I read sad news of some young employees in the corporate world committing suicide due to work pressure. Such shocking news. Reflection of the brutality of parents and society. At the same time, it is also a reflection of the trap we are all caught in. I often wonder what would make young students commit suicide for getting lower scores in the examinations, for not being able to compete with their batchmates in IITs, while fighting diseases, or for facing social criticism. I feel that suicide is like surrendering to death. Probably, there is a firm belief in the mind of the person committing suicide that death will relieve him of the pain. On the one hand, there is also a belief in the continuity of life after death and a hope that pains will end after death.
Of late, in the last few decades, we have become too obsessed with pleasure. Money has become the fulcrum of our lives and we want to earn a lot of money to spend for fun, pleasure, and entertainment. We want to stay at five-star hotels, travel in business class, watch movies in the best of theatres, have food in the most expensive restaurants, buy electronic gazettes of very high quality, and invest in luxury homes. We have become so obsessed with pleasures that our capacity to tolerate pain has reduced significantly. We feel quite uncomfortable if we are out of air conditioning for some time.
God has been kind to me to give me opportunities to interact with kids in different schools. Recently, thanks to my batch mate, I had an opportunity to interact with kids who are confined in juvenile detention centers and was amazed to interact with them. I was surprised that while the kids in the best of schools are so afraid, the kids in these detention centers are less fearful. Probably, all the fears in our minds arise from the same source. The fear of pain. The more we get attached to pleasure, the more we are afraid of going through the pain. The more we get used to the airconditioning, the more we are afraid to face the summer. The more we get used to business class in the flights, the more we are afraid to travel economy class. the more we get used to social validation, the more we are afraid to face criticism. the more we get used to getting up late, the more we are afraid to get up early. The kids in the detention center are not used to comforts and pleasures and therefore they are less afraid. The privileged kids are used to comforts and pleasures and therefore are afraid to face reality.
It appears that habits are like the whirlpools. Once caught, it is quite difficult to get out of them. Unfortunately, we all keep making whirlpools of our own habits and keep getting caught in them. I feel that it is the first and foremost responsibility of the parents to make the kids aware of the meaning of life. Life is not about the accumulation of the objects of pleasure. The more we get fixated on the desire to accumulate, the bigger the black hole in our lives. Sooner or later that black hole will gulp us. We will keep revolving around it for the whole of our life and it will keep gaining more and more mass out of our actions. The centripetal force it exerts on us will keep increasing and we will have to move at a faster speed to balance it with the centrifugal force. However, when the circumstances somehow do not allow us to move at that fast speed due to illness or emotional breakdown, we will fall into a black hole due to the centripetal force of the black hole.
While the universe is full of black holes, it is also full of space to explore. It is our choice whether we want to make our life centered around a black hole or we want to explore space. Broadly these two represent two fundamental forces of nature. While the black holes are the perpetual takers, space is the perpetual giver and does not want to hold on to anything. Probably the tendency to seek and grab is a manifestation of inner hollowness. A person with a full stomach will not be tempted to eat anything at a party. It is useless to blame the party. The real problem is our inner hollowness and since parents are themselves hungry for security and social validation, they influence the fragile minds of their kids, and kids keep living with the hollowness they borrow from their parents. Unless the parents contemplate the meaning of life, they are going to pass on their shallow understanding to their kids making them vulnerable to make an easy choice to surrender to the black hole when a difficult situation comes. I fail to understand why we live such a narrow life just orbiting around a black hole leaving the joy of exploring space.
I had a long discussion with a dear friend on the grace of God. He had a firm view that we can not come out of our orbit around the black hole until there is grace which is a random choice of God. I somehow feel that we create our own black holes because we choose ignorance over awareness. Any aware person will not decide to waste his life orbiting around a black hole. Awareness seems to be a fundamental attribute of all human beings. However, every moment we choose to stay in ignorance because of the false security and comfort that offers to us. We fail to understand that it's a bait to trap us. We can always choose to be aware. In the state of awareness, there should be no difference between us and the divine. It's like getting attracted by a drug, tasting it, and getting addicted to that. We want more and more of that. It's like an escape mechanism because we do not want to face the inner hollowness. Once we gather courage and face that inner hollowness, we see that space inside which is immediately filled by the divine grace. Awareness of the inner divinity seems to be the key.
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