Introspection continued..

Its been 12 years since I wrote my last blog. Why am I writing now? because ' you were in my path' today. Because of that, those words made me introspect.

My day was a normal routine day. Got up early, good start to the day because my child finally slept well last night( been under the weather), thanked the lord for it, got my child ready for daycare and get to work  in my home office. By 11am, I got some break and decided to check on some personal to do list. First thing there : check with my friend how he is doing?. My friend has been going through some financial trouble in his life for past 4-5 months, his father needed some money to get over some unfortunate turn of events in their life. It has been affecting his health which sadly he was hiding it from his own son. Since my friend exhausted all his resources through credit card, 401K, personal load etc, he fortunately decided to reach out to me to ask to fill in for a while. Me and my wife of course obliged and sent away some support in form of whatever the amount he asked for over last 4-5 months.  

I checked on him today ( since he has been disturbed this week) and bingo, he gave me some good news that things have taken a good turn and very soon he will be able to get rid of lot of his debt and eventually of course  return our money. He also stressed that now his dad is doing great healthwise (which is what I wanted to know). During our text chat, he wrote : " I told my dad to not worry, I have great friends here who are as good as God to me". The text simply stunned me.  What!!! Noo. How can he say that? Which what made me introspect and made me dive deep into spider web of my thoughts and try to make sense of it.

I am very emotional personal, very spiritual. I believe in my Guru, my god who was given me these teachings about way of my life. I do go away from that path sometimes but never too far. His blessings make me come back to his principles, teachings, values. Why would someone put me into Gods role? What did I do to make him feel that? I just gave few percentage of my family's savings to him, to work for some time and I am expecting it back( at some point). Its not like I gave away 50 or 70% of our savings to him and never expected it back, that would have been something worth nothing or something worth applause. This was least amount of effort I can carry forward, for thousand of souls who helped me selflessly so far.  They gave me never expecting it back, never showed me they are doing something extra ordinary. That was a noble deal, worth much much more than a selfish deed I did to my friend. Was it selfish? 

For me yes. In todays world, everyone around has everything. They have roadside assistance if their car broke down, they have gps to show the way, they have hospitals or 911 to call if they need hospital, they have home delivery of grocery if they need food, they have home delivery of food, they have governments paying them if they need money. Nobody needs helps, at least people around me.

But Me, I have grown up always trying to help others. It made me feel special that 1. I am walking my Guru's principles to help others 2. I have so much inferiority complex that this was the only thing that made me feel good about myself. In my growing up days ( before smartphones to be honest) I enjoyed helping people move, dropping them somewhere, helping with groceries etc etc. It just made me happy. Now I realize that in about last 6-7 years, I have never really helped anyone. All I was doing was helping myself through whatever challenges life was throwing at me. May be subconsciously, I was under this burden of millions of people who helped me but could I continue paying forward it.

My friend, you gave me that opportunity that I could genuinely help someone in a need, that whatever resources my family had, were able to give an iota of comfort to someone in a dire need. The satisfaction is immense.

So to summarize, does that put me up as a God? what do I think about it?? Nooo, of course I don't think it that way.  I carried to it forward, my guru's blessing made me do it. It was for my selfish reason to be happy doing it, its because --> And then I remembered a line I saw on YouTube. Person A helps Person B. Person B asks : ' why did you help me today???' Person A says : 'Because, you were in my path today' :)

Introspection continued....

Writing the first blog ________________ satisfaction.

Publishing the 1st blog _______________ drained out the fear.

Getting response for the 1st blog________ confidence.

It was 6 am on Sunday morning and I was walking home from the night shift with above three things in the mind. It was something that elevated my mood. It had rained the whole night, light drizzle. The rains for 3 days had created puddles all around. A tinge of cool air wheezing past me made a nice and comfortable walk home through the dazzling silence of a Sunday morning. Sunday mornings are generally silent in US after the "Saturday nights". Hence a aroma of silence loomed over the St. Stephen street in Boston. Big trees draped the street from both sides and made an illusion of green cave cover over the street.

My mood was further elevated by the scenes around. Sparrows chirping around, playing in poodles around, 2-3 squirrels having a run around the trees and occasional flapping of few pigeons through the street.

