Don’t expect predictability in Life.
There is no such thing. You can only be sure of Life’s unpredictability.
Period.
Over the last few weeks, while watching the
IPL 8 season on TV, I have seen an ad for a brand of air-conditioner that
claims to have graduated to being “your Life Conditioner”. ‘Life Conditioner’,
I wondered, thinking about that flippant ad for several days?
Can Life really be conditioned to perform
in a particular way, conforming to your wishes and producing outcomes that you
want? Of course not! Even so, the tragedy is most of us have been subjected to
so much social conditioning already that we need a ‘Life Unconditioner’ more
than a ‘Life Conditioner’!!! From what we must eat to what we must wear to how
we must marry to what are ‘safe and predictable’ careers we have been
conditioned. I read a story in this morning’s Times of India where Chidanand Rajghatta reports from Washington
D.C that a professor at UC San Diego has, for 11 years, been asking his
students to appear in the nude for an exam in an elective course on visual
arts. When the exasperated mother of a student created an uproar on social
media last week, when she discovered this “perverse practice”, the professor
himself has been unfazed by the controversy it has stirred. He has said, “It’s
a standard canvas for performance art and body art. If they are uncomfortable
with this gesture, they should not take the course.” I am not taking either
side here. I am only presenting a case for how conditioned we are as a race –
what the professor is doing is that he’s simply choosing to work outside the
confines of such conditioning!
All our grief and suffering comes from our
wants being unmet. Now, to be sure, there’s nothing wrong with wanting. It is
the expectation that our wants must be met that causes us agony. And that
expectation invariably arises from a perceived sense of predictability that
conditioning invariably delivers. For instance, we have all been raised to
believe in truth, honesty and hard work. We have been fed one myth after
another to prove this point. But when you arrive in the ‘real world’ you see
that there is so much falsehood, dishonesty and ‘easy-get-luckiness’ around –
and it is creating wealth too for sure – that you wonder if your belief systems
are wrong in the first place. (Think of the week that was and of Salman Khan,
Jayalalithaa and Ramalinga Raju!) No. Your beliefs are right. And they are
still relevant. But your expectation that just because you have the right value
systems, everything must go to a plan and must lead you to your just rewards,
well, that expectation is wrongly placed! In Life, some times, 2 + 2 will not
equal four. Life is not an input = assured output linear progression in the short-term.
Eventually, Life’s math will add up, but not before going through a sea of
unpredictability, highs and lows and gut-wrenching turbulence of its own
inscrutable kind.
The best way to live is to not expect
anything from Life. Simply do what you feel good about. And do it well. Leave
the outcomes to Life. Important, please don’t be button-holed into social
conditioning either. To take on that TV
ad on a spiritual plane, choose a ‘Life Unconditioner’ approach to living –
that alone can deliver a truly liberating, aha!, experience.
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