The Sunday Morning blast

 

The Sunday Morning blast and the whole day went for a toss. I had no idea why I acted / reacted to that small incident the way I did. This was not the first time.

While everything seemed normal on the face of it, I could feel the turbulence internally so clearly. I had started showing strong reactions and emotional outbursts to small things, leaving others and self too sometimes wonder what was there to react so bad to such a small thing. It had started occurring so frequent after a time that it had started bothering me too and it was now a situation of red flag.

Being a non medical student, I had never got any serious introduction to the subject of the human body and its functions. Barring few normal activities I had not much idea about the functions of this human machine. But now with a conscious effort I started remaining observant of my reactions to situations. I realized that my mind was reacting against its rational thinking and going with emotional impulsive reactions. It was obvious as our rationality takes a little longer to get activated than our emotions. 

Reading and knowing the human body has always been fascinating for me. It was once that I was surfing through the internet, I came across this book Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ by Daniel Goleman. It was like god sent for me at that moment. It spoke about a very interesting organ in our body - Amygdala - and its functions. More reading on it made me go curious about it. 

Amygdala is a kind of an almond-shaped mass of grey matter present inside each of our cerebral hemisphere. It operates unconsciously. We cannot control its immediate, instinctive, automatic reactions because they happen much before our consciousness gets activated. It is that part of the brain that unites emotions and memory. It is involved with the experiencing of life situations and giving an emotional meaning to it linking it with our memories. It also helps in reward processing and decision-making to handle a particular situation faced.

Reading further, I came across the concept of Amygdala Hijacks. It is an emotional response that is immediate, overwhelming, and out of measure with the actual stimulus because it has triggered a much more significant emotional threat. If occurred, it could cause serious mental problems such as poor decision-making and impaired emotional memories. I was scared reading that damage to the amygdala can happen when any strong emotion like anger, fear, anxiety or even extreme excitement impairs the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain in the frontal lobe that regulates rational thinking. Symptoms of these can be seen in day to day life very clearly like reacting irrationally with anger, frustration or restlessness to simple situations or incidents. 

The risk attached to this organ is that it gets triggered on a fraction of a second. It gives us the feeling of "fear" even before we understand what is that we are fearing of and why is it that we are fearing it. Instability of it can create body misfunctioning like increased heart beat, palpitation score, blood pressure, etc. This organ stabilizes itself if it senses safety around. Having said about its impulsive nature of reacting to threating situations, it is also interesting to note the good side of it. If our mind did not show such abruptic reacts to threats then how can one be saved from seeing a snake or a speed vehicle running towards etc.

Now, geared up with this understanding, if I look back, not to be surprised anymore, all this while I was having nothing but the Amygdala hijacks. I have shown so many such reactions and have suffered so many times silently in the past due to my own ignorance. 

It is important to remember that this human mind is full of magical powers. It is a mix bag of problems as well as solutions. It is on us to keep it healthy, wealthy and wise. Yogic exercises like breath management, cultivating good habits of mind management or developing emotion control mechanisms etc can be good ways to calm the amigdala and keep it under a balanced state. The idea is to learn the trick of Self regulation of this human organism. i.e learning ways to regulate our mind ourselves with Critical and Rational Thinking instead of letting the mind get dominated by our emotions. 

Exploring the human body is one fun activity that one can get into. It surprises me every time with something new. The more we know about this human body the less it is. Happy Exploring ! 😊

Is there a template to happiness ?

I was at the eleven day ritual ceremony for a loved one. In the midst of conversations amongst the gathered people I heard someone saying – “He was too young to leave. He was not happy in his life and that became the cause of his death.”

The thought that immediately ran across my mind was – “Who stopped him from staying happy” OR “Did he fail to figure out the ways to remain happy.”

My mind trapping me more, the questions that started playing in my mind – What do we actually mean by happiness ?, Is there any perfect recipe or formula or a format or a template to happiness that works for all ? How would anyone win that magic wand to stay in that everlasting state of happiness forever ?

Talking about “Happiness”, I am yet to understand a separate definition of it other than simply living every moment peacefully and with contentment in the most natural way of love and respect towards self.  In my understanding, there can never be any fixed formula to remain happy other than this basic one. The universe provides each living being ample number of ways to find its own happiness in its own best suited way. If there is no dearth of ideas and ways to remain happy, why is the human mind remaining so tensed and clueless to find ways to remain happy.

Today with the increasing number of cases of mental health challenges leading to ending life (self destruction or a but obvious natural end), it is so sad to note the kind of clarity we are living with this word called “Happiness”. It is becoming so clear that we just don’t know how to handle this gift called “Life”. As I discuss with people, I realize people are in great suffering and in a miserable state only because of the lack of understanding of this simple thing. “Life” is treated with such casual approach and disregard, as if, its just another thing, what is the big deal to get a human life. When we value things less, its so obvious a fact that we don’t care for it. My most suffocating and helpless response that comes out as a response is – “For God’s sake, can we give a little respect to the creator who has given us this gift for which everything is what it is today.”

The more I grow in my awareness, I realize my care for my own life is the biggest secret to my happiness. This realization has brought me an understanding that …

•    My health is important for me
•    My mental state is important for me
•    My relationships are important for me
•    My emotional balance is important for me
•    My financial security is important for me
•    My learning and constant evolution is important for me

•    My love for self is important for me

We are human beings and so in my understanding, these are few basics that help us sustain. These are a basic set of responsibilities that we owe towards ourselves. Once we secure ourselves setting these basics right, we create an environment that is safe and secured, to reside peacefully in. Once Safety comes, the first hinderance to my state of happiness i.e FEAR OF SURVIVAL is taken under control. Once we take this element of fear under our control, other areas of life start blooming on their own and the state of peace and joy becomes a very natural state of existence leading to lasting happiness.

