INVESTING IN PEOPLE

I attended a friend’s wedding, years ago. In addition to me, she had 3 other friends attending the event. But the groom had 100 friends there! I was awestruck. I didn't even know a hundred people in my life - a tiny fraction of them being such good friends that they turn up at my wedding! 

Okay! enough about weddings. But we have all seen such people. People who make friends easily and have so many they could just call and get together anytime and anyplace. People who are at ease among others and not awkward or weird. They do seem to have boundaries or trust issues. They do not need ‘me time’ or ‘alone time’. They don’t mind going off somewhere in the middle of the day or night if their friends call them. They like to be out and with people and generally are fun and seem to be having a great time. 

Then there are people like me. The opposite. We like being alone. We like to think. We are serious. We are introverts and like being quiet. However, we also keep away from people because of all the above. We do not completely trust others, because they are either like us (hence not completely open) or opposite to us (hence will not understand us). So we don’t make friends that much or that easily. We need our alone time, time to introspect, unwind, calm down and process our feelings and thoughts. But this time is also time away from other people! 

The result of this is that people like me become isolated. Usually we don't mind that. We are called loners for a reason. Being with ourselves is great - when things are going great. However life isn't always the same. Sometimes, we are sick, or lonely or need help. All of which requires people. And then we have nobody. No one to call and talk about how crazy the week has been. No one who can come help us pick furniture for the house because we have no idea about home decor. No one to drive us to the hospital when we are sick and can't think straight. 

People like me don't invest in building relationships. It takes too much effort, time and energy out of me. I would rather write this article than make that long overdue call to my friend. Result? People move away. No wonder we don't have many friends.  But what we don't realise is that we have to spend time and effort with people on our good days - when we don't need them, in order for them to be there during our bad days. Well that really doesn't guarantee that they will be there when you need them. That is where the numbers matter. Have so many people in your life that someone will be there when you need them.

I agree, that is a very depressing view or reason to have relationships. I mean, we are putting away precious hours of good days just to insure against bad days, and we never even know if the insurance pays. But isn't that what we do with money? or health? We put away a sizable chunk of money to be invested so that we have more later, especially when we need it. Are not all investments subject to some amount of risk? We sweat and spend hours in the gym and working out so that our knees and back continue to support us for as long as we are alive! But we never know if we are going to live that long! In every aspect of life we invest today in order to reap better benefits later on.  So why can't we think similarly in terms of relationships?

Please don’t go all virtuous on me, and say that relationships are not like money and should be treated as sacrosanct and not transactional. We all know that relationships are nothing but transactional. We give something to get something. Many continue to give without getting anything back because what they get out of the relationship is covert. So now that we are clear that people like me need relationships and friendships, we should invest regularly in them. It would mean making the calls, checking up on them, providing help if and when required, spending some time together, making plans with them and mostly getting out of my comfort zone. We have to give family and friends something which they want - our time and interest. When they make plans - join them. When they have an event or win - celebrate with them. When they are crying or cribbing - console them. We know the list. 

There is one major caveat to this whole thing. All the above is only possible - we can give our time and interest to relationships - only when we like other people.  Genuinely, like people. That would require us to get off our pedestal and see people with empathy and not judgement. This is no easy feat for anyone, but then we cannot really fake through our relationships at all. It doesn't work that way.  Relationships might be transactional but they are genuine and real. At no point am I suggesting anyone to FAKE relationships!

Disclaimer - I am not suggesting introverts like me force myself to become extroverts and just go around tagging people on instagram. But rather, have a balance, and really spend time with a few close friends and family and be there for them. Because we need them. 

Disclaimer 2 : I could be completely and utterly wrong with this approach. But this is an experiment. Worth a try!

WAKE UP CALL

Yesterday I got cheated by an online shopping site for 1100/-. I felt terrible about it. All the signs of it not being a genuine site were present. But I had chosen not to pay attention to them. There is always something to do or plan or think about. So most of the time, I am walking around doing things while my mind is on something else. Just like this incident. I didn’t listen to my own intuition which told me several times that there was something not right with this transaction. But I didn’t pay attention to it. I didn’t even want that item I ordered so badly! In fact, I shop online once or twice a year! I could come up with so many excuses to rationalize my action, but that isn’t going to mask the truth that I just wasn’t being careful. 

