INSPIRATIONS FROM HARUKI MURAKAMI

There are days when I feel like writing but do not know what to write. At such times I remember Haruki Murakami’s ‘What I talk about when I talk about Running’. He has been an inspiration for my writing, specially helping me during those famous “Writers’ blocks”.

Whenever I feel that may be I am not ‘gifted’, his voice fills me up, “the problem with talent is that in most cases the person involved cannot control its amount or quality. You might find that the amount isn’t enough and you want to increase it, or you might try to be frugal to make it last longer, but in neither case do things work out that easily. Talent has a mind of its own and wells up when it wants to, and once it dries up, that’s it”. Coming from a master, this is quite a solace!

He quotes the great mystery writer Raymond Chandler who once confessed that “even if he did not write anything, he made sure he sat down at his desk every single day and concentrated… this is the way Chandler gave himself the physical stamina a professional writer needs, quietly strengthening his will power” . This always propels me to go ahead when I feel I can’t.

While considering his careers as a marathon runner and a novelist, he has given a very interesting and technical comparison, “For me, writing a novel is like climbing a steep mountain, struggling up the face of the cliff, reaching the summit after a long and arduous ordeal. You overcome your limitations, or you don’t, one or the other. I always keep that inner image with me as I write”. And further… “I shorten the amount of time I run, the point being to let the exhilaration I feel at the end of each run carry over to the next day…When writing, I stop every day right at the point where I feel I can write more. Do that and the next day’s work goes surprisingly smoothly”.

Addressing the monotony that sets in after writing a few pages, he has quoted Somerset Maugham, “In every shave lies a philosophy…No matter how mundane some actions might appear, keep at it long enough and it becomes contemplative, even meditative act”. And finally the words of encouragement, “there are people in the world (Only a handful, for sure) blessed with enormous talent that from beginning to end, doesn’t fade… But the giants are, in the end, giants-exceptional legendary figures. The remaining majority of writers, who cannot reach such heights, have to supplement what’s missing from their store of talent through whatever means they can-Focus and Endurance”…. Murakami puts himself in the second category!!

Cheer up friends, we have chances!!

The Zahir- By Paulo Coelho

pp 320. Harper Collins

Paulo Coelho does not need any introduction as an author. After Reading the Alchemist, Picking up the Zahir was natural. And since then I ended up reading every one of his publication.
Zahir in Arabic means obsession- a thing which completely fills your mind.
Through a fiction written in first person, Coelho highlights many fixations in us. But the beauty of his writings in that he goes into the depth of them to introduce us to the root cause and then takes us to understand the ways to overcome them.
The protagonist is a best-selling Novelist living a luxurious life in France. He believes that he has a happy marriage, till one day his wife Esther (A war correspondent) disappears under mysterious conditions. However his misery starts when he realizes that she had deliberately left him.
For two years after that he tries to get on with his life convincing himself that he would be fine without her. However he soon has to face the realization that he loves another human being more than himself and that is his wife. From then on he sets on the long road to find his dear wife or rather to face his Zahir.
This journey that he takes up to reach Esther is the same that Esther had once taken. The clues that Esther had left for him were such that he would have to take up the same path and understand the facts of life that Esther wanted him to understand.
Among these lessons are some traditional knowledge shared by an old tribes-head. When asked, “What is life?” he replies, “It is just a story that other people tell us about the world and about how we should behave in the world”
And to another question, “Why are people sad?” the answer is, “… they are the prisoners of their personal history. Everyone believes that the main aim in life is to follow a plan. They never ask if the plan is theirs or if it was created by another person. They accumulate experiences, memories, things, other people’s ideas and it is more than they can possibly cope with and that is why they forget their own dreams…thus becoming unhappy”
Powerful concept indeed. Personally, I am becoming aware that most of the books that I pick up are pointing towards this same concept, BE YOURSELF.
And then I am again reminded by Coelho, “Our natural tendency is to want to please, even if the person to be pleased is us”…How true!!!
To explain the fact that how much we are bound by the ‘Others’, he says, “Mostly we learn to do everything reasonably well, but there is always a point where we get stuck…why…because according to the story we are told, there always comes a moment in our lives when we reach “Our Limit”!!!
Since I read it, I have strongly recommended “The zahir” to many. More than the story, it is the character description, dialogues and the connectivity in the philosophy that touches the core and sets one thinking.
I liken Paulo Coelho to one of those favorite teachers who can deliver powerful lessons through stories that appeal to us. Like most of his work, this is also a beautiful mix of autobiography and fiction.
One of my favorites.

