My Chaos Theory

Shattered earth picks up the pieces and like a phoenix is reborn of its own ashes counting a thousand blessings and ignoring the chaos within and without.

Reasons are often unreasonable, the heart knows much more than the mind...

Many events in life are unplanned and they occur despite our best laid plans. I learned that ages ago and stopped fighting against the tide about a decade ago. These days I try to concentrate more on living life than fighting chimeras. Mostly, I feel at peace inside and thank God for carving me out of chaos. (The universe, afterall, was born out of chaos.)

Peace only comes from a calm heart that says, 'I am innocent, I am all accepting.' With peace in my heart, I can fight all the chaos around me or just ignore them till they die their own miserable death.

Anger is our worst enemy and needs to be tamed. The more I am angry the more I suffer. It came to me in a moment of flash while watching the low tide at Juhu beach almost a decade ago that I should let go of my anger and instead concentrate on building my life upon what I had as opposed to what I did not.

I felt immensely light and happy in that one moment by letting go of all the accumulated hurt and misery that I was carrying around like a burden round my neck. I went immediately to a temple (right next to the beach) and thanked all the deities present for giving me this wisdom.

Ever since that flashing moment I have been blessed with a reservoir of strength that has been tested again and again - every two years or so and I have been able to move away and on from hurt and anger without getting bogged down.

Another cause for chaos in our lives is stress at work. My system is auto-fitted to maintain a work-life balance - I know that from very early on. I mostly do not carry office home or vice-versa. It is very rare when this balance gets mixed up and my body usually first signals with splitting headaches. 

This is one chaos I have learned to fight by turning my back to it. Though my first reaction is still to swim with the tide but, slightly faster to allow me to put a distance between myself and this whirlwind of a chaos. I sleep, meet friends, avoid shopping (or I'd go bankrupt), read and watch movies back to back on the DVD to avoid thinking. This is actually the second signal. Often at this stage I throw plans out of the window and listening to my heart and jump boats. Whatever is giving you stress at work is best avoided and left behind if it is beyond you to make amends. Afterall, your body and mind (not to mention hearts) are more precious than any external factor that is causing stress. 

Another cause for chaos is sadness. It is inevitable that death, distance and dalliance will cause extreme sorrow. There are no exact ways to fight this kind of sorrow and each occasion lends a unique way towards finding a solution. I'm no expert at overcoming sadness. Often, I'm saddened if not by my own loses then by the problems of those who I know or see everyday. This is one chaos I have learned that should be treated as a character builder. The one who can overcome deep personal losses to rise in life is the real hero and deserves to be lauded and emulated. I do try but, around me I see so many others who have suffered grave losses but, stand head and shoulders above everyone and I salute them.

So many of my friends have suffered personal losses ranging from losing a grown up child , to loss of parents, dirty divorces, deadly diseases, messy in-laws and many more losses that are so personal in nature that they cannot be mentioned in social forums. But, even after suffering these crippling losses and in many cases severe humiliation/s they are still standing tall and I never miss the amazing smiles on their faces.

They are my heroes all of them, the old mother who has been abandoned by her son but, has adopted a host of strays who slide up to her whenever she comes in sight, another mother who has overcome the loss of her four-year-old daughter to a freak accident where she fell down the balcony in front of everyone's eyes and died, another friend  who has now laid to rest her parents after attending to them for about a decade because they were both suffering from dementia where they did not even recognize her towards the end of their lives, she has also dealt with a messy long-drawn divorce, another who has suffered cancer and then a divorce and is now raising her kids all by her own, another divorcee friend who is mostly straddling an emotional see-saw but, her child is an angel because she did not let her nerves pass on to him - all of them are my heroes. Whenever I feel let down by life I just think of the people around me and find the calm to fight my private wars.

Everyone suffers and sadness is a bone-deep chaos because it is a deeply emotional one. Those who allow this chaos to suck them in lose many precious years of their life that never returns. Losses should be treated as cornerstones and building blocks. The more one suffers and overcomes grief the stronger they become.

Believe me every memory of suffering should be written off by the happy memories of the same person or incidence. I try to think of only the positive and try conditioning my mind to not attack me with locked up memories that bring on pain. Look inside your hearts, there is a pool where happiness lives and concentrate upon it. If I am sad, I try to make others happy, once there are smiles around me my pain heals and becomes a mere throb.  

I understand that it is not very easy but, since I have seen it work I wanted to share it with those who are still floundering with anger, stress and sorrow by fighting, by festering old wounds and planning the downfall and annihilation of the villains but, my own advice is to let go, let go and enjoy the life that has been gifted to you – it is rare and precious. 

Once you start living away from the chaos you will be able to laugh and be happy at the sight of even the smallest of nature's miracles. Go find a rose bush that has a single red rose and smell it even though it is growing in the garden of the neighbor who hates you. Then smile at him and say genuinely that the rose in his garden smells divine. I'm sure he'll change his mind about you and even if he does not then stop thinking about his villainy and think about the fragrant rose in his garden that gave you such pleasure for a while and you'll stop resenting his presence next door. That one action will help you relax and probably even bury the hatchet.

Many a times, friends and family have called me a coward and advised me to retaliate but, I have moved on, it is my best defense mechanism. It allows me to save my strength and pour it into the positive and I’d rather be positive than be sucked into a black hole of negatives. It is too chaotic and only begets more anger, stress and sorrow and it is a never ending nerve-wracking cycle. I feel that I heal faster and I get back on track allowing me to achieve more by forgetting and forgiving.

Dear friends, I pray that we all walk out of our ‘self’ to gather love and peace not anger and sorrows.