The days are challenging. The information and automation age is dynamic and creative people are at the mercy of AI which is replacing human creativity, chatGPT and the bots are reducing the opportunities for a lot many of us who eat the bread made of our hard and sweet labor. We weave our dreams with the golden strands of words. We are writers, researchers and thinkers. We do not know when our jobs will be sacked and we will have to go back to the drawing boards again.
In the middle of the week I suddenly felt insecure and my mind was giving me alternatives but I always chose to be a writer despite of the challenges. I remember once my friend questioned me, “When will you get into a real job?” I chortled but I knew I needed to choose silence.
The weather of Rishikesh is a blend of sun and clouds lately. The flowers are in full bloom. It is exciting time and I love to hang a hammock in the garden and lie there, reliving the redolent stories in my head and sometimes recording them in a voice recorder for penning it down later so that I can share them with y’all. I love to collect my thoughts and save them as voice memos. Sometimes this collection surprisingly becomes my new blog story. We observe and absorb so much from the people we come across, even strangers we pass by on the street. Everything leaves an impression upon our thoughts, the trees, the changing color of the leaves, the food we eat and the friends we meet, the whole lot stays with us.
We eventually become like the environment we surround ourselves with. You can say that we are like the water which takes the shape of the vessel it’s poured in.
I stood still staring at the artwork of the clouds and the gale. It was mystical. My creative juices were overflowing as the wind caressed my face and the unclaimed and open sky covered me. Little droplets of rain kissed my lips, my forehead and my eyelids. It was like the nature was romancing with me.
I don’t know when I drifted in a childhood memory of mine. My friends and I were playing on a summer day and one of them pushed me from the staircase in my parents’ house and I broke my teeth, it was bleeding and I was terrified. My mom held up the fearful and petite frame of mine and rocked me in her sturdy arms until I felt warm and secured. It was like this sturdy hammock on a windy day on which I lay.
Aby came around to check on me. She woke me up. She had an umbrella for me. It was pouring now and the wind was frantically blowing while I was in deep sleep in the hammock, she looked at me with an amused and curious concern. I smiled and said, “I was safe in my mom’s arms, don’t worry dear.” She smiled and gave me her usual expression of knowing.
As we moved towards the little room we shared for our retreat, I turned once more to look at the trees that held the hammock together, to feel the wind that cajoled me and thought about this flashback, I felt secure and the volatility of the industry, the automation and the manipulations didn’t bother me anymore. The message was so loud and clear.
Don’t look at the universe with the sense of lack. Rather know that you are being taken care of. Some things work and some do not and that’s that. In both situations you are okay. The Universe is abundant and loves you because you are a part of it.
“I know what to gift to you next Shree… a pocket dream-catcher.” Aby broke the chain of my thoughts. We both chuckled and got into our cozy den for some hot-chocolate, laughs and sweet Ramphals, a fruit that is special to this little town, the yoga capital of the world, Rishikesh.
Mother’s Day is coming and I feel each day is hers. It is so important for me to feel her love and acceptance in everything I do. I hope I can be this sturdy hammock in the wind for my seventeen year old son who’s about to go to college and we wont’t have him around for a long time now as he gets into the world of creating identities that are far from the innocent and unqualified realities of home.
Sharing a poetry by Li-Young-Lee that resonates with what I feel today.
The Hammock
When I lay my head in my mother’s lap I think how day hides the stars, the way I lay hidden once, waiting inside my mother’s singing to herself. And I remember how she carried me on her back between home and the kindergarten, once each morning and once each afternoon. I don’t know what my mother’s thinking. When my son lays his head in my lap, I wonder: Do his father’s kisses keep his father’s worries from becoming his? I think, Dear God, and remember there are stars we haven’t heard from yet: They have so far to arrive. Amen, I think, and I feel almost comforted. I’ve no idea what my child is thinking. Between two unknowns, I live my life. Between my mother’s hopes, older than I am by coming before me, and my child’s wishes, older than I am by outliving me. And what’s it like? Is it a door, and good-bye on either side? A window, and eternity on either side? Yes, and a little singing between two great rests. Do comment here so I can feel I am not alone in my thoughts.
Life Change Work 