When there is no hope, remember, you
are still alive. And as long as you are there, the ‘God’ within you too is
alive, kicking and capable of a miracle.
Most often, hopelessness leads you to
conclude that it is all over. That you are finished. You miss something very
crucial at that time, that all your data points, all the evidence, that you use
to arrive at that conclusion, are external. They lie outside of you. Your
prayers also are to reference points outside you __ a ‘God’, as in an idol in a
faraway temple, or in a sacred church, or at a distant dargah! When you find that your efforts to seek a miracle for yourself
are reduced to a naught, you amplify your conclusion and say, nothing is
possible. You resign. You give up. In all this time, even for a moment, you
have not looked within. You have not realized the blessing of your being alive.
There’s a famous saying, “With God anything’s possible!” That ‘God’, that miraculous energy, is what’s
powering you. The fact that you can conclude, basis external reference points,
that you are finished, is proof that you are alive. If you are alive, that
Universal energy is powering you. Dip into that energy. Go within. You will then
realize the futility of benchmarking all your wants and needs on external
reference points.
On 30th August 2012, we had to
pawn Vaani’s last piece of jewelry – her thali
(a gold chain, the equivalent of a wedding ring in South-Indian culture) – to raise
cash for us to survive as a family. As we did that, I remember telling
ourselves that “after this effort, when this cash dries up, we are on love and
fresh air”. We had nothing more of value to liquidate to raise any more cash. The
30-odd months that followed saw us being roasted, as a family, over the hot
coals – with zero income and zero cash on many, many, many occasions – but both
Vaani and I never lost hope – not in ourselves, not in humanity, not in the
Universe. It’s over 3 years now, since that day, and we have still not
recovered from our 8-year-old fragile, bankrupt, insolvent situation (To know
more about this story please read ‘Fall Like A Rose
Petal – A father’s lessons on how to be happy and content while living without
money’; Westland, August 2014; available to order on this Blog).
But we have survived. And we have survived only because Vaani and I believed,
deep within us, that we would.
This experience has taught us that
hopelessness is a wasteful emotion. To live through any crisis you just need to
be aware of your being alive! With this awareness try and understand how you
are feeling at the moment. If you are sad, accept that reality. If you are
fearful, accept it too. If you are anxious, again accept it. Whatever you feel,
acknowledge it, accept it. Then ask yourself, what can I do to change this
reality? List down your actions that you can take to leverage your being alive.
Some of them may be painful, uncomfortable actions. But if you have to do them,
you have to. Because you want to change how you feel, right? With the actions
you take, the problems you face, that led to a state of hopelessness in the
first place, may not immediately go away. But if you are feeling good about
what you are doing, you can be sure that you will walk into a new reality.
Every new journey starts with a first step.
That first step is to change the way you are feeling about whatever’s your
current reality. You may not be able to see your destination yet, but if you
have sat in the plane, fastened your seat belt and have closed your eyes, you
can be assured the pilot will take off, and with the available data on
probability, chances are good that you will land where you intend to in some
time.
To be sure, both hope and hopelessness are
imposters. One tricks you to imagine that all will be fine. It breeds inertia.
And the other deceives you and tells you it’s all over, nothing’s possible.
Again it breeds inertia. Whereas visiting the energy that powers you, you feel
rejuvenated, inspired and begin to act. Inertia can never
get you started. Only action can.
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