The missing Rose- By Serdar Ozkan

190pp Wisdom tree

Though I had read the introduction of the author before starting with the book, somewhere in the middle of it I assumed that the writer is a woman. That all the lead characters in the book are women might have had something to do with it, but I was taken over by the sensitive and very feminine approach to an object as delicate as a rose and its tenderness.
Reading through the introduction and re learning that Serdar Ozkan is a man deepened my appreciation for his fine writing skills.
The Protagonist Maria is a typical young woman who is caught between her heart’s desire to become a writer and the need to keep up to society’s expectations and gain others approval.
Diana’s mother can see the dilemma that is slowly pulling down her daughter. However she is unable to persuade Maria to follow her heart. Hence on her death bed she reveals a secret to Diana which sends her on a trip to find and understand her twin Maria. This search turns out to be the quest to search and understand herself.
Drawing the inspiration from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's legendary novel “the little prince” the author leads us with Diana to an extraordinary garden of roses in Istanbul where the gardener Zeynep Hanim teaches the art of conversing with the roses.
Written in a mystic mode, the book gives out those subtle messages that relate to all of us today and forever. The book connects each one of us to the Greek mythology.
Few of the quotes that I could relate much to are:
“Most people entered into a new relationship carrying all the old ties with them- their old feelings of mistrust, being misunderstood, or a defensive wall -prevented them from living the new relationship freely….what they fail to realize is that it is not their partner who wrong them, but their own past which they hadn’t been able to leave behind”
“To become attached, first one needed to be become unattached”
“Rain clouds, rain, water; all three are sensational too. But to quench our thirst, ultimately we need a confining glass”
“Every question asked… is like a seed. In time it grows roots stems and buds and finally blossoms”
And the best:
“do you know what it means a rose my friend? Being a rose means “freedom”. It means not existing by the praises of others and not ceasing to exist by their disapproval”
“ …To a certain extent all of us give up something of ourselves in order to win the approval of the people around us”
“…and because you owe your existence to their praise, once you are forgotten, you cease to exist”
Yes, the missing rose reminded me again of what has been an important lesson for me. –Be what you are, care for your rose, it will blossom and give out eternal fragrance.

No wonder it is one debut novel that has been translated in 29 languages across the world.
This book is for all of us today and always, like the essence of a rose.

Why Me? Why This? Why Now?- BY Robin Norwood

225p Arrow books

The tag line says, “A guide to Answering Life’s Toughest Questions”. Well, I did have some tough questions when I picked it up .I read it for the second time in order to understand and grasp it enough to write a review. Yet I would say that so much is contained in just 225 pages that it is difficult to comprehend it all in one or two readings.
Robin Norwood is the bestselling author of “Women who love too much”. The striking difference between the two books is essentially the approach to life of a university trained Psychologist and that of a Spiritually advanced Universal being trained by the hardships of life. This book can be a powerful companion to anyone who is bogged down by the intricacies of a human life.
Starting with the three questions Why me? Why this? Why now? The author focuses on the essential presence of wound and pain in every human life. However she introduces the concept of healing from an esoteric perspective as she says, “spiritual development and healing are essentially the same thing”
The central concept is the need to understand our human incarnation as one stage in the long journey of the soul. The soul that is born has a clear purpose to reach its enlightenment and Nirvana by learning a series of lessons. In between incarnations, the soul takes an overview of the earlier birth and plans its next incarnation based on the lessons it needs to take next. Thus our sufferings here are planned opportunities for learning and enhancement.
She elaborates this concept, “We mistakenly believe that happiness, comfort, ease, security and status are our goals, but he soul has another agenda altogether. It cares nothing for the personality’s suffering, only that there be the refinement, the strengthening and the purification so that the personality is rendered worthy to serve the souls purpose”
Though the subject is complicated, the author has made the understanding simpler by quoting many a real life examples. She has beautifully used the example of AIDS to exemplify the concept of wound and healing. This example furthers the next concept that, “ the healing of the individual affects the healing of the entire body of humanity, the healing of the body of humanity affects the healing of the entire planet”
Another important source of our learning is our relationships. The author goes on to explain that before every incarnation, the soul plans its relationships to effect its advancement in learning. She states, “…Their (Relationship’s) true purpose Is not to make us happy, not to meet our needs, not to define our niche in the society, not to keep us safe…but to cause us to grow towards the light.
Norwood has quite imaginatively used the example of a typical fairy tale to demonstrate the journey of the soul which in fact facilitates the understanding of the otherwise difficult concept.
She puts the obvious question for us- why must all the healing and learning come through suffering and why not through Joy? And then she sums it up for us: “Joy and suffering are not so much opposites …Anguish leads to understanding, understanding leads to Joy and Joy leads to healing. Thus we might say that enlightenment comes through adversity, while healing comes through joy”
Finally: “healing is redefined here as a vast process that overrides the boundaries of life and death and makes use of every experience to advance the understanding and every occasion of adversity to restore balance”.
My recommendations? A Bible for every individual with a quest for life.