This got me thinking, and wondering about all the other mistakes I had done. Very few of them had been due to lack of information or knowledge. Most of them had been due to carelessness. And carelessness is nothing but not paying attention. I cannot even begin to count the number of times I had told my daughters, to be careful. I have given examples and stories and guidelines and scolded them a thousand times because they didn’t care and something went wrong. Now I feel like a total hypocrite! So  I am feeling doubly bad – I was careless in a financial transaction, and I have been teaching something to the kids which I don’t practice myself. Okay, I am not beating myself all over about this. I have already forgiven myself for this. But every experience is an opportunity to learn something and become a little better at living. So this post is about that.

I have a feeling everyone lives like this. But just for the sake of not being a hypocrite (for my daughters) I need to change.  How can I be more careful in the way I live? How do I be careful in everything I am doing? I do pay attention occasionally – when I am writing, or driving or helping the kids with their homework, or telling a story. But never am I completely there when I am cooking or walking or exercising or the zillion other things which fills my days. My mind is always busy with some thoughts. It is not quite, nor is it involved with the activity I am doing then. Is it because the activity is easy or monotonous or because I think I am so good at it that it doesn’t need my attention? This is normal right? A lot of our daily activities are automated. We don’t need to remember how to brush or wear our pants and all that. That is how we manage the sheer immense number of things we do in our modern life. But then sometimes incidents like this happen and I wonder if that is the best way to live? Maybe easier but is it really working?

Maybe this is what all the gurus and saints and people like J D Krishnamurti have been talking about – being in the moment. He talks so much about paying attention to everything happening around and within ourselves. Dan Millman in ‘Peaceful warrior’ said – there is always something happening, are we paying attention to it? If I was, I would still have my Rs1100/- and not  feel like a fool. But the problem is, I do not know how to pay attention all the time. Lets look at my excuses:

 It will be so tiring to use my brain so much all the time!

 It will be difficult to finish all the things I want to do if I am focussed on only the thing I am doing right now. For example while making lunch, my mind is busy making dinner plans and prepping them!

 I absolutely love the drama happening in my mind!

 I have emotions about everything and need to process them by thinking them through.

Well I have no clue if the above excuses are genuine or just excuses, but I need to try doing this to see if these excuses are genuine when I actually get down to paying attention to what I do. Project AATT is on (Attention All The Time)!!! I will report after 1 week, of doing this. 

Whom am I kidding? Do not expect any update for weeks or months or never!

CAN YOU TRUST YOUR MEMORY?

 I used to attend Indian classical dancing classes when I was 9 years old. I have vague memories of going every weekend, a uniform and trying to convert Bengali notes into English. The teacher was very strict. The dance school was above a grimy, noisy metal workshop. The sessions were tough and quite difficult. I remember coming home with trembling legs after every class due to all the practice. I quit the classes after a couple of years. I remember it was because I found it quite tough and wasn’t really interested in it. However, twenty years later, as I was talking to my mother about it, she said I quit dance because I wasn’t good at it. I was so surprised because that wasn’t what I remembered. However if Mom said it, it must be true, so I changed my belief about the reason I quit dancing. I tend to forget the past quite a lot – especially events and occasions, so I trusted her memory more than mine. As time passed, I found many inconsistencies in my mother’s memories about events in the past. That’s when I realised something, Mom doesn’t remember everything. If that was the case, was her memory of the reason for me quitting dance was really true? This realization gave me immense relief.

You would wonder why is it that I am dwelling on something so trivial and in the past. Well, because it contributes to the “story” or “narration” of my life and it decides how I think about myself, which in turn dictates my actions and belief system. Everything I do and think now, is due to these tiny, trivial data points which act like road map or guiding beacon. So this narrative of our life needs to be accurate. It cannot depend on inconsistent data given by my own memory or my mother’s. There is no way to go back in time and understand why I decided to quit dance. But the judgement which arises from the reasons behind the action, will shape what I think about myself. So there are two paths for me. Either I completely disregard this data point as having any bearing on my character or I change the narrative to something which suits my future goals.

Sometimes I feel that it is quite good that I forget the past so easily. Because memories are inconsistent. They are not completely true. We twist them into something either to suit a narrative we choose or to browbeat ourselves; unintentionally. So when I don’t remember whether I am good at dance or not, next time an opportunity to dance comes up, I would participate without any hesitation or baggage or pride about it. Can we live like that? Fresh page every time, every day? Would that be easier or worthwhile?

