A Sympathetic Ear Is All We Need

There have been many occasions when I wanted to shout on top of my voice, ” I do not want solutions, I just want a sympathetic ear”. Haven’t we all been there? Every time I feel overwhelmed by the world around me, I feel the need to offload my troubles onto someone. Just sit and tell them my troubles and then carry on with life. I know that talking about them won’t solve them, but we feel light and less alone when we talk out our problems. But now I have encountered an even bigger problem, there is no one to listen.

I tried speaking to my family and soon realized that I was better off keeping my mouth shut. By speaking, I was adding to my troubles. It almost feels like I was asking the police how to steal.
Next, I turned to friends for a sympathetic ear. The minute I started telling them my first problem, they started comparing it to their lives and their troubles. It became a competition of who has the worst situation. It was fun for a while, but I never got to actually telling my problem before the winner was declared. They had their own set of issues to deal with and I could not compete with theirs.

This time I turned to my seniors. I tried to speak to my teachers and lectures, anyone senior to me. It was fine at the start, they listened. But slowly after some time, they started making suggestions, giving solutions etc. They understood my mindset and attitude, so they started anticipating my issues and told me what to do next before I could talk. It would have been a blessing if I was really looking for solutions. I realized this must be God’s way of telling me to stop complaining all the time.
Nowadays, I have anything on my mind, I just stand in front of a mirror and rant out all that I have to say. If it does not help, well that how I get inspiration for my blog posts 😉😉.

Variety In Life

They say that variety is the spice of life. One would have to accept that diversity is what makes life fun to live. It is what make innovation and learning easy and achievable.

Let us not lose this diversity that we have with petty misunderstandings and ego clashes. Let us rise above our differences and start to appreciate them and accept them.

The Way To Meditate

Meditation is a form of relaxation and relieving our body of all the stress and tension. It is also a way to reconnect with our inner-self, to become aware of all those suppressed emotions that we keep bottled up, without any outlet. We can talk about the benefits of meditation and how it is helpful to destress us but, how does one meditate. When I researched what meditation was, they said, “it is a state of clear and open mind that is free of all thoughts.” Initially, I found it hard to actually sit and meditate. I was not able to clear my mind of all my thoughts. In fact, the more I tried to clear my thoughts, the more they kept overwhelming me. I decided that it was time to make a serious effort to learn some way to meditate.

As always, I tried the traditional approach of going to a teacher to learn. I told her about my trouble with clearing my mind and how I did not understand how to do it. She took me in and taught me a technique to start off with and slowly get into a meditative state. As per her procedure, she would guide me to relax my body in a progressive way starting from my feet, up to my head. Once my body is relaxed, I should concentrate on my breathing. She said once I achieved it, that was when I learnt meditation. I liked this technique and I practised it daily with her. It felt relatively easy to relax my body and stay breathing. The problem was, what do I do after that? I noticed that while I was following my teacher’s instructions to relax my body and only feel my breath going in and out of my lungs, I had something to anchor my concentration. Once she stops giving instructions, my mind didn’t know what to do next. I felt like a dog that follows its master enthusiastically on a walk. Once they reach the park, the master sits down to feed the birds or ducks and the poor dog is clueless, so he runs around disturbing the birds and ducks.

After reaching this far in my quest to learn meditation, I was more than determined to see the end of it. I now turned to read books to learn what to do next. This is where I heard about ‘Mindfulness Meditation’. It says that rather than dwelling on one thought of past or future, focus on the present. One should take in the sounds, smells, sights of their surrounding without judgement or analysis. Just see, feel and hear. I liked this style as it focused my thoughts that were scattered in different directions and anchored it to the present. I could practise this type of meditation during my commute to the office, sitting at my desk or during walks. I decided to stick to this style of meditation until I felt the need for more.

There is another form of meditation that I liked and learnt when I was researching. In this form, one can concentrate on one happy or peaceful thought and keep repeating it in your mind like a mantra. This particularly helps when one is agitated or disturbed about an event or a person. This way, I can send the person good wishes, good health, or positive results etc.

