The Tsunami within

“Your battles inspired me - not the obvious material battles but those that were fought and won behind your forehead.” ― James Joyce

As if the enormous battle of merely living isn’t enough, one can always rest assured that there are more than enough twats on this earth to last at least 10 lifetimes. Created merely to make our lives miserable, humanity is doomed. Somehow, mankind has an innate ability to screw up and sweep everyone and anything along with him for the ride.

And thanks to this load of crap, we are saddled with something that applies quite universally to everyone who’s feeling the “thick of battle” – the weariness from having to deal with these nincompoops. Thanks also to them, we often just wanna run away to another place, another city or another country so that we can leave all that unpleasantness behind and “start afresh”. More often than not, this is more than a desire… it is a need. But while I’m all for one to just pack his/her bags and leave this &%$#!@* place to where the sun shines brighter and the grass is real (and not some astroturf), I sometimes wonder too, whether all the running will actually get us what we’ve after. Sure, we’ll end up with the “Yes, I do love myself… it’s the people that I can’t stand” mantra, coupled with a need to “break away” and go on quests to “find ourselves”. But honestly folks, the heart of the matter is that we don’t really love ourselves as we ought to. If we did, we would have “found ourselves” already and saved a whole lot of $$$ instead of the usual run-around, only to find ourselves at the very same spot where we begun. See, we love the things or the perceptions of ourselves; the way we wear our hair, the way we dress, the persona we project for the world to see. Yet when push comes to shove, we failed to honestly love ourselves to a point where the hairstyles, the clothes, the possessions and the image does not count as much as the reality of a life that’s truly real (or as thespians would term it as “authentic”), both to others as well as ourselves. This zen-like place is where we can truly sit restful with a peace that surpasses all the crisis, all the calamities and the tsunamis that swirl all around. Yes, it is an inner peace and acceptance of truly loving who we are, not what we have achieved. Some term it as wearing our character on our sleeves while others recognize it as simply self-confidence. Whatever it’s called, it’s presence is undeniable and its power to remain calm in the eye of the storm is real. And believe me, at the very eye, the core of the tornado, while all around swirls with mayhem, the centre is dead calm. It is surreal, but nonetheless, real. So perhaps, while troubles, problems and chaos may be arise from the world and circumstances, the greater chaos is within ourselves. And unless we can come to a place where in the midst of all that chaos, there is still a core of absolute calm, there may not be another earth far enough that we can run to, nor a heaven real enough at the end of the rainbow. For it is not so much against others that we battle with, but is with ourselves. Yet having said that, unless the battle is fought, the war cannot be won.

#tsunami #battles #innerpeace