Courtesy www.hongcurley.com
Ever since my return to India(Related Post: Goodbye Cubicle Nation), I kept myself very busy. My first one year flew off very fast in a village school in Nandigama. I had over a hundred ideas to think about for the development of the school. I was working on implementing over a dozen activities in the school. I did not have time to reflect on anything. After a brief lull during the transition to Prasanthi Nilayam, my work picked up pace again. Well, there still was no time to reflect on the progress I was making.
After the move to Hyderabad(Related Post: A Recap of Events Since 2011), I kept traveling week after week and month after month. I visited a number of schools and participated as a trainer in several teacher training workshops. The days passed by in planning these events, making travel arrangements, executing the plans and finally returning home to rest and recuperate. Rewind and repeat. No respite and no time to reflect on anything that I was doing. I enjoyed the ride, sometimes rough and sometimes like a walk in the garden. I did not think there was a need to reflect on what I was doing. Boy, I was so wrong!
The last three months things have been very different. Due to my dad’s indifferent health, I was forced to hang up my boots for a while and just stay put at home. I was handling just the most important things that I should be part of and the rest I was reluctantly surrendering to others to handle. I had to cancel some of the important training programmes that I should have been part of.
I was having plenty of forced free time. I allowed this free time to enter my life.
Strange things happen when you are left to just yourself. There are many tough things that one can handle with ease. It is dealing with the self that is most difficult. For the first time in my life I had the opportunity to encounter my very own self. It was probably the toughest phase of my life since my return to India. In all my work life, I was always doing someone else’s work. Weekends were really busy with several social activities. When it is time to go to bed, the mind was usually full with thoughts of what is in store for the next day. Long weekends were booked for activities weeks in advance. There never was a “me” time. Some weekends that were very light yielded some time for reflection. The next working day, however, arrived much before anything fruitful came out of the short time spent with self.
It is because of this forced free time that the conversations with the self started. I spent long days doing nothing. NOTHING. I did not want to escape from myself by reading books, blogs or watching movies. I tried that but the lure for dealing with the self from within has been too strong. Without my knowledge I was being strangled from deep within.
I had several close encounters with myself in the last three months. I tell you, it is a very scary thing to be in that position. They say that an idle man’s brain is a devil’s workshop. They are wrong. The truth is people simply do not know how to handle themselves. Over the past few weeks, I am learning to handle myself better. Several good things are coming out of it.
It is a new arduous journey in which I am understanding the enemy within and am in the process of making a lasting peace pact with it. I will allow myself to soak in these times of awe and wonder. It is a masochist’s torment and yet blissful.
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