What Ails You

Through my teens and sometime later I had this habit; that I now recall with amusement, of calling up friends and sharing my ‘problems’ with them. My day just wouldn’t pass without sharing the details of the day with my darling friends.

Since I was doing nothing to solve my ‘problems’, in fact I wasn’t even perceiving them for their reality; hence the inverted commas, the issues that I rattled about stayed the same. My dear friends, bless them for still hanging on with me, would either offer loving sympathy or earnest advice and the day would end with my having agreed to their advice. Chapter closed albeit for the day.

In retrospect, I feel I was not making much of a progress as a person when I depended so much on my friends emotionally. The reason was that when I dwelled on issues that had to do with my transaction with the world, I focused on what was happening to me rather than what I could do about it. Towards the end I had known exactly where I needed to contribute and how, and yet I was just too busy rattling about it. We like to think that venting out actually helps us feel better, but in reality the more we rattle about our issues, the more we give power to the issue over ourselves so we can’t really help being overwhelmed by it.

For instance, one of my challenges was that I was extremely frail. My sister, even before she became a clinical nutritionist, would make detailed diet charts for me, force me to devour eggnog, lightly fried organ meat and other nutritious meteors in the hope of getting me robust. As a kid, I somehow started enjoying having her chase me with a glass of milk in her hand! The drama stopped the day my sister realized she couldn’t make me robust and healthy without my contribution to it.

Over the years, thankfully my emotional dependence on my dear friends has waned. It probably has to do with the understanding that others, no matter how loving, earnest and devoted, can never solve your issues because the issues that hound you need your intervention. However like the errant child, sometimes we like to be chased by reality because it pleases the ego.

You could be a wildly successful career person with a neglected child who sometimes makes you feel guilty by the way it clings to you desperately. You would wish to spend more time with your family and are not able to for the sophisticated web of success you’ve built around you. You would dedicate a few moments to mourn at your dreadful state of affairs but at the end of the day your ambition to be more successful prevails and you go about meeting your work deadlines at a feverish pace. If you’re fortunate enough, you will realise one day that your state of affairs require you to reconfigure your priorities. You need to intervene.

For some of us, the pattern of running around breaks with the onset of something completely shocking or frustrating happening to us. Its magnitude is such that it makes us rise above our habitual tattle and discover that some experiences are only meant to be understood ourselves. It could be the loss of a loved person or the position you held over another. It could be a complete change in the matrix between you and Life that compels you to think in silence.

Sometimes, in such precious moments when your mind is silent, your heart will speak to you about just what it is that ails you. Do not ignore that priceless advice. Do not evade it by putting facades between yourself and what ails you and blame others for it. Eventually you will be leading back to yourself to undo the trouble.

As the wise men of wisdom say, ‘the journey is as long as you make it’.