The heart of the matter

When I met him recently, he came across to me like the enigmatic Elon Musk with a dash of Jeff Bezos in him. But, on a summer afternoon, while at work, he felt uneasiness creep into him, and a feeling of total paralysis swept him. His eyes teared up, and his hands turned clammy. His heartbeat climbed like the roar of an aircraft engine taking off into the skies. Pain in his chest felt excruciating as he toiled to breathe. His lungs despaired for a whiff of oxygen. As he continued to gasp for air, he felt a sharp shooting pain rise from his chest and radiate down to his arms. His pounding chest felt as though an enormous elephant was trampling and tearing his heart away. Suddenly, his world turned black as he helplessly watched himself get sucked into a dark abyss. Soon, he lost all consciousness. Later, in the evening, when he opened his eyes at the nursing home, he realised he had just been through a heart attack. 

For Rajesh, making millions and winning the best exporter award had become his obsession and passion. His father had taught him to be fiercely passionate about his enterprise. Taking his father’s advice seriously, he immersed himself in work and gradually forgot to slow down and mindfully enjoy the little things in life. Most of us tend to do so, but not to the outrageous extremes resorted to by him. For instance, during my ADGP L&O days, my office overlooked a vast expanse of the oceanfront with a beautiful lawn bang outside. But, I can’t recall a single occasion of having taken a breather to drink in the breathtaking view my office offered to all. 

Conversely, babies, Zen monks and some individuals can tune out of the chaos around them and tune into the beauty that surrounds them all the time. Even a mundane activity like taking a stroll in the busy street fills them with joy and happiness rather than stressing them. By appreciating little things and being grateful for them, we can alter the stressful, hostile environment lurking inside us into one of peace and joy. We live in a magical world packed with marvels of God’s creation, and it would be a sheer disservice to let them pass by unseen just because we are focused and hell-bent on creating an impact in life. 

Most people who navigate through such hard times undergo some emotional scarring. But, the positive mindset helped my friend find new meaning and purpose in the face of adversity. He felt gratitude for life because of the good that came out of it. The catastrophe taught him not to take life for granted. His bond with family and friends deepened, little things lighted up his day, and life began feeling like a celebration. 

Recently, while skimming channels on my TV, I came across a scene in an animated movie in which a small fish swims across to a bigger and older fish and asks her to show her the ocean. The older fish informs the small fish that they are, in fact, in the ocean. But the little fish yells back, “No, this is just water; I want the ocean. The import of this parable being — that despite living amidst joy and bliss, we create suffering and unhappiness in our lives striving to scale some Mount Everest that we have created and embedded in our heads. We appear to have painted that peak as the perfect destination that will enable us to discover happiness. For Rajesh, his Mount Everest was to scale his company into a Fortune 500 company. 

In the corporate world and bureaucracies, we see a similar propensity manifest in the hierarchy as a clamour for plum posts. The intense desire, in some, to garner top posts generates extreme stress and suffering because of an erroneous belief that binds their self-worth to the coveted job. When the unmet desire lingers over extended durations, the frustration springing from it often manifests as a psychosomatic disease. Hence, we can circumvent unfulfilled desire from taking a toll on health by accepting and surrendering to “What is” and not longing for an external designation or tag that can never fill or replenish the lack within. Because true joy emanates from the formless dimension inside. And when we honour our inner and live from that space, the outer circumstances automatically lose the power to torment us. 

Accepting what is, is what helped my friend flip his life and make it meaningful. Rather than dwelling in the past or experiencing anxiety about the future, it would do us a world of good if we took the time to look into what lies within. The spirit within us is more important than our past or the future. It may not matter where we came from because we can change our identity by going within and altering the story or meaning we have assigned our lives. Similarly, we may anticipate a particular future but eventually, suffer a setback and experience a different outcome. At which time, it’s our reliance on our inner self that can lift us and steer us out of the storm. We have a vast cosmos of consciousness inside each one of us that we must endeavour to access through spiritual tools like prayer, meditation, journaling, inner conversations, or just by observing silence.