DISTRACTION

 “Mama”, screamed my seven year old daughter. She had this extremely irritated expression as she looked at me. We were playing badminton in front of our house. The reason for her irritation you ask? Well, it was me not giving her my attention completely. While playing badminton with her, I was also talking to a friend nearby, about something not trivial, but neither extremely important. This happened for the third time in a game of thirty minutes. The first time, a friend called to ask for a recipe which she needed because she was making dinner for guests. The second time, was because I was instructing the gardener about watering the plants and transplanting. By the third time, she really got upset and had to express her frustration as my distraction.

Later on in bed, when I asked her about it, she said “I really wanted to play badminton with you, because you like it. I was enjoying playing with you but you were not playing properly when you were talking to other people.” It hit me hard. Her profound wisdom!

Here was a seven year old, telling a thirty seven year old about how to manage time, about distraction, about relationship. This understanding is based on Nir Eyal’s book- Indistractable. I will explain below.

Time – We always feel there is so much to do, and there really is. But the problem doesn’t lie in the number of activities vs time available. It problem, is that while doing each activity, we are unable to immerse ourselves in it, or get in the flow of each, hence the dissatisfaction about incomplete work remains in the mind. This dissatisfaction makes us feel there is not much time but loads to do. Giving something complete attention gives greater sense of accomplishment rather than completing the task.

Distraction – Nir Eyal’s – suggests time blocked scheduled week which should include everything, even relaxation in it, in order to handle distractions. In this case, my distractions were talking to the different people in between a game of thirty minutes. This is exactly how the rest of my day goes. Everything I do is either interrupted by myself when I see some other task which needs attending to, or I get calls or people come over to talk. All this while I have two little children at home, which means, they could interrupt me anytime.

But it has rarely happened that I allow my children interrupt my tasks or my conversation. I have always asked them to wait while I finish what I am doing. So when I am doing something with my children, WHY CANT I ASK OTHERS TO WAIT? My daughter told me the solution to this, “tell them to go away, kindly but strictly.” Her vocabulary is limited, but what she meant was, tell others to not interrupt my time with my children. I think that is a very good solution. But not something very easy to do.

How can you tell your family and friends that you cannot listen to them because you are playing a game of badminton with your child? We all still have it deeply ingrained in our minds that adults and their problems and their conversations are more important than the children. We could use whatever words we want – we earn the bread, we have more responsibility, we have more tasks, we in reality help more people, etc...But none of them is completely true. Yes we have more things to do than children, but none of them is probably more important than spending than thirty minutes with the child. Equally important yes, but more important – NO. So why is it that I let everything interrupt my time with my child.

It is not fair also, because when I demand their attention, I do not allow them to be distracted at all. They have to pay completely attention to me when I am talking or teaching them something. Look at my double standards!

I have a friend, a working mother of two, who says she misses her children and rushes back to spend time with them. I am a stay at home mom, but I still don’t get much time completely with my children. I always wondered why. But now I have understood why. It is not just about priority – my children are my priority. But only in my mind. In actions, I am getting distracted always. So Nir Eyal’s suggestion – to timebox schedule my time, and not let distractions during each activity should be helpful. This would require good self discipline and some difficult conversations with friends and family, but really required.

Relationship - I have been encouraging and teaching my daughter to play badminton since a year and half. She didn’t show much interest earlier, because maybe she was too small to have the right grip or have the required coordination. But I never stopped suggesting that game. Maybe that is why, she thinks I like the game. And despite a lot of other children playing different fun games around, she wanted to play badminton with me. Because she thinks I like it. Because she loves me. But if you ask me how many activities I do with her, because she likes it, there wouldn’t be many. It is the same with my younger daughter. Yes, I would give them chocolates, and ice creams, and they get their TV times, and play times and play dates. I teach them to cycle, swim, do their homework, etc. But you see how these are different from actually doing the things they want to do, with them. The way my daughter wanted to spend thirty minutes with me on a game of badminton (which she was also enjoying) – it has a different quality of time spent in the relationship than me teaching them how to cycle or swim. Nothing is being achieved, no milestones are being met or learning happening. It is just time spent purely with each other. That is so much required in our relationships, and my 7 year old daughter is teaching me that. I have so much to learn from these kids.

An expert on parenting taught me about “special time” in her Parenting group. This is the best solution to address the above issues of time, distraction and relationship with my children. If you are a parent like me, maybe its time you do this too. Every day.  It goes this way - 

Special time, means that I decide on 30 mins or 1 hr of time everyday, which I should spend with each of my children separately. In this time, the child decides how to spend the time, and I just take her lead. I do not try to teach or make her learn, or change what she wants to do. I go with her completely, as she wants. If she wants to watch TV in her special time, then I sit and watch with her. Even if in the whole day, I am busy, this small special time of 30 minutes will create the connect with the child which will make her feel cared and loved and that she matters.