I started out looking for the best and easy way to meditate and ended up learning more about myself and the way my mind works. There are many more forms of meditation and relaxation. I have listed just a few here, but I hope it motivates everyone to try them and find peace.

Beware Of The Evil Eye

Anyone who is from India or who has visited India is aware of the evil eye, or ‘Buri Nazar’ as we like to call it. As I pride myself on being a person of science, I always dismissed this concept of evil eye or ‘Buri Nazar’. It is a widespread notion that says when an envious or ill-intentioned person regards us or our possessions than it will cause harm to the person or the possession. It sounds magical, doesn’t it?

For a long time, people around me have supported this concept of an evil eye and told me many anecdotes of suffering caused by it. There are also just as many people who denounce this notion as being unscientific. They say, these anecdotes are based on hearsay and are stories of uneducated minds. I belonged to the latter thought process. I felt that the idea of causing a person to lose their wealth or health or happiness with just one envious thought seemed magical and fantastical. It happens only in fairy tales. But what if there was a way to prove this evil eye.

Do not worry, neither have I not lost my mind, nor have I turned into a believer. It is not a study or thesis that I have conducted on this subject. I stumbled upon the work of Dr Masaru Emoto on water crystals and the impact of human thoughts, words, emotions etc, on these crystal formations. He says that water carries a consciousness that is gathered from the people and the emotions around it. In his book, ‘The Hidden Messages In Water’ Dr Emoto says, “water exposed to loving, benevolent, and compassionate human intention results in aesthetically pleasing physical molecular formations in the water while water exposed to fearful and discordant human intentions results in disconnected, disfigured, and “unpleasant” physical molecular formations”.

I have attached a link to his interview from this YouTube video. https://youtu.be/ujQAk9EM3xg

From my understanding, what Dr Emoto says is that a positive and loving thought or person invokes positivity and peace around them. Hence, the water crystals are symmetrically and aesthetically beautiful. Similarly, a negative, hateful and envious person or thought invokes discord and unhealthy environment around them. Hence, the water crystals are deformed and shapeless. Since a human body is made up mostly of water, it would be safe to say that these water experiments hold true on people as well. I felt that the same explanation holds true for the concept of the evil eye as well.

I am still not convinced a 100% about this evil eye. It is because I do not like the idea that all my hard work could crumble just because of the jealous and weak thoughts of a person. However, Dr Emoto has made me rethink this concept. I may not have become a believer, but I do not denounce the concept either. There is sufficient experimental proof about the impact of loving words and hateful words that are carried through the water. I do not agree that evil eye works every time, but I believe that positive thoughts and love begets positivity and love. If I surround myself with loving and positive people and emotions, then I will only attract love and happiness. What do you say??

Let Us Agree To Disagree

People all over the world, irrespective of ethnicity, race, religion, gender etc are all obsessed with being in agreement. People want to be in conformity with others in everything, be it appearance, ideas, opinions, even in priorities. The funny thing is, even when you disagree on something, we all want to disagree on the same thing. Conforming to a norm or a set of rules of utmost importance.

We all speak very highly of heterogeneity, uniqueness, out of the box thinking. However, the minute an unconventional idea, or fresh thinking or something different comes up, we all want to remove it, to change it or to kill the uniqueness. Basically, our first instinct is to remove anything that stands out and bring back uniformity. We might enjoy discussing this new idea, we may argue about its pros and cons. We could also debate about it, but we all want everyone to reach a consensus and stand by it. We do not accept fringe groups who want to make their own path.

In today’s world, diversity in the true sense is not tolerated. It is a superficial concept that we like to boast about. However, in our hearts, we secretly plan to remedy this situation. At the core, we want everyone to think, function and behave alike. This notion is what brings about the death of a culture. When we get into a herd mentality, individual thought dies. Without independent individual thought, society cannot grow and evolve. It will die a slow and painful death.