Overall, an awesome morning, rare ones where everything looks good around and as I said, the above three things made me feel good Even from inside. These are the times where one hopes for all the good things in life. The problems seem small and gives confidence of overcoming the odds. I wished the walk was long to enjoy these things.

AS I walked past Gainsborough street, I sensed a movement behind one of the tree besides walkway. As I walked ahead, I saw a man. He was middle aged, horrifying long hair and beard, wrapped in torn clothes which were shabby and dirty. It was all enough to make me realize his unfortunate condition. As I came closer, He greeted me and asked for change(money) saying he hadn't eaten anything for past 3 days. I gave him the change.

Suddenly things changed. The things around seemed no good to me. Various thoughts started gripping me hard. I felt like a kiss from an death eater. I was thinking about that man. May be he was sick, hungry. So the rains around, the coolness, was not good to him as it was for me. The sparrows, pigeon, squirrel were nothing noticeable to him. May b what he worried the most was about the "Food", the very basic thing that was important for his survival; a survival which was not worthy to be called a "LIFE".

I stopped by the alley of my building. I didn't wish to go home. I wanted to be alone. The incident had taken control of my thoughts. Many weird, random and fearful thoughts crossed my mind. They were too random to mention in sequential way; too vast to catch them in words. May be I was thinking too much. May be I was concluding too much.But, I learnt few things and decided a few.

Life isn't fair to everybody.There will be times when an Axe of mis fortunate may come upon anybody. Hence, whenever we are fortunate enough to experience the good eyes of destiny and grace of THE ALMIGHTY we should be aware of the less fortunate people. At the same time, its our duty to help these people in whichever way possible. At that moment, I decided to do the same whenever I can; not to show anybody but for the peace of my mind which I lost that morning and hoped to gain it on future fortunate morning.

I think, I took one more step towards a being a better Human Being.

Introspection

Hi,

My name is Satyajeet. I am from Pune currently completing my masters in Boston, USA. Blog term is very alien to me and always kept a distance from this. But certain things led me to think on expressing my thoughts, letting out the flow through the channel of words. Hence, i thought blog could be that very platform enabling me to do so.

I dont know what to start with. I had thought of loads of things to start with, but now that I have sat down to write, my mind has plunged into the ocean of dilemma. I am not a writer, so collection of words seems difficult; appropriate subject, another difficult task.

I will start with an incident that made me to introspect. Thoughan ordinary incident, came hard on me. It was an Autumn afternoon and I was on my way along with some friends to a shopping mall in Boston for some shopping. We were walking to T station. Just before the T station, I noticed a girl, may be 20-24 years of age, with a trained dog and could make out that she was blind and the Dog was guiding her. Dog was well fed and had some kind of uncanny innocence on its face. I was walking towards the T station with some other people along with this lady . We all reached the lights where we were supposed to cross the road. People were crossing the road in spite of a stop signal. The dog waited patiently there and so did the lady. I was a bit curious and waited there too.The lady was chatting intermittently with dog, cuddling him. With the flash of Walk sign, the dog promptly crossed the road along with lady and fortunately, they too were waiting for the train.

As the train approached, dog made the lady wait safely outside the prohibited yellow line. they entered the train, so did we and she was given the priority seat. AS she sat on the seat, the dog in an orderly manner retreated below the seat with its mouth poking out in the train lobby. The lady THANKED the dog and it went to sleep.

As I said very ordinary incident, but made me introspect.

The lady was leading a normal life with help of dog, who was guiding her perfectly through the city and in a way completing her weaker side. She was also thankful to the creature. It was something more than give n take relation between them..It was the LOVE that made the striking distance. On the other hand, may be the dog expected nothing from her and was performing the duty with precision towards the lady.

It made me realise two very important things .

1. How ridiculous it is for us to crave for things like money , status, pleasures beyond our reach and more than we require. It is this rat race that makes us unhappy every time we get something less. Happiness and satisfaction are so easy to get by if we ignore this race.

2. Love and affection could be the virtues which should be thought of beyond anything else. They could also be the aim of life and would definitely make us a better human being, if not a popular or rich human being.

I know all these things sound cliche, but some where this incident made me realize those things more strongly, deeply.I think I took a step towards being a better human being.