"The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster."
(Elizabeth Bishop, One Art)
This morning, at dawn, on my favorite beach, I sent four boats afloat and away. Each boat signifying the bondage of a relationship I have labored for all my life.
This was a big step for me. I am not into rituals, in fact I abhor them, I find them repulsive even. Growing up in a culture steeped with rituals I found myself very much at odds with society when it came to rituals, but today I made up one of my own, for this period signifies a very important turning point in my personal life. It is the real full stop in a long sentence of my life. A new paragraph starts.
Some of you know my story intimately, some only know it at the periphery, and some of you are reading this note for the first time. This note is very hard for me to write, as it is extremely personal and I especially do not want to hurt anyone. But it is also very important for me to write, for this note may serve, if it is at all possible, as a sign to others in a similar situations, and maybe give them assurance that they too, one day, can be free from bondage. This freedom is from the bondage of anger, pain, expectations, hurt, desire, betrayal, and the incessant measurement of what is right and wrong, what could be or could have been; and all these emotions are now replaced with only one ardent compassionate wish for the people on those boats - May They Be Happy.
To write a tell-all might make a thick book of tears, and it will not serve the purpose. It is not about the people from whom I separated, nor is it about the incidents that led me here, it is about my emotions and of truly letting go of the past. It has been a long arduous journey - my learning to recognize the intimate truth about the cause my pain and suffering, then of my learning that there is a way out of it, and then of my release. I alone am the architect of this freedom and that is the only thing that matters at this time. Specifics of the relationships or incidents have no meaning in this context. Instead I talk about all the mistakes I made over the years, cues that I misunderstood in life, and the responsibility I take for being so ignorant and misinformed. I put out in the open my naivety, my innocence, and from it the path to freedom that I have discovered, better late than never.
I feel that my mind is like a dishwashing sponge, one that has been used everyday for all these years and has accumulated dirt water deep in its pores. Even when this sponge was placed in clean water, there was no space to soak up the clean. The sponge needed a strong wring. And the last five years served that purpose very well. These years have been really hectic for me, every year brought with it a new seemingly insurmountable challenge. I took the storms straight on and somehow managed to survive, I know not how. I was wrung to the core, trashed many times and wrung again. Then, progressively I have been placed in clean water, and finally I have been able to soak up the wisdom, true life wisdom that has led me to this shore of freedom.
Much of my pain arose from social conditioning and my naivety. As I look back, I can see three distinct flows that intertwined like braids: a stupor/daze of unworthiness, a pervasive feeling of loneliness and hence a deep rooted desire to belong, and a fear of physical and emotional pain. Over the four decades, quite frankly, there has been scarcely a moment when I have treated myself with mercy and kindness. I had an inner judge who was merciless, relentless, nit-picking, driving, invisible but always on the job. This served me well in few walks of life, I am highly functional and successful in my professional and worldly achievements; but it has also left me anxious, driven and often depressed. There has been a pervasive feeling of being not okay and personal deficiency, and it went hand in hand with deep loneliness. As unworthiness and insecurity permeated every space of my being, I have felt alone in my suffering, and that it was a personal problem and somehow my fault. The curtains of ignorance were so thick that I did not see all this. I did not see how I was affecting and hurting myself all these years. Today I see all this. I have lost much time, but there is some time left still.
These four relationships are sanctioned by society to be near and dear to every person, that no matter where the world goes these relationships are supposed to stay true and protect you; and I believed it. My extreme wanting for attention, affection, love, compassion, and kindness led me to keep investing in these relationships, no matter the cost to self. These people took me for granted, I spent the entire time wondering why my investments were not paying any dividends. I was naive enough to not question the norm and my desire was the thick curtain of ignorance which prevented me from seeing the extreme personal loss I was incurring. There have been years when I have cried all night, and then in the morning taken the tear soaked pillow to the terrace to dry it in the sun so that no one will notice. There have been long nights when I felt ripples of anger crawl in my veins, which made me so hot and suffocated, that I had to drive to the ocean in the middle of the night to let the mist and wind cool me down. There have been days spent in daze of restlessness when I felt I was sitting on a bed of scorpions, feeling the painful venom throbbing within and no respite. There have been times when I lay on the kitchen floor writhing in physical pain and then pitying myself for not having a single person around to hand me a glass of water or help me get up, berating myself on how much I have failed in life. I have suffered, very much. As I kept giving, more was asked of me. My delusion of hope let me believe that it was my duty to give, that being selfless, especially for these relationships, is what everyone does, and is my greatest asset. I took the definition of serving to the extreme and became an indentured slave. My inner judge drove me to be good, and defined new standards of goodness every moment, and the little girl in me kept hoping to please and receive a glance of acknowledgement. These people didn't see me as a human capable of sensations, both emotional and physical. For them I was a robot - they fed their needs and desires and I performed like a wound up toy, beating the drum at their command. My attachment was to hope, and every unfulfilled hope further reinforced my unworthiness and led me to try harder, almost always to exhaustion. I was afraid to let go, for I let these relationships define my identity. Letting go meant that I would become a nobody! That was scary. It was all an intertwined jumbled mess of suffering.
Today, as I sent away these boats, I set myself free.
Free of the bondage of these relationships.
I abandon all hope, and with it, all the fear of loss.
That is freedom.
I own no one, and no one owns me.
There is a lot of love in my heart, and it is free now.
I am open and willing to share with the world,
to give myself freely, kindly, and with all my effort.
I do not have to look back anymore, for there are no more strings attached.
