Be grateful to all those who have contributed to you getting
this far in Life. It may appear that you have
achieved a lot on your own steam, but when you pause to reflect on how much
others have contributed to your journey, you will be soaked in gratitude and
humility!
The obituary
section in The Hindu caught my
attention this morning. The doctor who had delivered me, 48 years ago, had
passed on yesterday. Interestingly, Dr.Rukmani Sourirajan, had delivered all my
mother’s three children – me, my brother and my sister. I remember meeting her
last at her maternity home in Dhandapani Street, T.Nagar, in February 1978,
when my sister was born. A wave of gratitude came over me when I saw her
obituary announcement. Surely I have to be grateful for what she has done for
me, my siblings and my mother – each of us could have been poorly handled, yet
none of us has had any delivery-stage complications.
That thought led
to me reflect deeper. There are so, so many people who have contributed, and
continue to contribute, to my growth and evolution as a person. And that means
if I started thanking each one of them, I would probably run out of time and
space. This is not just true for me. It is so true for all of us – all the
time! Which is why, as Meister Eckhart (1260~1328) has wisely said, “If the only prayer that you say in your
entire Life is ‘Thank You’, it is enough!”
Yet, caught in
the rat race of everyday survival, gratitude often takes a backseat. In spirit
we are willing to be grateful, but in practice we are not – because we are so
consumed by our Life and our problems.
I lean heavily
on the Sanskrit phrase “Matha, Pitha,
Guru, Deivam” when I offer my prayer
of gratitude each day. The phrase teaches us to offer our reverence in the
order of mother first, father next, teacher after that and God last. It may
appear – especially to those who know me or have read my Book “Fall Like A Rose Petal” – that I can’t be
serious when I say I am grateful to my mother, especially when I openly concede
that I have a poor chemistry with her. I see the issue of poor chemistry and
the principle of gratitude as two separate things – just because I don’t agree
with my mother on several counts does not mean I am not grateful to her for
bringing me into this world, for teaching me the alphabet, for raising me and giving
me a basic education. I find this practice of saying, “Mother, Father, Teacher, Life (to me, Life = God) – I thank you!”,
during my daily mouna (silence
periods) sessions, very, very liberating. It calms me down and keeps me
grounded.
Undoubtedly, each
experience in your Life has had another’s contribution in it. It’s very humbling to know that you are not a
sum of all your so-called achievements – your qualifications, your wealth, your
material assets and such – but that you are actually a sum of all your
experiences and learnings. When I saw Dr.Sourirajan’s obituary announcement
this morning, I was reminded, yet again, that my efforts are so inconsequential
and incomplete to my own Life – without the contributions of so many other
people over the years! To that doctor, in
gratitude today, I send all my love…!
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