When to stop.

My friend told me about surrender and I realized I was going about it the wrong way.

Needless to say surrender is a word that’s so misunderstood that it has a space of it’s own in the trite corner.

Back to my friend, not only do I have one but she’s real. Not real versus imaginary, but real in having shown up with egg on her face and bad smells and financial hell and poor relationships and then picking herself back up and showing up all battered and bruised. She’s real in that she’s trying to step out of our magazine worlds, our ‘playing house’ narratives of ourselves and moving from romanticized and unreal people to emulate to being her real self. A bit like we were in school. With a lack of pretense and artifice as we didn’t know any other way to be.

So back to Surrender. Apparently it’s a real thing too. And something that is a good condiment in wanting to be a complete person and not a romanticized version of oneself.In the seesaw of life , or in the 360 degree circle that makes up the doing of an action and starting another , surrender is an end point. An end point in a circle.

Back to going about it the wrong way, I’d met Megha’s friend Surrender, but it was the surrender of books , or of Films based on classical literature. In surrendering it was a troubled Jane Eyre who found Edward Rochester ,an Elizabeth Bennet who found Mr Darcy and the guy who was searching for the meaning of life and went around the world looking it , to give-up and come home and see it in a drop of rain. My take-away from those stories was if you surrendered then you achieved your goal.

But the point of Surrender when it is a friend, is that to surrender Is the goal and that is the whole point. That is where it ends. Surrender is then the end point of effort . It may or may not be the prequel to a goal but that has nothing to do with us.

I see you nodding your head and tsk-ing. Even I’ve read abbreviated guides to The Bhagwad Gita and know that was what Arjun was advised by his lofty charioteer. ‘The fruits of your actions do not belong to you’.

But hearing and knowing are different things.

कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन | मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भूर्मा ते सङ्गोऽस्त्वकर्मणि || 47 || karmaṇy-evādhikāras te mā phaleṣhu kadāchana mā karma-phala-hetur bhūr mā te saṅgo ’stvakarmaṇi

Death – The Great Equalizer.

At age 70 my father said to my sister ki zindagi pal bhar mei guzar gayi.  And he was different his last years, more introspective and more altruistic and looking to help than even before. He was always helpful, just more when he got older. He seemed to think his time was numbered and I’d pshaw him.

A photographer friend who’s also in his 80’s posted a photo about our planet’s size in our cosmic system. It made for a spectacular visual. Our itty-bitty planet.

My father made a lucky guess or had a premonition, but in either case he died unexpectedly one night. Any who could have been traveling at that time was traveling.

My mum came up to call me, we took him to The All India Institute of Medical Sciences , we thought he was sick. He’d actually died, perhaps 45 minutes before. He didn’t really wait for anyone.

 

When I weep I don’t weep for him, though I do sometimes, I wish I’d been nicer. I think  that he’s gone on to bigger and better things. I weep because I’ll never see my Father again. That fuzzy halo of white hair, the myriad emotions on his face, his voice, the feel of his fat hands, how he smelled for years. I’ll never sit in a room and talk with him again, never watch a cricket match and hear his comments, never pick up the phone and hear his voice the other end, never cook him anything or make him a cup of tea, never go for a walk or take him to lunch.

In yoga we talk about Maya and the continually changing nature of things. And it becomes easy to see the vicissitudes of life as coming and going. Our anxieties and our goals become  almost one in the see-sawing of life.  ‘Sometimes you’re up sometimes you’re down…’ isn’t that how the song goes?

Death somehow is one of those things that you can’t ignore. It seems like a tear in the normal ups and downs of life.

How can someone who was there one minute go to being irrevocably not there, not ever?

Death reminds me of death.  When I read the news today about LK Advani’s wife, i misread it thinking LK Advani had passed away. And my thought was death spares no-one.

Do you wonder about death my friend?

My death, hitherto unknown, near or closeby, will you be the sleep of peace, my final resting place?

Will I welcome you as friend or foe?

 

 

 

Respite.

..I’m gonna fly like a bird through the night, feel my tears as they dry..

“I’m holding on for dear life, won’t look down won’t open my eyes”

Chandelier by Sia.

Wish.