Must we sleepwalk?
She was neither very old nor was she very young. She had her partly grey and partly orange flaming hair roughly haloing her head. Had she applied henna to hide her grey? And she sat on a ladder leaning against a wall. The ladder led to nowhere in particular. A rooftop with no view except rows upon unending rows of irregularly shaped boxes people around her lived in and called houses. Or may be homes. She could have been just about anyone. She could have been sitting just about anywhere. What was striking was that she did not seem to be looking anywhere! just out into the empty space in front of her- with staring empty eyes and an expressionless face. There was nothing there. Not even boredom. Form across the road, from a balcony that overlooked her terrace, I saw this woman. And wondered.
Would it make any difference to her that the life around her buzzed with electricity and energy? Would she have combed her hair in place had she realised that life around her cared? That she could make even this moment matter? Would her eyes have registered any movement from across the road had they been seeing and not staring vacantly.
I thought- Sight is not equal to Vision.
Sight is not equal to vision… and hearing is not equal to listening. And many people inhabit the space between the two aspects of these sesnses. They do not even try to make any sense of the world around them. They wake up each morning, rush through the rush hour to, and then from, somewhere. And go back to sleep again. Day after day. Night after night. Do these people feel? Ever?
I looked at my ten year old standing next to me. Nervous energy bundled into her frame. Waiting to go for an exam. A music exam. She could not practice now- she was waiting for her turn to sing. How do you SILENTLY sing? Yet, the deep concentration and the fire in my daughter’s eyes told me, she was singing- in her head. Following each note. She was also looking at the space in front of her. However, her eyes were far from disinterested, dying pools of glaze. These eyes were strikingly focused and shining with a light that defied the twilight around us.
My daughter had a task at hand. She loved the task. She was being challenged in that moment. And she was aware of each moment leading up to the challenge.
Is that not how life plays itself out? Task-love-challenge-awareness-reward.
How is it that simple flow gets interrupted? How do we lose our Self in nothingness? How does life lose its meaning for this human creature that has been called a meaning making machine? What is this life if without a meaning? What is it if without attention?
There are those who live deeply- and feel deeply. Every moment is alive for them. In fact the pause between moments where the things really shape up are also alive. Someone is sad, or happy. Someone is interested or bored. Someone is active or lazy- but they’re engaged in their life and the breath that sustains it.
Then there are those who simply move through the moments like a zombie- may be not even a zombie! Zombies also move towards sustenance and targets!!
These difficult times have brought home these distinctions sharply forth. We must stay away from people and activities we did as normal- sometimes not even stopping to consider what we did and how much we did. We hardly took a moment to express our gratitude for what we had. Now- we have been forced to slow down. Fortunate are those who have a roof over their head and a place to plant their feet. Fortunate are those who have food on their table and fire in their kitchen.
And when we hit this pause button- those that love deeply and live deeply- cannot but notice that the sky is far more azure and pure, the birds can be heard in the middle of the day, the colors are more vibrant- the world is reset.
We can either choose to live each moment as if life is precious and meaningful or as if nothing really matters to life as usual.
That choice is usually up to us. Each passing moment.
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