Today's lesson...

Be like the flowing river,
Silent in the night.
Be not afraid of the dark.
If there are stars in the sky, reflect them back.
If there are clouds in the sky,
Remember, clouds, like the river, are water,
So, gladly reflect them too,
In your own tranquil depths.

Manuel Bandeira

Seeing the unseen!

15th January, 2007. It was around 6.45 pm. We had just heard Kate, a passionate social worker narrating her experiences with kids and life. Perhaps it ignited a spark in us, me and Nirupam, it shook our selves, asking whether we were also passionate to the same extent or not, whether the spirit in us to do things was dying, whether we were also passionate to the same extent or not.

We left office and I was just kicking my scooter so that I could drop him and go back home. I had just put the helmet over my skull when he started her topic. He said that Krain was a genius and her solutions worked. He had told us about his experience with a kid at Mindspark who used to detach from the group when he felt he was being ignored by the rest. She gave a solution to the problem and it worked. Her point was that kids should themselves take the responsibility of their learning. This left us with the question that why we didn’t get such ideas.

I admitted the reason I ran away from teaching was that I was afraid of not delivering the required to kids. I didn’t want my inability to communicate clearly be the reason for kids not learning which they should be. He asked me if that was the reason or was it a confidence issue. I was clear that it wasn’t a confidence issue. He added that even he sometimes failed to go along with kids. He didn’t have answers to situational problems arising and had to leave the problem unsolved.

The question that immediately came to us was “Are we enjoying what we are doing?” The answer was loud and clear “No”.

(Ab tak mera sar woh matke ke kaaran bhaari ho chuka tha and so I removed it. Ibdun was leaving and she just could not stop herself from asking “Office mein baat kam karte ho jo yahan khade khade kar rahe ho?”)

We both had a view that it was very important to enjoy our work. We remembered those days when we used to do analysis and each day our minds would remain constantly sparked. Why did that charge dry out? We didn’t know what had changed. The problem that was bothering us was, we were not enjoying our wok and hence we were not able to deliver which we were able to.

We had discussed some analysis ideas that day and we also had a meeting with Rana regarding that new project. Both those incidences pointed to the same thing. We were doing it for the sake of doing it. We had reasons why we thought so. Initially when we used to do analysis, we were always eager to see the result. But that day we left the discussion and didn’t even bother to execute it. Regarding discussion about that project, we felt we didn’t do it the way we should have done it. We took interest in answering questions about the execution part of the project which we thought we were not much interested in. We didn’t discuss points about the actual purpose of the project.

(It was high time we were talking in the parking lot. I desperately needed a cup of chai and so we went to Alalbhai’s kitli and had maska bun and chai.)

We smsd Rana asking if she found the discussion we had, meaningful. She called us and asked why we were asking that question. She said she found the points valuable and she had also framed a basic structure for the project. We didn’t know what to do. It was around 8.15 pm and I remembered a pending work I was supposed to complete ASAP. We left from the office but kept discussing the problem on the way.

We were standing at his apartment gate. We wanted a solution to our problem. We thought of talking to people about our dilemma. Since Darrish was on tour, we had no option but to wait till he came if we wanted to talk to him. Nirupam told me that he was not feeling confident as he had failed twice. In that case I suggested him to do what he was good at. I told him to take up random projects and complete them as he was good at doing that. So the question that came up then was “Are we afraid of taking responsibilities?” I told him that I was not feeling confident that the maths part had almost been given to me. This indicated that even I was running away from taking responsibility. He told me that he had learned from experience that in that case, instead of running away, we should ask for help whenever needed (which we had been avoiding till then).

Then came the turning point of this entire discussion. He told me he had started feeling that Darrish had lost confidence in him. I asked him how he knew that. He told me about the discussion they had and how on mentioning that he was not feeling confident about taking up tasks (as he had failed), he said that even he felt the same. I asked him if that was the reason why he had started avoiding certain things? He said he didn’t know. I told him how I felt once when Darrish took the analysis of that project into his hands in spite of knowing that some of us had already done the basic work. From that day I felt I was not good at analysis and so he didn’t allow me to work any further on it (in that project). That was also one of the reasons why I had stopped taking interest in analysis (though I always believed that it should be done). But I also felt that he had not done anything new. The project ended up with the same findings that we had come up with, but with more finely done analysis. Even we could have done it given the time and the opportunity. For us the deadline was a deadline and for him it wasn’t; it stretched till he was almost satisfied.

Both of us were silent for a while, we were thinking something, perhaps the same thing. I think we were relating those various incidences to each other and were trying to look for patterns there. The threads had started to untangle themselves and each cord was leading to the same root. Everything was getting clearer and clearer. There was a tricky smile on our face.

We both finally agreed that it wasn’t anything else but it was our ego that was coming in the way. We never knew when the egoists in us started controlling us. We never wanted that to happen. We decided to be conscious and warn ourselves whenever we felt the egoists were taking charge.

However, we were still left with the fundamental question we had started the discussion with, why were we not enjoying our work and what should we do so that we enjoyed it?

It was almost 9.30 pm. The 2.5 hrs’ discussion was really fruitful. We discovered the passive selves within us that were creating hassles in our day-to-day life. But at the end we were proud. Proud not for possessing such entities in us, but for being brave enough to confess that we had ego. We finally discovered the dogs within us!

But the next question was, “What next?” We had to solve the problem. I found the answer to this problem while reading the chapter ‘The Sixth Tuesday We Talk About Emotions” in ‘tuesdays with Morrie’ by Mitch Albom. The answer was Detachment. Here is a part of that text:

“I thought about how often this was needed in everyday life. How we feel lonely, sometimes to the point of tears, but we don’t let those tears come because we are not supposed to cry. Or how we feel a surge of love for a partner but we don’t say anything because we’re frozen with the fear of what those words might do to the relationship.

Morrie’s approach was exactly the opposite. Turn on the faucet. Wash yourself with the emotion. It won’t hurt you. It will only help. If you let the fear inside, if you pull it on like a familiar shirt, then you can say to yourself, “All right, it’s just fear, I don’t have to let it control me. I see it for what it is.”

Same for loneliness: you let go, let the tears flow, feel it completely-but eventually be able to say, “All right, that was my moment with loneliness. I’m not afraid of feeling lonely, but now I’m going to put that loneliness aside and know that there are other emotions in the world, and I’m going to experience them as well.”

“Detach,” Morrie said again.”

So what we needed was to consciously look for the moments when our egos tried to overtake us and once found, detach from it. We have already started practicing it. We hope to see the results soon!