One good thing that I like about the government service is that your roles keep changing. Today I was looking at the transfer and posting orders and realised that soon after the order, the roles of so many of us will change for the next two years. It's so easy to see this change of roles. In fact, none of us has an option to ignore it. You have to perform the duty assigned to you. Yes, I see that people get attached to their positions and start playing inter-division politics. We get a position for just 2-3 years and become attached to it. The moment we get out of that position, we realise the stupidity of falling into another trap.
We can't see the reality, even though it is so open before us. We sit and sleep in our room every day, and yet if somebody asks all of a sudden about the colour of the bed sheet, we won't realise because our attention isn't on the colour of the bed sheet. Similarly, we might have spent a day with a friend, and if someone asks us what dress he was wearing, we won't be able to recall it because our attention wasn't on the dress. When we go to watch a movie, there are two types of people. First, those who get lost with the characters and feel intense emotions. They will laugh and cry with the characters. For the time being, they forget their real identity and get lost in the character. On the other hand, there are some who would stay alert and therefore be able to watch the movie critically, noticing every minute detail of direction, choreography, cinematography, acting, and dialogue. They will remember that they have come here to watch the movie. Similarly, some actors keep repeating the same type of roles and get tied to that image. Somehow, they start to like that image, develop a fixation on it, and slowly stop experimenting. On the other hand, accomplished actors experiment with different roles, and, in fact, they will change their makeup, delivery of dialogue, and whole body language as per the requirements of the role. That's because they know they are actors, and the purpose is to perform the assigned role to the best of their ability. Their focus is always on doing justice to the role.
We get lost in the 3-hour movie and become attached to the assignment we get in the office, while, with little vigilance, we can see their temporality. Still, we can see so many fights all around us where people are fighting to protect or promote the positions they have been assigned. When it is not possible to see something that is so obvious, how are we going to see that we have come to this life for the sake of playing a role? How can we be aware of "who we are" beyond the role we play in this life?
I don't think that most people ever explore the possibility of being something beyond their role. I don't know whether we have a choice about being born into a particular family. However, once we are born, we automatically have certain blood relations, and in the course of life, we form many more. Generally, we remain quite conscious of these relationships. However, we lose awareness of where we have come from and where we will go after performing these roles. We hardly try to recall that memory. We hardly try to know. That's why we suffer. So long as things move the way we want them to happen, we stay happy, and as soon as things turn the other way round, we suffer.
Is it possible to remember "who am I" while living in this world? When we forget, after entering the movie hall, that we are just a spectator watching the movie, and get into the character, how is it possible to remember the true self in a world where day in and day out, we are playing the role, and there is no occasion to recall that "I"? That's why it is all the more important in this world to take some time off the schedule to break the constant chain of thoughts, and see what we truly are. It's not easy. When we sit silently, for the first 10-15 minutes, the thoughts continue to flow. Sometimes, even for more time. The stronger the identification is, the greater the difficulty in breaking that chain of thoughts. However, once that chain is broken and we see the reality as it is, we are amazed. It's like coming out of the exit gate of the movie hall to realise that it's just a movie, and that a similar movie is playing in the minds of all human beings, and that the scripts of one such movie have no connection to the other. In fact, that connection can never be established as a role. To develop that relationship, we have to get past the illusion of being a role. Then we connect with love and compassion. Then we connect with all the human beings.
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