How else does one explain these lines I read when I was struggling to balance my time between the people I loved and the dreams I cherished?”… Why are people sad? That’s simple, they are prisoners of their personal history. Everyone believes that the main aim of life is to follow a plan. They never ask if that plan is theirs or if it was created by another person. They accumulate experiences, memories, things, other peoples ideas.. it is more than they can cope up with, and that is why they forget their own dreams.” This was Paulo Coelho rushing to my help thru “The Zahir”.
I, who have been a dreamer (the practical kinds) always, had somehow come to believe that giving up our dreams for the sake of our people was the ideal way to live. Paulo did stir the stagnant water and the clarity came with these ripples from his other masterpiece ‘The Pilgrimage’. “When we renounce our dreams and believe that we have found peace, we go through a short period of tranquility. But the dead dreams begin to rot within us and to infect our entire being. We become cruel to those around us and then begin to direct the cruelty against ourselves. That’s when illness and Psychosis starts….the only way we can rescue our dreams is by being generous with ourselves.” I got my direction.
And then this happened when I was studying ‘depression’ for helping my patients. I read ‘Veronica decides to die’ again by Coelho, where in he gave an insight into most practical explanation for the modern day illness—‘depression’-“madness is the inability to communicate your ideas. It’s as if you are going in a foreign country, able to see and understand anything that is going on around you but incapable to explain what you need to know or of being helped, because you don’t understand the language they speak”. And truly enough, my Psychotherapy practice has confirmed that major psychological problems in the society have their roots in communication related issues. Lack of opportunities to open up and face problems squarely can be dangerous. My other guide M. Scott Peck, author of “The road less traveled”, says, -“the tendency to avoid problems and the emotional suffering inherent in them is the primary basis of all human mental illnesses”
Among the other people who influenced me sometime through their writings, is Victor Frankll. He facilitated my thought process by reinforcing the principle of my life, i.e. ‘continuous growth’. Here is how he puts it in his work, ‘Man’s search for meaning’, “One of the main features of human existence is the capacity to rise above such conditions as biological, psychological or sociological and to grow beyond them”. And Dr. Wayne Dyer answers the question, ‘How do I know when something is alive?’ with , “ If it is growing, it is alive”!!
More about dreams comes from Og Mandino in ‘A better way to live’- “ If we have built castles in air, our work need not be lost, for that is where they should be- just put foundations under them” Master stroke Mr. Mandino!!
And Stuart Avery Gold, through a lovely story of a frog called “Ping” said to me, “If the path you travel on has no obstacles, it leads nowhere and you will always be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the things you did but failed”
Most interesting and life saving help has been on bringing up children. Those practical lessons wiped off all my smart preconceptions and made me open to see what my children were trying to convey. Dr. Wayne Dyer in ‘What you really want for your children’ quotes Earl of Rochester, “Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children. Now I have six children and no theories”. That’s my story!! the difference is that I have lost all my theories just with two of them.
On a more serious note, when I was deeply entangled in influencing my children towards certain set of behaviors that I had harbored as the only correct way, I stumbled upon “The Prophet’ by Kahlil Gibran- and what I read made me question my perceptions and those of all parents-
“Your Children are not your children
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself
They come through you but not from you
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you
…You may give them your love, but not your thoughts
For they have their own thoughts
You may house their bodies, but not their souls
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow
Which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams”.
And recently I learnt from Daniel Gottlieb in ‘Learning from the heart” that “When parents push their children relentlessly to achieve, their anxiety is more about their own history and not about their children’s future.” And truly enough, when I gave the choice to my children, they preferred to opt out of all scheduled activities and just be!!
The journey continues. They talk about every aspect of my life. They talk on leadership, love, expectations, failures, doubts, confusions, travel, death, life and… oh well!! I have always wondered how? Perhaps my answer lies in this statement by F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Writers aren’t exactly people…they are a whole lot of people trying to be one person” I guess we all agree to that. I would just say I am blessed.
No comments:
Post a Comment