I set myself free. Free of all the pain, the wanting, the misery, the suffering.
Today I wish for myself a new dawn -
may I have patience,
may I find peace,
may I be free of desire,
may I be able to direct all my energies towards wholesome actions,
may I be able to help others without expectations,
may I be able to get my volition become purer as time passes on,
may I be happy.
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster."
(Elizabeth Bishop, One Art)
This morning, at dawn, on my favorite beach, I sent four boats afloat and away. Each boat signifying the bondage of a relationship I have labored for all my life.
This was a big step for me. I am not into rituals, in fact I abhor them, I find them repulsive even. Growing up in a culture steeped with rituals I found myself very much at odds with society when it came to rituals, but today I made up one of my own, for this period signifies a very important turning point in my personal life. It is the real full stop in a long sentence of my life. A new paragraph starts.
 |
| Boats floating away |
To write a tell-all might make a thick book of tears, and it will not serve the purpose. It is not about the people from whom I separated, nor is it about the incidents that led me here, it is about my emotions and of truly letting go of the past. It has been a long arduous journey - my learning to recognize the intimate truth about the cause my pain and suffering, then of my learning that there is a way out of it, and then of my release. I alone am the architect of this freedom and that is the only thing that matters at this time. Specifics of the relationships or incidents have no meaning in this context. Instead I talk about all the mistakes I made over the years, cues that I misunderstood in life, and the responsibility I take for being so ignorant and misinformed. I put out in the open my naivety, my innocence, and from it the path to freedom that I have discovered, better late than never.
I feel that my mind is like a dishwashing sponge, one that has been used everyday for all these years and has accumulated dirt water deep in its pores. Even when this sponge was placed in clean water, there was no space to soak up the clean. The sponge needed a strong wring. And the last five years served that purpose very well. These years have been really hectic for me, every year brought with it a new seemingly insurmountable challenge. I took the storms straight on and somehow managed to survive, I know not how. I was wrung to the core, trashed many times and wrung again. Then, progressively I have been placed in clean water, and finally I have been able to soak up the wisdom, true life wisdom that has led me to this shore of freedom.
Much of my pain arose from social conditioning and my naivety. As I look back, I can see three distinct flows that intertwined like braids: a stupor/daze of unworthiness, a pervasive feeling of loneliness and hence a deep rooted desire to belong, and a fear of physical and emotional pain. Over the four decades, quite frankly, there has been scarcely a moment when I have treated myself with mercy and kindness. I had an inner judge who was merciless, relentless, nit-picking, driving, invisible but always on the job. This served me well in few walks of life, I am highly functional and successful in my professional and worldly achievements; but it has also left me anxious, driven and often depressed. There has been a pervasive feeling of being not okay and personal deficiency, and it went hand in hand with deep loneliness. As unworthiness and insecurity permeated every space of my being, I have felt alone in my suffering, and that it was a personal problem and somehow my fault. The curtains of ignorance were so thick that I did not see all this. I did not see how I was affecting and hurting myself all these years. Today I see all this. I have lost much time, but there is some time left still.
These four relationships are sanctioned by society to be near and dear to every person, that no matter where the world goes these relationships are supposed to stay true and protect you; and I believed it. My extreme wanting for attention, affection, love, compassion, and kindness led me to keep investing in these relationships, no matter the cost to self. These people took me for granted, I spent the entire time wondering why my investments were not paying any dividends. I was naive enough to not question the norm and my desire was the thick curtain of ignorance which prevented me from seeing the extreme personal loss I was incurring. There have been years when I have cried all night, and then in the morning taken the tear soaked pillow to the terrace to dry it in the sun so that no one will notice. There have been long nights when I felt ripples of anger crawl in my veins, which made me so hot and suffocated, that I had to drive to the ocean in the middle of the night to let the mist and wind cool me down. There have been days spent in daze of restlessness when I felt I was sitting on a bed of scorpions, feeling the painful venom throbbing within and no respite. There have been times when I lay on the kitchen floor writhing in physical pain and then pitying myself for not having a single person around to hand me a glass of water or help me get up, berating myself on how much I have failed in life. I have suffered, very much. As I kept giving, more was asked of me. My delusion of hope let me believe that it was my duty to give, that being selfless, especially for these relationships, is what everyone does, and is my greatest asset. I took the definition of serving to the extreme and became an indentured slave. My inner judge drove me to be good, and defined new standards of goodness every moment, and the little girl in me kept hoping to please and receive a glance of acknowledgement. These people didn't see me as a human capable of sensations, both emotional and physical. For them I was a robot - they fed their needs and desires and I performed like a wound up toy, beating the drum at their command. My attachment was to hope, and every unfulfilled hope further reinforced my unworthiness and led me to try harder, almost always to exhaustion. I was afraid to let go, for I let these relationships define my identity. Letting go meant that I would become a nobody! That was scary. It was all an intertwined jumbled mess of suffering.
 |
| Loss that redeems |
Free of the bondage of these relationships.
I abandon all hope, and with it, all the fear of loss.
That is freedom.
I own no one, and no one owns me.
There is a lot of love in my heart, and it is free now.
I am open and willing to share with the world,
to give myself freely, kindly, and with all my effort.
I do not have to look back anymore, for there are no more strings attached.
I set myself free. Free of all the pain, the wanting, the misery, the suffering.
Today I wish for myself a new dawn -
may I have patience,
may I find peace,
may I be free of desire,
may I be able to direct all my energies towards wholesome actions,
may I be able to help others without expectations,
may I be able to get my volition become purer as time passes on,
may I be happy.
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