9. TRUTH

Continuing on the summarizing through excerpts from “Talks and Dialogues” JD Krishnamurti.

What are we seeking in life? Is our search based on our inclinations, our tendencies or circumstances? So which of them is our guide, or what shapes our urges, longings? All of us are seeking something – greater satisfaction, more and wider experience, and greater pleasure. Seeking more satisfaction and pleasures bring with its own shares of pains and fears. It is the same with allowing tendencies and inclinations to shape our search, it brings with it more bondage, pain and sorrows.

And there are some who are more serious and say they are seeking the truth. Truth is a dangerous word. Because search for truth cannot be achieved by a casual and intermittent drive. It requires a sustained and continuous looking, not in any particular direction but a total comprehension of life.

But if we are serious about life, then maybe we can start on the path to finding the truth. We must be serious about life – in everything we do – cooking or our relationship with another person, or in our search for the truth. We must be extraordinarily and vitally serious about everything in life, because each one of us is responsible for all the misery, all the wars, all the pain and all the drudgery there is in life.

Because each one of us is responsible for all the misery in life in the world, there is a need for a radical revolution within each one of us. Because each one of us is the individual and the society, both violence and peace, both love and hate and fear, and sometimes there is a great imbalance in us. We are not only responsible for the world, we are responsible for ourselves, in what we do, what we think, how we act and how we feel. Only if we are able to understand this mixture, this contradiction in us, only then would we be able to understand the path towards truth. Unless there is a radical transition in us, seeking anything is of little meaning.

Man has always been in search of the truth, since history can tell. He has been searching for an otherness, which we call God, which we call the timeless state, a thing which is not measurable, which is not nameable. Man has always sought that because his life is very dull, there is always death, old age, there is so much pain, contradiction, conflict and a meaningless-ness to life. We are caught in that and to escape from it, we want to find something more, something that won’t be destroyed by time, by thought, by any human corruption. Man has always sought it, and not finding it he has cultivated faith – faith in God, a savior, faith in an idea. But faith invariable breeds violence. When I have faith in an idea, a concept, I want to protect that idea, that ideology is a projection of myself, I identify with it and I want to protect it at any price. When I defend something, I must be violent. Over a period of time, nobody believes in anything anymore. Either one becomes cynical and bitter, or one invents a philosophy which will be satisfactory intellectually- but the main problem is not solved.

The main problem is – how to bring about a revolution in this world – not only outside but inside each one of us – a world of contradiction, a world of such anxiety. Only when such a radical change happens can we go further and seek the truth and the questions of if there is God, whether there is a timeless dimension, etc. When that transformation takes place inside us, we will be able to answer this question of truth and this seeking ourselves, within us. And this transformation needs to take place in each one of us.

So what can we do to change ourselves? Not the world, but first ourselves? Others have always told us how to over the centuries – kings, priests, thinkers, etc. But we haven’t come far based on that. We cannot depend on anybody, there is no guide, there is no teacher, there is no authority there is only oneself and one’s relationship with another and the world, there is nothing else. When one realizes that, he faces that, then

·       either it brings great despair from which comes cynicism, bitterness and all

·       or in facing this fact, he realises that one is totally responsible for oneself and for the world, nobody else.

When he faces that, all self – pity goes. Most of us thrive on self pity, blaming others, and this occupation does not give clarity.

So what can we do to live in this world, logically, rationally, sanely with a balance inside us, to live without any conflict, hate or violence? To find the answer we need to pay a great deal of attention. It is different from concentration. Concentration is an exclusive process, focussed on one thing blotting out the rest. Attention is not, it means to give complete attention, not a fragmentary or partial attention, that is, listen to the aeroplane going by, listen to the talk, see, hear and feel everything completely without any boundary/frontier (like concentration which puts up a wall).

So the first thing we need to do is to know ourselves completely – no hidden corners, or secret un- trodden recesses of the mind.

·       Either we do this carefully, step by step, through analysis through examination, through opening every layer of one’s consciousness – it means we will take time. To realise that I am angry, jealous, and to understand why, the motive of it, to uncover to unroll the vast and complex me – it will take time. It could take days, months, years and in this process there is always distortion going on because of other influences, pressures and strains.

