Is Your Glass Half Empty?

Hello beautiful people, how are you all?

I have returned from a small set-back, back to sharing and connecting with you people.
I have a small incident to share which is rather funny too. It was only a month gone after my father left for his heavenly abode and we all were still trying to cope with this in our own ways. We would barely sit and talk about it. While I found my peace and freedom to let it out in solitude, my sister brother in law would find it in talking to family and others and sharing, my mom is very innocent, she just went with the flow and neither did she isolate herself not did she engage in a lot of conversations either.

One evening, there were a couple of family members in the living room . My sister was expecting during that time, so she had ordered some food she was craving for long and everyone sat talking and snacking. My periamma (elder mother in literal language) came inside the room where I was sitting reading a book and asked me why am I not sitting outside with others and easing out. She had a fair question, I told her I have some work to finish and stayed quiet, thereby avoiding a conversation. She got the hint and she left. A few minutes later, my brother in law came in and asked me what I am reading. I told him “This is a book called ‘When All Is Not Well’, it’s written by a person I admire a lot – Om Swami – he is a monk.” My brother in law said “That’s fine. But shouldn’t you be sitting with all of us when things are not well?!”. I smiled. I was amazed at this response and it is quite obvious, but I just couldn’t find it in me to be sitting around chatting and laughing when an incident like that had happened in the house.

In fact, the scriptures say that the departed souls (their pain-body) actually feel twice or thrice the amount of sorrow we feel when we are mourning for them. I have spent days reading about the journey afterwards from puranas and somehow agonized me even more. I was left in a situation where I was feeling a lot of pain and was literally reminding myself of what I had learnt, so I would try to distract or sleep. But there were most times when I cried miserably and felt more hurt about hurting my father’s departed soul. It was a vicious cycle. I might have seen/read everything know Indian monks have spoken about death and the journey afterwards, you name it.

The point I’m trying to make here is – today when I look back at it, I can see how much sense it would have made to rather let things be and not be conditioned. Its true the pain was immense, but we are humans. We are wired to remember only a few things at one instant. When there were instances I literally laughed, I would pause the next minute and wonder, ‘How am I laughing when something so traumatic has happened.’ and I would voluntarily bring it back to memory and it would set me back to my zone. Some of you might wonder how pessimistic this is, but unfortunately for me, that was how I was wired. And today after repetitively pouring content from Swamiji into my mind for a long period, I am happy to share that I can see that is glass is also half full, while I see the other half is empty, to be able to understand it when he says – “Pain in inevitable, but suffering? That’s optional” 🙂