Went to meet up with my friend and spent the night listening to what she has been through the last few weeks.
She poured out her emotions on having to deal with her ex, her daughter and her colleague or subordinate who was diagnosed with the last stage of cancer.
She shared with me how she dealt with everything and teared up.
It was great she shared.
I listened, and with a lot of fear and trepidation. I tried to listen with awareness and at my best, do listening mediation.
That night i felt my arms and legs wrought with fear, and a lot of it.
Like a mini panic attack of sorts, i felt my limbs go weak go numb with lots of needles. I felt emotionally drained.
I couldnt sleep well and woke early this morning. Then i was so tired out I slept in the afternoon and only woke up in the evening finding myself better. Before that my tummy was full and I couldnt digest things.
I had my first meal of the day at 7pm.
And now feeling better, i want to try and make sense of this in the way I could best—writing it out.
This little exercise showed what is that in me.
My fear about about cancer, about life or the death of it.
Recently i had been listening to so many cases of illness, there were Facebook friends who were further away, and there was a contact who shared during lunch that she was down. Then my ex colleague, my friend ‘s subordinate.
I had a rising sense of fear.
It seemed so easy. SO so easy.
What was the universe or life trying to tell me—was this an alert or a wake up call? what was the message behind?
Impermanence was definitely one.
And for me, my fear about illness about life or the death of it. That I couldnt understand or haven’t spent heart trying to make sense of.
Childhood memories of grandfather, who seemed to pass away with liver failure. Then when i was bigger, my maternal grandma who had colon cancer. My mother who passed on when she had a viral attack on the heart in a bad bout of flu. My paternal grandmother who has it in the later stages of her life, but facing it with so much courage and bravery.
I thought of the friends who have recently battled the illness and those who have passed on. Everyone’s story is different.
Why did they get ill?
With limited wisdom and ignorance, and framing in a shorter span of a lifetime, it could be stress, unhappiness and something in life that has gone awry, more like a mental or emotional kind of wrong that has showed up in a different light physically.
In a longer frame, karma? Like time is up.
Something I thought we do not have control over. But as I m writing it now, maybe we do.
Recent stories showed me little bits of why people fell, in life. There was work stress, there was stress for bringing up kids with problems, there was stress with dealing in a boss who sucks and people who have succumbed because mentally they seem to have succumbed to unhealthy thinking or refused to budge or change or breakthrough.
And these are the mirrors in life, that reflect back and make you ponder about yourself. As they say, life is a reflection.
They show you what worked and what did not. What else can be changed and pushed for in my own.
I thought about myself.
I havent really digested my mother’s death, maybe because i didnt know her in life. Her life, her thoughts and emotions.
And her life came and went.
And everything went through but wasn’t experienced.
I did not or have not taken life “seriously”, I did not venture in to think perhaps why there is life, and or —-the purpose of meaning of it.
I ran away and is running away in a “flight” response.
But the recent stories have unsettled me and made me realise that I can no longer use the same response. Or rather, the old response no longer serves me.
I thought about myself, my understanding and of life.
I did not dare and has not face up to the real meaning of life. I was successful in my work and have aced my way through the best educational institutions.
But certainly there was so much more in life I didnt know.
So when I listened to these stories of people getting sick and falling down in life, they were stories and I didnt understand the meaning of it.
And the meaning was to really go for what matters, in my little life, to make sense as much of happenings, to dissolve and resolve unsettled past and emotions, to really spend time on things that matter. Not going after the the name of it.
Its also about conviction, belief and pushing for things you really believe in and expressing your soul and your self, and not being afraid of it.
Its about getting to the root living it rather than living in the surface of it.
And really living it out and up what matters to me.
Its about not just spending time, but devoting the insides of yourself, your time, your thoughts and emotions, your breath your soul—–truly and wholeheartedly to causes that matter.
My family, my kids, my siblings, my dad, my extended family. As for money, I do need it, but i think that, can be taken care of with suitable planning and savings.
Om ma ne pad me hum.
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