Some unedited thoughts:-
Silence has become too hard to find. Too many thoughts these days. Mind always wavering. Just want to tune it off and go blank. Too much of everything I guess. Need to cull a lot out of life. Only the essential to be left. I liked when Harold gives away everything in his pilgrimage and walks with nothing but the minimum to get by never even packing food for the next day (from the book ‘The unexpected pilgrimage of Harold Fry’) . There’s a lot of baggage we carry with us. There’s some reason too – that baggage gives us identity. We identify ourselves with it – what are we without it we say to ourselves. But, every step we take adds only more baggage. Every step becomes laborious.
Sometimes I want to break free. But, no matter what I do, I still can’t keep the existential sadness at bay. No matter how much I have to look forward to in any given day, I still feel sad or to say unaccomplished by the weekend. Why? Don’t know. Life does not offer any goals nor suggests any routes. It is what it is. Yet, I get up everyday determined to make it through. Is this courage? I like to think so. Sometimes, the goal just becomes “getting through the day”. Travel through the day in the most sanest way possible, most sanest way known to me. To help myself do that, I need to travel light. Simplify, simplify, simplify – navigate with the essentials – those that I absolutely need (very tricky this aspect — very easy to confuse luxury with need).
If tuning off from time to time becomes essential to step back and notice what is essential, turning a blind eye to temptations is the other. With the Kindle, I was happy to travel light with what I consider is essential to me – books. But, browsing through the huge online bookstore, every book seemed essential. Very easily confused “would-be-good-to-have” book with “I-need-this” book. Closing amazon’s site was peace. Is it denying? No, I can always open it back. But, closing it when it is not necessary is essential to peace.
When you cut off the inessential parts from life – unnecessary relationships (are the biggest baggage we carry – I think that’s why hermits & Gurus don’t have relationships), past times, commitments, goals, wants, we know what we need to survive happily. Don’t confuse this with giving up. Being able to afford an air conditioner and then giving it up knowing you don’t need it is real ‘giving up’. But, not being able to buy one and giving it up ‘thinking’ it is inessential is just cowardice. And, only when we cut the chains we’ve fastened to ourselves that we start to feel free and find time for silence. Why silence? Because it is peace.
Enclosing myself in a cove of silence and stepping out of it to tackle life with the essentials seem to be the most meaningful way to spend a day to me, as of now. And, this is what I should do – till I realise (if there is any other) other way to navigate life.
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