Have a little faith- By Mitch Albom

Non- fiction. 250p ; Sphere (Little, Brown Group)

Once an entire village caught in a draught, decided to pray for the rain. On the designated time everyone arrived. Only one little boy turned up with an umbrella. That is faith!
I was reminded of this anecdote as I picked up this latest in series by Mitch Albom. The title, ‘Have a little faith’ aroused my curiosity. Personally I find ‘faith’ a very delicate subject to be handled publicly. Chiefly, owing to its most popular definition- ‘Organized religion’.
As Mitch himself quotes in this book. ‘Jews in America, like devout Christians, Muslims or Sari wearing Hindus, often bite tongue because there’s this nervous sense that somebody out there doesn’t like you’.
It’s not just America Mr. Mitch.
Given the background, the subject is handled beautifully. The author, a Jew by birth and almost atheist by deeds, learns the lessons of faith from two opposite personalities belonging to politically opposing religions. If it sounds too farfetched, one has to read this true account of three individual all tied with a singular rope of ‘faith’.
And as one reads on it becomes clear that it is not about these three people. It is about all of us, the entire humanity tied together, holding on to each other looking for something to rest our faith in.
Mitch Albom, the bestseller author of ‘Tuesdays with Morie’ and ‘five people you meet in heaven’ has again come up with a masterpiece. However, when it started, it was only a curious attempt of a man often running away from God to understand the man of God himself.
The story is woven around the fact that Mitch was requested by the rabbi of his hometown synagogue Will smith, to do his eulogy. Since Mitch had always had an awe of this man, he agreed on the condition that the rabbi gives him a chance to understand him as a person. However, what Mitch had expected to be a few meetings turned out to be a journey lasting over 8 years till the rabbi died.
It is said that when the time is right, the teacher arrives. The meetings with the rabbi sowed a seed of understanding faith in him. That is when another teacher arrived on the scene. Henry Covington, a reformed drug dealer and convict turned Pastor.
Throughout this period Mitch had several meetings with the rabbi, whom he called ‘the Reb’, and kept visiting the Pastor. Both men talked to him about their lives. More so Mitch had the opportunity to learn so much more about their lives from other sources. The Reb had devoted his entire life for his faith and his community. The Pastor on the other had had squandered away majority of his life getting involved in extreme antisocial activities and had turned to faith when he felt all other doors were closed on him.
The Rabbi’s life had been one of an example. The pastor’s life had also been an example- albeit, one not to lead by. The reasons that had turned them to religion were contrast. The conditions in which they were preaching were opposites. Their religions were politically contrasting.
And yet, Mitch realized, as the readers do, that both of them were representing the same—How to endure when difficult things happen! And both of them were symbolizing the same—the importance of faith in trying times! And as if to add to the series of connectivity, he find out that the people in Henry’s church call him ‘the Reb’.
Everyone has his own faith, but it is important to have faith. And faith is far beyond any particular religion. On one occasion when the Rabbi described the death of his young child and the pain he felt years back, Mitch asked him the obvious question, ‘Didn’t you loose faith on your God?’ To which the Rabbi answered, ‘it is far more comforting to think that God listened and said no, than to think that nobody’s out there.’ Such is the power of faith.
While listening to the stories of the homeless and talking to the Pastor, Mitch has expressed his own Revelation, “I used to think I knew everything. I was a “smart person” who “got things done”, and because of that the higher I climbed, the more I could scoff at what seemed silly or simple, even religion.”
“But I realized something…that I am neither better nor smarter, only luckier. And I should be ashamed of thinking I knew everything, because you can know the whole world and still feel lost in it.”
As the book describes it: Have a little faith is a book about a life’s purpose; about losing belief and finding it again; about the divine spark inside us.
Mitch Albom has written about some of the things he was able to mobilize to help Henry’s church get back in shape and to get people to help it. He seems to be the right person to be writing about faith, for he extensively supports various charity works in and around Detroit. The details can be learnt on his web site http://mitchalbom.com/service .
A book that I would keep in my reference library. Recommend to buy the hard bound copy as the cover design is inspired by the rabbi’s old prayer book held together by rubber bands. Gives the feel of someone sharing his faith with us.

My Indulgence with reading

There are many people who touch our life some way or the other. Those that do it in the most subtle manner are called as writers. There have been many who have touched my life at just the right time. It’s kind of spooky but many times it seems like those words were meant just for me.

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.