Gandhi Jayanti just went past. I love the life Mahatma led and I keep wondering what were the thoughts of the great man? One of the beautiful realizations I had was – how he churned an experience, or a personal hurt, is what created him. When he was thrown on that cold platform – two things could have happened: First, he could have felt very hurt, made it a personal thing, expressed or vented and finally moved on.
Second, and what he actually did – the indignity he went through, made him wonder, what it was that a complete country was going through. Instead of making it a personal hurt – he made it a collective one; instead of seeking to simply relieve himself, he sought a solution that changed the world as we know it.
I am an emotional person. I live life in the depths and hurt is something that happens to me too. Sometimes personally, sometimes professionally. Sometimes it is deep, and other times transient. Like all others, I had found my own mechanisms to cope with it and keep moving. Sometimes I vented, other times expressed; sometimes I dwelled in self-pity, other times I went into a shell.
However, after this beautiful realization about Gandhi happened to me, I realized, there could be a better way. Life being life, gave me a situation to immediately test it. Someone very close to me, was unwilling to do a little something I really wanted him to, at a crucial juncture. He is someone who says he always wants to be there for me so I couldn’t understand why, when I was asking, he wasn’t obliging.
The thing about hurt is – it just is. You can’t always rationalize as to why this hurt or that didn’t. Why there was this much degree of hurt. For whatever reason, I couldn’t accept it and was disturbed.
Something phenomenal happened to my thought process as I kept watching myself. I realized, my first response was to simply vent it all out and if he got hurt in the process, so be it. However, when I didn’t give in to that carnal need, in some time the reactive thoughts settled.
I watched my thoughts and emotions in awe, and as I settled even further, I realized hurt is caused when someone does something we don’t want them to, or doesn’t do something we want them to. If I could find a way to communicate why it meant so much to me, without rubbing him on the other side, perhaps it would work.
From the message I was first about the send – and the message I actually sent several hours later, everything within me had transformed. I realized three important things:
- If it is hurting, and it is a close relationship that really matters, suppressing wouldn’t help. One is not expected to be a doormat in a beautiful relationship.
- There is a way to communicate the emotion, which expresses clearly what I want without causing hurt to the other.
- I could use this situation to perhaps help so many other seekers to find answers to their hurt through this article.
The way I have grown in my own eyes and emotions through this seemingly ordinary incident is immense. I haven’t heard back from him and whether he would do as I wish, but something within has already transformed. Since I have been able to express, I am feeling relieved. Since I did it in a beautiful way, I know it won’t create a drama and further hurt. If things do go the way I want them, it will be extraordinary. If they don’t, I am still left feeling so beautiful about myself as a person. And as a lover.
Each one of us are given a chance every day, in so many ways, to think the higher – to grow from being an ordinary atma to a Mahatma and each time we rise to the occasion, we actually live life worthy of being called a Higher consciousness. A Mahatma! Wishing you, and me, many more Mahatma moments.