·       Or I identify myself with something greater, with the nation or the state or the family or the idea of savior, of Buddha. I identify myself with that, a projection of myself, a conformity to pattern and this leads to more struggle.

So man has done this throughout ages – either gone inwards through introspection and analysis or he has identified himself with something or he has lived in a state of total negation, hoping something will happen.

These methods have not helped us know ourselves well. So there is this complex entity called “me” with all its contradictions and mixtures of things – Can I look at this “me” so completely and instantly that I understand the whole thing? We can only see the truth when the mind is not fragmented, when we see with totality. When you see yourselves totally, not just the fragments here and there, but the totality of your being, - that is the truth. So can we look at oneself so completely, so attentively that the whole of oneself is revealed in an instant? Most of us cannot do this because we have never approached the problem so seriously, we have never looked at ourselves. We blame others, we explain things away, we are frightened to look at ourselves and so on. You can only look when you give your whole attention. And in such an attention there is no fear. When you are giving your mind, your body, your nerves, your eyes, your ears, everything to look, there is no room for fear, there is no room for contradiction or conflict. There is no comparing or measuring happening then. I then understand that comparison invariable leads to illusion, of measuring oneself against the other, and trying to be like the other person, and hence creating an illusion by denying oneself as he is. Similarly when I identify myself with something greater like a state or ideology, then I understand that all such comparative thinking leads to greater conformity and hence greater conflict.

So I put all this measuring and comparing away, and pay complete attention to look at myself. Then my mind is no longer seeking, asking, questioning or waiting. It doesn’t mean that my mind is satisfied with things as they are – it means my mind has no more illusion or imagination. It moves to a different dimension, in which we find that the pain, pleasure, fear of everyday life and the limited nature of the mind is all completely gone. Then there is enjoyment, real joy, feeling of great bliss which is not thought.

What will open this door is daily awareness and attention. Awareness, without any choice, of what is going on within, as you speak, what you say, how you walk, what you think. It is like cleaning a room to keep it in order but just because you keep the room clean and in order doesn’t mean the window will open. All you desire or interest will not open the window. You cannot invite it to open. All that you can do is keep the room in order. By being virtuous (not according to the different faiths), by being sane, rational, orderly. Then perhaps, if you are lucky, the window will open and the breezes will come in – or maybe they will not. It depends on the state of your mind, and that state of mind can only be understood by yourself, watching it yet never trying to shape it, which means watching it without any choice. Out of this choice-less awareness perhaps the door will open and you will know what that dimension is in which there is no conflict, no time, something you cannot explain through words.

ART

 Continuing on the summarizing through excerpts from “Talks and Dialogues” JD Krishnamurti.

What place has art for such a mind? Why do we depend so much on music, poetry, etc? Is it a form of escape, a stimulation? What is a painting? You paint something, some like it, some criticize it and if it becomes famous, it fetches a great price. But if you are directly in contact with the sky, the trees, the mountains and the birds, then you don’t need art. If you watch and are with the movement of a bird on the wing, the beauty of every movement of the sky, in the hills, in the shadows or the beauty in the face of another, would you go to a museum to look at art? Maybe you do not know how to look at all the things about you. That is why you go to the museum to look! But if we knew how to look at the face of a passer – by, at a flower by the roadside, a cloud of an evening, to look with complete attention and therefore with complete joy and love, then all these other things would have very little meaning.

MEDITATION

Continuing on the summarizing through excerpts from “Talks and Dialogues” JD Krishnamurti.

Meditation is a loaded word, and there are several schools of meditation, different methods, various systems which will produce attention. They say “watch the movement of your hand” or “pay attention to it, work and watch it, watch it” and so on. Meditation as control, following an idea, looking on an image, taking a phrase and going into it, listening to the word Om or Amen, listening to the sound of it, following it, etc. There is implied an activity of thought, an activity of imitation, a movement of conformity to an established order. According to JD those are not meditation at all. Meditation is to be aware of thought, of feeling, never to correct it, never to say it is right or wrong, never to justify it, but to just watch it and move with it. In that watching and moving with that thought, with that feeling, you beginning to understand and to be aware of the whole nature of thought and feeling. Out of this awareness comes silence, not simulated, not controlled, not put together by thought, for silence put together by thought is stagnant, is dead. Silence comes when thought has understood its own beginning, the nature of itself, how all thought is never free but always old. To see all this, to see the movement of every thought, to understand it, to be aware of it, is to come to that silence which is meditation, in which the ‘observer’ never is.