“Who are you?”
The question is an unsettling one…
The answer to it
Depends on context…
Without a context,
Who am I?
A great question is one
That dislocates certainty
And puts it on a quest.
To Love is To Trust
Haven’t you felt that
Your trust abides
Only where there is
The all-pervasive presence of love?
To break another’s trust;
To belittle it…
Or to shame it
For not being enough–
Is to live without that presence
Without faith…
Enclosed within
Your misconceptions and self-obsession.
Love allows you to
Extend yourself
To trust that where there is love
There is truth.
Trust and love
Keep your heart open
Your perspective broad
And your thoughts kind
The gift of trust
Is love’s greatest reward
To have lost your trust
Is to have also lost love along the way.
Remember to Do Nothing
Think about it: Nothing acts
But something is made to act.
Acculturation, education,
Society, work, marriage
Raising children…letting go…
We’re made to think that
Activity is action.
And if everything
That is something
Must act to be
What does nothing do
To be nothing?
In essence you will always remain
Not what you have done,
But what you haven’t.
Your something-ness binds you to your world
Your nothing-ness liberates you from it.
The Leader
Small fears but great connivances
Scores kept
Scores settled
Projects won
The designation acquired
And the pride served…
Work for many- great as it may be
Is but a means to an end;
It’s an end that is sadly often trivial…
Simply because it is self-serving
And not a means to deliver
The grand promise of the work itself.
The Leader
Is simply a person who recognizes
The true value of work
Its nature and its way.
Work is more than just a means
To profit- personal or corporate.
At its heart, it’s a contribution
Of that which is most worthy in you
The leader simply shows others
The merit in the reasons for which
Selfless work must be undertaken.
Fulfilment > Completion
You could complete
Something that demands
Completion
And yet be fulfilled
While it is incomplete.
Fulfilment is not dependent on completion.
To be fulfilled is to be
Poised to render incompletion
With unconditional love and acceptance
Assimilating the humility
That comes from unachieved outcomes.
The Search for Promise
There is occasionally
An hour
That is eventful…
A pivoting moment
Where you stand
Divinely reminded
Of what is worth
Living for
And what is the worth
In losing.
To a seeker
No occurrence is vain.
Everything colludes
To provide you
With new meaning
Fresh insight
Or an accepting wisdom
Where the vision that clearly sees
Differences and distinctions
Begins to blur.
Watch this moment
Absorb its essence
Feel your emotion
But do not emotionalize
The moment.
Humanity is not a particular
Flavor, after all
It requires no recipe.
It’s a quest… To be human
Is to search for promise.
Life
Even though
I tended to my plants
With unfailing care
They still withered
And died
Too soon.
Nevertheless
New life sprouted quickly and
Once again life bloomed.
Death, I learned
Is not the end of life
But its release.
So, mourn not my end
For what will end
Was never life.
A wise soul once said:
“You’re never more alive
Than when you’re dead.”
A Crisis
A crisis threatens you
With loss…
A loss of meaning and purpose;
Or with a loss of resources
And reserves.
A crisis reminds you
That life comes with no guarantees
That to live means to incur debt
That must be repaid
To all that sustains, nourishes and protects you.
A crisis teaches you
To live with deference
To wait and to be grateful
To effectively transact the business of life
By refusing to bank on it.
A crisis inaugurates
Your liberation
From the smallness of certainties
To a realm of possibility
A crisis is a time to live consciously.
A crisis conveys you
From the narrow alleys of fear
To the vast open skies of promise
You renew your relationship
With trust and faith.
A crisis is integral
To the design of humanity.
It reminds us that to simply be
One need not be accomplished
Just alive and inspired.
Growth
Growth is not in itself a virtue
And to seek it for its own sake
Is to have misunderstood its purpose.
We grow in and through
Movements that yield self-discovery,
Realization… a deeper seeing.
True growth is a natural process
Not a simulated artifice
It’s not a measure on a scale.
Leave things alone;
Let them simply be-
Immersed in time and space.
Allow them their abrasions
Allow them their struggles
Allow them their fight to be.
Growth is not merely expansion;
At its heart
It’s a search for possibility.
Where We Hung Around
Roads, streets and street corners
Are so much more
Than an urban infrastructure…
They are keepers of time-
The interstices of our destinies;
They convey us from the past
To the present and from here
To the future.
Who knew then
That the street corners
Where we hung around
On lazy, bright afternoons
And warm, dusky evenings
Would echo their laughter
Far into a future
That is today.
The street-corner musings
On life, its irony and love
Continuing, despite distances
And disagreeing time zones;
When your day is my night
And my night is your day…
Yet we continue to chat on WhatsApp
As though we’re hanging around the corner.
Or the long drives that began
In the spring of 1991-travelled far…
Shared moments grew into a shared life.
These roads allowed us
To meander aimlessly
To simply revel in being together
Or to meet secretly- anywhere apart
From the places we were outgrowing.
On these very streets
We imagined a life of our dreams
In its tiny establishments we worked,
Positing our hopes for a larger life
A bigger future…
Not knowing then that in the future
That is today
We would come to miss terribly
Those roads, streets and street corners
Where we simply hung around.
Wit. Wisdom. Wonder... 