Stray Thoughts of Dr. Y. V. Rao
Dr.
Yerneni Venkateswara Rao
M.Sc., Ph. D
Retired Principal
GUDIVADA- A.P
Our
children did not choose us and we didn’t choose them. They happened to us and
we happened to them just as our dreams and dream happenings occur to us. All
these just came to pass on their own. Therefore to see these happenings as any
more than chance events or encounters and to bestow on these relationships any
significance in the shape of special bonds is sheer delusion. Like it or not,
all our other relationships are even more tenuous—good and essential as long as
they last.
Dreams often happen. Some dreams are
enchanting and some haunting. Just so are our relations with our children. At
any given time, some of us happen to have happy, some others unhappy and yet
others indifferent relations. Likewise, there are periods in the same life
marked by the best of relations as also those plagued by the worst of relations
with no apparent reason for either. Why? None knows just as nobody knows why
some among us have sweet dreams while some others frightful nightmares, or for
the matter of that, why we ourselves alternate between the two. Trying to apportion
credit or blame/discredit for the wellness or illness of our relations with our
offspring is like affixing responsibility for what happens to one in one’s
dreams. However, all dreams dissolve on waking leaving neither pleasure nor
pain behind. So should our relations be seen to be what they really are under
the microscope of our knowledge and discrimination with no scope left for
bitterness and nostalgia.
This does
not mean that we should desist from enjoying our happy moments or agonizing
over our unhappy moments with our children. Quite the contrary, we should
experience both as we can’t but do so as humans but with no trace of attachment
or aversion. We should love and lavish affection on our children as also share
their joys and sorrows and extend support and sympathy to them in their hour of
travails and tribulations, but doing so should not become an obsession lest we
should be locked into dependency relations with them and they with us, which is
a kind of bondage forged and fortified by each and every bond of attachment we
all form with other members of our family consciously or unconsciously. It is
therefore imperative to ensure that no bond of love and affection is allowed to
fetter/ shackle us. Detachment should be our watchword. So should be the case
with each of the other relationships/ bonds we forge outside the family.
Irrespective of its being good or bad, incidental or intentional, a
relationship is a relationship and it must always be informed with detached
love and understanding, kindness and forgiveness. It is the relationships and
the underlying trust and faith , that make up human spirit which is what makes
us truly human, and the only way we open our eyes to that spirit is through our
interaction with other people. In fact, the greatest lesson, the truly
significant and supremely important lesson that life offers is connecting to
one another through love and compassion, for love and compassion for others is
central to being human. Life in the ultimate analysis is connectedness with the
society around us, its the loving
relationships that keep life going. After all, it is through such bonds of
humanity that tie us all together. that
we express ourselves, learn to help and serve, and evolve and grow morally,
ethically and spiritually. In short, we are here to learn and to love and to
better ourselves so we may tread the path of enlightenment that leads us from
falsehood to truth, from darkness to light and from death to immortality.
One of the things that we must learn in life
is to take things in our stride and move on. To get stuck in life bemoaning our
loss or beguiled by our luck is worse than useless. For then, we not only not
profit from the present moment but also foreclose our doors of opportunity to
evolve and grow spiritually for ever. Living, after all, is like a journey
involving a lot of travelling and only those who are used to travelling know
how to move on and reach for the distant horizons. Life flows majestically
undeterred by those that stand in its way and unmindful of those that keep pace
with it but always affording bountiful opportunities, some hidden, others
obvious, to learn, to love, to forgive and to grow.
The vicissitudes of life, after all,
illustrate how time smoothes some paths while spiking others, closes off some
windows of opportunity while opening up others, and how identities and
relationships are fluid, situation ally negotiated constructs, and not really
tied to places and people in an problematical way. While we make our efforts to
tide over difficulties, we shouldn’t forget or underestimate the role, the big
role life plays and should never- not even when faced with the most formidable
challenges—lose hope and courage, the twin wheels of life that keep it going in
times of adversity , and the wings of flight that keep it soaring at other
times. For all such ups and downs are but learning exercises for
self-improvement and tests to assess our progress set by life as part of its
endeavor to school us to excel ourselves by breaking our own records rather
than real obstacles in our evolutionary path. For a man who is prepared to walk
that extra mile, no distance is too long to cover and no goal is too far to
reach.
Death, the ultimate destroyer, anyway
destroys/demolishes the superstructure of relationships we build around
ourselves all through life. If our knowledge and wisdom can sever some of these
illusory bonds of attachment and aversion early on in life, won’t death’s task
become that much easier and our release from the bondage of life that much
happier? Our scriptures highlight a few of the particularly tough ones viz
attachment and clinging to one’s son, wife , home, wealth and worldly
pleasures. So any serious effort towards this end /goal must begin with the
task of freeing ourselves from the fear of death by severing some or all of
these bonds by consciously cultivating an attitude of detachment, even
indifference to them. Just as surgery restores physical health, so does
breaking bonds, especially the more entangling ones, help gain spiritual
health. However much we fear, detest, denigrate and try to runaway from death,
but for it how much more burdensome and oppressive will life become as age
advances bringing in its wake disease, decrepitude, disabilities and other
debilitating infirmities? Won’t we then begin to fear, despise and desire to
escape from life itself, and cheerfully embrace death instead? Death, after
all, is over quickly.
Ironically, isn’t it death that makes life so
invaluable in the first place by constantly reminding us, albeit subliminally
of our evanescence/ephemeral and transitiveness and of the imperative need
to optimally use every moment of our allotted span to learn appropriate
lessons—lessons in compassion, tolerance, detachment, forgiveness, love ,
sympathy, dispassion, desire less action, philosophical complacency,
cultivation of finer sensibilities and suppression of baser instincts etc—from
each of our relationships and evolve and grow in tune with the cosmic
evolution. That life is but a brief interlude between two unknowns is a
self-evident truth. Who we were, and how and where we were before we plunged
into this life is a mystery; what we would be and how and where we would be
after we fly away from it is another big mystery. Be that as it may, wisdom lies
in making the most of one’s existence, however transient it be, instead of
throwing it away as a thing of no consequence because it is brief as most are
wont to do. To launch on a good and great enterprise, it is never too late nor
the unfinished enterprise a failure, for in great enterprises even to fail is
glorious.
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