Life is delicate. Slightest of a gap in our understanding can make us pay heavy. Let us be mindful to our own understanding. 

Oneness

When it is the same air in circulation i.e my exhaled breath becomes the inhaled one for some other being. When it is the same sky that runs over every living being. When it is the same water that is running inside all the beings. When it is the same fire that is burning in us all and When it is the same space that is existing between us all beings ... why can't my mind understand the simple concept of "Oneness". Where is the problem is what i ask myself - Is it my ego, my pride or simply the ignorance of my own mind. Silently comes the answer - yes it is your own misalignment with the very thing called Life.

30 seconds to midnight

 It's the time again when all at home have gone to sleep and I come to my desk to pen few thoughts. I switch the table lamp on, look for my favorite pen from the pen stand, pull my diary out from the pile of book and notepads kept on the left side of my table.

The day was a hectic run as usual. I open my diary, flip the pages to reach to the bookmarked section and the page opens with today's date written on the right side corner. I look at the date and I wonder to myself "oh the first quarter of the year has already gone by".

I rub my tired eyes with both my palms, give it a light massage in circular rounds and keep my hands over it for a minute to give my eyes the warmth of my palm. My body is tired and so is my mind but for some reason refusing to accept it. It seems like still it has the world of energy to go wandering every possible corner, as if hunting for that one answer that would make it happy and it would go happily to sleep after that.

With the page in my diary open and my pen kept between the pages, I push back on the chair, lean back for support, take both my hands folded back to my head to give it a little rest. As I close my eyes, the happenings of the day goes through a jet speed movie flash. I am sitting with all the material comfort that I need, the day also went perfect but why are the gaps of ending it as a "happy day"  so large and huge inside my head.

Inspite of having an all task accomplished day "why was I not happy" - was possibly the question that my mind was still on a case to find out. "After all what does the mind want to really announce loud and clear that "it is happy" ? Why is the mind always after a chase to perfection and idealism to prove myself better .

The other half of my inner self rises to a revolt -
- What would happen if I simply decide to not do anything till the time I wish to act.
- What would happen if I just accept myself with all my imperfections and stop all chase to perfectionism
- What would happen if I decide to stay in this non - idealistic world.
- What would happen if I decide to stop running after this illusionary world

Will the heavens fall really ? Will I really starve for food ? Will I actually burn down to ashes ?
And what will happen if I really "choose to just be" with all my perfections an imperfections, be in the state of "Being" and stay absorbed and soaked in the awareness of "Beingness".
Will that put my restless mind to rest a bit and smile with happiness.

I opened my eyes when I felt the sensation of two drops of tears started rolling down my cheeks from my eyes. I open my eyes to see the clock striking 12.

What an amazing 30 seconds I was. I brought myself to awareness. I pickup my pen and just wrote two words " Good night" and went to sleep peacefully with my restful mind ! 😊

Twenty TwentyOne - A watershed

2020 and 2021 - the biggest nightmare to witness but a new bloom to a beautiful sunrise too ! 

2020 March, it started - the first wave. Somehow we managed and sailed through it with the belief that this too shall pass and we should be soon able to take control over the virus, little did we know what lay ahead. To everybody's surprise 2021 came even more violently with the second phase creating the panick in every house, theworld over. Never knew before and had never thought also what a Pandemic was like. It almost devastated the whole world attacking health, finance, livelihood. The virus spread across the globe at a speed faster than wind giving no time to even think what was happening. We were so unprepared - no vaccine, no medicine, no knowledge of the infection, no idea of the cures. All we knew was - "it was spreading like wild fire among humans".  In this state of helplessness and panic, came the only workable solution to be - restricted movements and stay indoors instructions. Everyone including the medical fraternity, scientists, government went clueless on the situation and the required actions to be taken for exercising over it. The death cases were only on the increasing high score world wide. To add to the messy state of affair all around was the economic slump. It was a state of utmost despair and pain - physically, mentally and emotionally for everyone to see how the entire human community was suffering. 

Ofcourse, the pandemic gave us the hard times, the pain, the fears but at the same time it came as a great teacher too. In the chaos, came the good part. It was like a watershed. It was during these times when the night seemed the darkest and the most unending, in the desperate desire of survival, we started looking life in so many ways beyond our long established ways of thinking and living so far.   

It reminded us all the teachings that our parents and grandparents had given us but sadly we had forgotten. It made us realize the value of relationships, value of money, value of good health, importance of savings, beauty of quality over quantity and the list is long. The best result of the lockdowns and stay at home orders was that we started looking at our homes again. We started dusting those remote corners of our houses to create more of spaces for me-time and family moments, We started taking decisions of quitting the high paying jobs and metro living and moving to our home towns with small assignments closer to family, we started puling out those books from the bookshelf which never got our time, those music records, old photo albums, old diaries which were left abandoned for years, we started de-cluttering and cleaning our wardrobes and cupboards by discarding unnecessary unwanted things and donating to the needy, we started to rise on our compassionate behavior and the best part was that we started cooking at home again, experimenting and trying old grandma recipes. 

But the most important learning that this period of utmost turbulence gave was learning the art of living at the present by choosing love & faith over fear & anxiety for who knows what is there tomorrow. 

Times are tough and will continue to be for some more time but Life rests on Hope and Hope for a beautiful tomorrow  is always a beautiful feeling ! ❤😊