We all need to make an effort to accept our differences. Not just on a superficial level, but also in our hearts. We should understand that there is nothing wrong with being different. We must make an effort to realise that there is nothing wrong in seeing a different perspective. There cannot be a hero without a coward, no white without black or no good without evil. So diversity is a requirement to every society rather than a nuisance that you have to put up with.

Image Source: I have sourced the featured image from Google images. I do not own this image.

Celebrate Your Victory, Not Their Loss

Celebration after victory is required after any contest. Be it in sports, business, politics, elections, cinemas, academic pursuits etc, it is common to see the boisterous celebration, partying, and quite a bit of chest-thumping. Especially in sports, we get to see spirited voices that speak of the greatness of their team, players, strategy, execution and much more. Any football fan would vouch this being a common practice. Even as part of the ‘after analysis’ of the game, we see experts on both sides break the game down, play by play for their viewers.

As long as the discussion is limited to the performance and play, it is all good. The trouble starts when the fun and celebration start to get personal about the players of the losing team. To make one team look great, followers start to demean and insult the opposite team. They make a show of how bad their performance was, the number of errors they made, the flaw in their strategy and play etc. This is the most unsportsmanlike behaviour, but it is particularly common among the fans.

We see such mudslinging, offensive and personal attacks being made toward the opposing team not just in sports, but also in politics, elections and business competitions too. Something about participating in a contest brings out the darkest and meanest attitude in people. They resort to various below-the-belt tactics to take cheap shots at one another. Celebration becomes more of a slugfest. It takes away the joy of winning and the fun of participation.

True sportsmanship is an attitude that should reflect in all of us. In those who participate in the contest and the revellers who come to support the contestants. By resorting to demeaning our opponents, we only prove that our victory is undeserving. It shows that our team won, not because of our superiority, but because of the opposing team’s inferiority. Nothing is more insulting than being robbed of our victory because we did not deserve it. It is something that the world needs to learn.

Inspiration

Inspiration is the positive driver that guides us and urges us to achieve our target. I have written a few times, on a similar theme in my earlier posts. I wrote about motivation, how the quality of motivation is important, and how we can turn our fear into a positive driver. I do not want to be monotonous. The reason for speaking on this topic again was a heated discussion that I was part of. It brought upon a sudden urge to rant to my readers on the topic about what should and should not inspire us.
I have always believed that inspiration and the root of inspiration is an individual choice. What encourages us and what discourages us is a personal choice based on our experiences and perspectives. Yet, I hear people denouncing and ridiculing others on what they base their inspiration on. How can one decide what is inspiring or not for other people?
I often notice that people make fun of one another as a way to make them take up a dare or a challenge. It is all part of the friendly ribbing that is common among kids. It was fine when it was between kids, but when we see elders employ the same tactic, it gets disturbing. There are instances when grown-ups poke fun at kids on their weaknesses and expect them to get inspired by it.
They think that when they say, “You are stupid”, or ” You can’t manage the job” or ” You run like a girl” etc, we will take it as a challenge and complete the task to prove them wrong.
I find this tactic to be childish and counterproductive. Picking on a person’s weaknesses or insulting them will only discourage them and make a person doubt. It will in no way, encourage the kid.
Kids generally draw inspiration from famous people or sportsperson. It is quite common to be influenced by positive example that we see in the outside world. This idea was shot down stating that we should not look outside for inspiration and that it should come from within. I agree with this argument but, being mean to a kid is no way to reinforce their confidence or boost their morale.
At times, it might be tricky to encourage a person or to give them a confidence boost. However, it is not necessary to kill their faith with harsh reality checks. You might come from a good place, but insulting a kid or picking on their weaknesses is just called bullying. If your intention is not to bully a kid, please change your tactic. I can only suggest that we all should be mindful of the way our words are perceived. If we have nothing motivating to say, then it would be better to hold our tongue.