerizing hopes of the future; they were all compiled as Random Thoughts in my WORDSChamber or a letter to a distant someone behind the rainbows compiled as a “Book of Letters”. And in reflection I realize, in just a few months between our first meeting and our wedding, how many letters did we send, weaving - from a single thread of love connected between the distance that separated us beyond the seas and mountains between the two continents then – weaving intimate conversations of what life means to us and how we intent to build it, brick by brick! Then, the most agonizing moments were two: one, when she will have to keep the phone and leave, and the other, to select the most lovable greeting card for whatever reasons I wish to send! I have in an old chest at home an old leather wallet that still has a fresh and crisp currency note sent to me on a special day; what I can buy with that note now is much lesser than what I could have bought with it then, but it’s just the value of currency that has devalued, and it is precious still when I think of the moments she would have went through, buying them, and packing them, and driving in her scootie to the post office to post them, and the last look perhaps at the postman with a humble plea to please take care of it!

I now wonder, I haven’t written to her an email for ages since!

Why then did the peacock stop dancing with its words spread out, or is it the rainbow that disappeared from the sky that stole its hope of rain to come!

I realized the other day, how surprising it is all !!

A week ago I reflected on this and wrote:

‎"I am intrigued by the paradoxes that surround us; down the street is a mason who could build for you a palace, yet lives in a hut; next lane is of a goldsmith who could craft for you an artful piece of an ornament, yet not own a stud; there sits a carpenter with his chisels and hammer, carving out soulful shapes for an arch for the rich, and his window is covered by an old worn out cloth! There is a book of destiny all these are credited to, in the end !"

The untold story was more than what was told!

There in that house is a lady bringing up two wonderful daughters – wife of a self-proclaimed poet – who could only read the poems and verses that her husband wrote for the world, and none for her!

Why can’t she get the poems to read, for her?

Why should she be a spectator in the pavilion, and not the dancer herself on the stage?

And I found the answer too.

What was love at the beginning transformed!

When love transforms to a better shape – when it is all done by rubbing with rough edges of life’s tests and has done its walking through the parks and between the pine trees, when it has seen the summer and lived through the autumn - it takes shape of respect of a particular kind, an inexpressible guarantee of a special belongingness that transcends the excitement of love.

Yet it intrigues me.

The script of life and the love that it is made of!!

Is it the story of your life too?

Shahir Kutteery

The End !

There are moments you come across in life where the closets of memories are sorted and clearedto take a few of the best ones with you to the future; a conscious transition marking an end and the beginning. The moment of cutting that umblical chord that connects to a series of special moments in the past have to be carefully held and truncated to move on to the future. It’s an aching moment.

Silly though it may sound, I feel that ache as I woke up this morning. Perhaps there was a build up to this since a week.

I am shifting to my new accommodation today – from Naz City to Elegan Hills !

It’s nearly a year since I came to this place; to take time as a scale to measure its significance would be as containing ocean in a mustard shell ! The days and months that lead to arriving here in Erbil, and the months that followed till now has great significance beyond what the Time could contain. The experience of living together with strangers who became friends and grew to be emotionally inseparable, the stages of transitions from strangeness, to dislikes to likes to loving and caring, the invisible bond it help us build in sharing those personal space, and the understanding that it developed of each others’ taste of living, their personal hopes, likes an dislikes – these would have not happened if it were not for the opportunity we had to be together. Clive, George, Devrim…all of them leaving a special memory of their own unique ways of living – one that perhaps we would never experience again, together !

And then there was the world I built within that world of a shared space – a shielded space of my own where I gardened my thoughts and nurtured my hopes; a world small in physical space yet so expansive as it could contain the whole of the past and till the edge of future, with an ever shifting horizon.

I don’t know if I will miss this place; but I know I have been sensing an ache as I pack my things; every steps are the last of its kind; every moment, one that will never come again. I have never enjoyed packing; to pack is always to part from something, someone. It has always been a symbol of disconnect; it always had a tinge of ache. When you take things with you, and when you leave things behind, you are not just taking or leaving it physically, but a piece of memory with it; you might forget it, and it may be insignificant in the larger scheme of life, yet, there is a gap of time from now till then when it is forgotten and transition into being insignificant.

What is an ‘end’ has always been a new beginning.

What is endless?

Did You Write This Letter?

O! Dear,

I have been wanting to connect with you for ages now, and didn't want to rush you a mail or flash on you a phone call but sit down and talk leisurely; it never happened all this while, for such is the pace of life!

I sometimes wonder in whose hands the reign of my life is! Who is accelerating it? Or, what is, rather?

I dont' know about you, but there are moments when I fall into silence as I come back from work, and perhaps would remain silent for hours without me knowing. A withdrawn state of being, with lot of conversation going on in mind and yet the voice suppressed between the chest ! The politics at work, the pressure of things to do and the desire to deliver more, the deadlines, the relationship, the battles, the failures, the dejection, the surprises, the celebrations, the cocktail of experiences we go through on a day is such that the exhaustion silences us as the day pulls down its curtain in disguise of a restful night !

That's when, my dear, with a punctuation of a sigh, the temptation to wrap those thoughts in these words become stronger. At times it gets birth as a little verses, and at times it becomes a letter; at times it simply flutters its wings and fly away to an unknown garden of dreams, and at times it simply become vapour and exist just as a steam of thought on the warm walls of my heart !

I am writing all these today for no reasons! I feel so exhausted - one of those days when you feel so heavy inside but do not know why you feel so and can't point a finger at any reasons...; you are a victim who had to read me as a result.

It keeps me wonder, what is it that I am chasing with such an exhaustive energy! What is it that I am aiming to gain with such a loss of the 'present'! The credentials, the laurels, a shining profile - just to be framed in a box of obituary in the end ?

Love

Shahir

October 16, 2011