Days go by and often I am left with no time for myself. I keep wondering if this was so always or it is something in these present unusual times. With conscious effort I have mused on this aspect over the past month and to no definite conclusion or analysis which means something, I thought. Then I happened to read a post or was it a forward – I do not remember – about the lady of the house suddenly becoming different and letting all other members be responsible for their own actions and feelings and not feeling guilty about everything that happens or someone feels. It was an eye opener.
Some writings tend to make you aware of situations which exist in your life and environment, but you are not able to identify or correct them. The reason almost always is lack of self-awareness and self-compassion.
I have always been hard on myself with regards to my profession and my personal life. For me being humane in the real sense of feeling for others and making their dream my own has been a way of life. I now realize that most often than not it has been to my own detriment.
Years ago as I worked and thought that the change would happen if you are that change itself led me to lead a professional life wherein the other person’s dreams became mine as year after year I made them come true with my hard work and innovative ideas and each year their coffers would be full and the school strength what they wanted. Every event, every aspect of school administration and planning which I was given I did as if it were my own organisation. The benefit to the organisation was immense, the detriment to me was a jolt and rude awakening that whatever you do for others, if they have a choice, they will choose over you and shall let you know that you are not indispensable to the organisation. It is a different story that the guilt continues for them (that they did and behaved thus) which makes them sound holier than thou that they let go of me for they meant good for me!! Wow! Probably they become deaf to their own untruths at such times.
It is amazing how people assume that you are so extremely naïve and credulous. Yet I have played along with them as they have tried to fool themselves into thinking that they can hope to play God as they hold the purse strings. I think it is one’s education and upbringing which makes one keep silent and be polite when the person in front is taking credit for something just the very opposite.
As for the resilient me, I never look back and mope.
Several years of work in the education sector helped me burn my fingers like nothing else did. Several assignments were a put off and I attributed it to complete waste of my productive time. Yet I saw many others continue in similar or near similar conditions and situations and realised that they played their cards right by appearing to be attached while being completely detached. And each of them had their own personal work beside the professional appearance we saw. I wished I had that kind of ‘on-off’ switch or that duality built inside me.
I see this being detrimental for my own well-being even in my personal life. I feel too much when a friend is upset, I care too much in situations at home, I do more than is sometimes physically possible for me at home and for others. In short, I tend to take responsibility for everything done and not done the right way and for every action or reaction not appropriate. Surprisingly in my professional work I have never moped on situations gone by but on a personal front the hurt from friends or family tends to hit closer home.
When I have been an aware, diligent human being in all roles that I have played in my life, I now comprehend the need for each person who is in my life and who traverses it, to be responsible for their actions towards me and all situations we may find ourselves in commonly.
I refuse from this moment onwards to feel accountable, liable, answerable, blameable – whatever for the actions of others!
My hands are already full of my own responsibilities of home and hearth and my work and my pet rabbits and their feeding times and the turkeys and their routines to be bothered any more with what and how others do and conduct themselves.
It’s fun to see the bunnies grow up, it is amusing to have them run away startled as I try to pick them up, it is a bit unnerving when my turkeys create a ruckus for it indicates that someone new has walked in, it is relaxing to see the birds nest every evening in the tree in the lawn, it is calming to see our silver oaks sway in the breeze, it is peaceful to see the green lawn swathed with the slightly warn sunlight filtering through the leaves, it is nice to know friends are waiting for my new blog and are enthusiastic about my new announced book, it is thrilling to start writing a completely different & unexplored genre of books – Stories for young kids (!), it is nice to have time to chat with my father in the far-away land, it is enjoyable to plan and pack up hampers for friends and children of an organisation whose work I am impressed with and whose amazing people heading it are the most wonderful human beings I have come to know in recent years, it is entertaining to trouble my young son when he is ‘chilling’ which is almost always (!!), it is darkly comical to try a see some method in the madness of how my staff works at home, it is engrossing to read some interesting books recommended by friends on the Kindle again, after many years………………..
My list is endless as I pass another day in my paradise with no time for hype and unnecessary exhibition and unreal spectacles and faux ceremony. Pass over people……display elegance which is remembered as against as something which is just noticed.
My Diwali Rangoli like other years was done in flowers from a design which used coloured powdered and this design is an amalgamation of four designs!!
It was difficult though to click pictures while trying to keep the unkept out of the frame; if only we did not degenerate our environs it would be like paradise – Sigh, if only!!
Using the abundant sunlight in our amazingly mood-uplifting balcony, I find my green thumbs and gardening fingers twiddle and I sowed amongst other things some fenugreek.
Definitely my paradise!!!
Wickedlyours 