Endurance

One of my friends' relative lost her husband a couple of years back. I have met this person during my friends' wedding and this woman is a very beautiful, energetic and jovial person. She may be in her early forties, even though she looks like she is in her early thirties. When I heard that her husband passed away, I was really shocked and saddened.
They have 100 acres of coffee estate and their house is in the coffee estate, so there are no other houses nearby. Their kids are studying in the city and they stay in a hostel and not with their parents.So it was just husband and wife living there. They have a family staying with them, who look after the plantations.

After her husband's demise, she was devastated. Relatives asked her to sell the estate and move to the city with her kids. But she was not ready, she did not want to leave her husband's memories. She recovered from the big blow life had thrown at her. She started looking after the plantations all alone, without anyone's help. She started taking courses in Pepper plantations and started working on it. They are now having much more profit than before. She still remembers her husband. It saddens her, but she has found a way of making her husband happy by doing something which was a part of his life.

I learnt a few things from this:
1. When the situation goes worse, and when it's not under our control, we have two options, either sit and cry or do something about it. Turn that negative energy in to building energy, creative energy.
2. There is no way of getting people back  who have left us, at least physically. But we can always find them in our memories. Create something out of those memories. Find happiness in that.
3. Love can be shown in different ways. Love can be shown even when you know that your partner is never going to know about your love. Love is just present that's all. True love does not need acknowledgement.
4. Lastly, love the people around you, because we don't know when it's too late. You may get irritated when your family keeps calling you when you are in a meeting, or your spouse keeps nagging you to do something or wants to spend more time with you. God Forbid, but we don't know future. We may long to get those calls and never get them, we want someone to keep watching us and tell them what to do and what not, but we may never have that again.

Have faith in God, Live Love Laugh and move forward.
Hats off to this wonderful woman.May God give her more strength and courage.

Meditation

I stay almost 20 kms away from work. I commute through office bus everyday. It takes me 1 hour to reach office in the morning and 1 and half hours to reach back home due to considerably increased traffic during peak hours in the evening. Many people have suggested me that I should move near office so that I can avoid spending 2 and half hours every day in the bus. But I have my own reasons why I stay this far. Some of them being, the place where I stay is pretty neat, clean, the locality is quite developed with multiple shopping malls, restaurants etc. Nice place to hang out. The people in whose house I am staying as paying guest are really nice, I get good food here and many more. Recently I found one more reason to stay this far and that is "Meditation". Sounds weird isn't it? Hear me out. Meditation does not always mean closing your eyes and chanting a mantra. There are other kinds of meditation too. I usually spend most of the commute time in reading books or on a call or listening music. Nowadays I have come up with one more way of spending time: meditating on things which bother me. It could be work related stress or family problems, personal problems, could be anything. 

We are lucky enough to travel in a comfortable AC bus, which is not crowded. I sit in the last seat of the bus, so no one can see me, which makes me comfortable. If my mind is troubled, I just sit there look outside the window and thoughts automatically keep coming to my mind one after the other. And I make sure that I feel as bad as possible for whatever I am experiencing. I argue with people in my mind, I think of all the reasons why I am right and they are wrong.Once I am done with all this self boasting, my mind calms down and slowly I start to realise that if I go ahead and start an argument with that person or if I do certain thing which affects another person, what will be the consequence? And every single time, the consequences are bad or harsh. Then I think of an alternative, what if I do not react or react in a certain way. And every single time, this gives a possibility of positive consequence. By the time I reach my house, all the trouble in my mind would have settled down and I feel so much at peace with myself. The next day, when I face the people or situation which caused stress and panic in me, I feel so much at ease and peaceful.

 In this fast moving world, no one has even 10 minutes time to keep aside for themselves. Even when people are in bus, i have seen them checking their phones all the time, or being on call. It's ok to do all that. But it should not be the only thing you do. We need  time to analyse and we need time to understand, so that we grow as humans. No one around us is doing this contemplation. At least if we make an effort, we can make our lives much easier and worthy of living..