Digital Minimalism, a must!

• Schools - Online.
• Work - Online.
• Socialisation - Online.
• Retail - Online.
• Entertainment - Online.

You get the drift, I hope?

Digital has suddenly expanded itself to fill physical spaces of our lives- both at work and at home. Don't you agree? Our lives have got intertwined inextricably. Physical and digital spaces overlap now like never before, so much so that, many of us have accepted our digital identity to be an extension of our physical persona and there is very little wrong in it, digital is indeed gaining compelling prominence. Let me, however, invoke Mark Twain, who said, to make my argument here :

“Too much of anything is bad, but too much good whiskey is barely enough.

If you look carefully you'll notice that the point at which our physical world meets with the digital one, there is chaos, created by the abundance of information, not all of which is found to be either factual or useful.

Let me explain how?

Before we get to the heart of the issue let us list down major points of our digital interactions.

• Emails
• File and data
• Browser
• Smartphone
• Social media

The container of consumption may range between computer, phone and tablets (keeping IOT out of the scope, willfully, in the interest of simplicity) but for a vast majority of us, our digital lives are nested around the outlets listed above. From experience, we know that it could get overpowering really quickly. From enjoying email carrying the good news to a sea of unread emails, from having important files to mountain heap of data we do not know what to do with, from a few cool new extensions to too many of them filling the entire length of the toolbar, from occasional notifications to a phone that is a constantly buzzing menace - Digital chaos caused by excessive indulgence is real and is known to cause cognitive fatigue.

Don't you agree?

Let me ask you a few question.

• Have you not felt the load of unread emails on your chest?
• Have unattended notification from your favourite social media apps not caused anxiety in you?
• Have you not started the day with and on your phone and also ended the day with it?
• Have you not felt lost in an abundance of choices? What to watch on a given day on your favourite OTT platform?

I see you nodding, in agreement and that, my friends, is the digital clutter that I am talking about, here.

I wrote an article on essentialism on 8th March 2020, in which I spoke about the concept, ways to implement and the reasons why I find it to be a good approach to life. (I'll link the article towards the end of this one, if you haven't read it already you can give it a go).

While replying to some of your comments on that article, It dawned on me that with the 'COVID-19 house arrest' situation, digital clutter has only intensified and so has the frustration, stress and anxiety that comes with it. 'Working from home' concept for digital workers does not befall without its vices. The boundary that healthily separated 'work' and 'home' has vanished, now. We have associated work with the workplace for a long time. Granted, the nature of work has changed dramatically in the last decade which has made 'work from home' a smart option, but the pandemic has made it the 'only' safe option. And this act of force has made it less pleasant. It has become particularly difficult for those with additional responsibilities of running the chores of the house.

Suffices to say, that collectively we're not in a good place at the moment, with the spread, extent and the shape of our digital identity.

So, I propose that we introduce organisation into our digital presence with the aim to take control of its spread, to disentangle the situation into a simplified arrangement. The idea is to make technology work for us and not the other way round; to declutter it. Since I subscribed to the concept of Essentialism, I've given considerable thought towards introducing minimalism to my digital life too. Happy to share a few things that I have tried in my own routine, with you. My suggestions are by no means the only ways to achieve the goals that we listed earlier and certainly are not the best way forward too- but it has worked for me. So take it for what it is worth.

Let's take prominent digital spaces that we interact with one after the other.

Social Media

The user experience of social media is pleasurable, so much so, that it has become the strongest source of diversion for modern workers, who appear powerless before its attraction. Constant, continuous and mostly free of additional charge- supply of content entices people to remain hooked to it, sometime at the cost of being productive, being social in the traditional sense and even useful to the task at hand.

Social media is a costly affair, we pay for it in the currency of time, the most valuable asset that we have. To limit its impact on my time and digital habits, here are a few routines that I have developed.

• If deleting social media accounts sound too extremist to you, begin by unfriending and unfollowing those who do not add value to your life. I mean by the way of their content and views. Get rid of all 'motivational' speakers, trust me you do not need them. Keep only those who really inspire you to be the better version of who you are and who you wish to be.
• Limit exposure:
  • The human mind loves continues inflow of information. Social media platforms are designed to give its users a false sense of fulfilment as though they are filling some deep void with the timeline/wall/feed scrolling. We often forget that it is not real. So to be mindful, I follow, the routine of 30 minutes on social media each workday and 1 hour on weekends, all platforms put together. Full disclosure, there are days when I overstep my boundaries too, but I feel good about the fact that on 90% of the days I do follow the limit that I have set for myself.
  • Do not engage in badinage with people, who you do not find inspirational. So learn to walk past a useless post without displaying your reaction or gracing it with a comment. Know when to back off from an exchange. I am not asking you to not engage, at all. Stand for what you believe in by all means but know that your comments on social media only go that far in changing the situation on the ground. Do not overvalue its impact.
• Create friction:
  • Social media applications are easy, user-friendly to the point of being addictive, so delete them from your phone, like RIGHT NOW! Even if you wish to keep them on your phone, DO NOT turn on notification for them. It is the worst mistake to make.
  • Access it from the most useless browser that you can find. Willfully destroying the social media experience, is a great way of limiting your exposure to it.
• Know that social media is a curated world. The real world is far from it, the world of social media is not only virtual but also fake, in most cases.
• Advertisement cry for your attention and platforms steal your data to serve advertisers. How comfortable are you with your data being harvested without your consent to benefit corporations you have no interest in? Depending upon your ease, you decide how much time and attention should you blow on them.
• Just renounce instant messengers, you do not need them. Those who need to get in touch with you will call you, so chill - you are not missing out on anything important.

Email and files.

Email continues to be the most patronised and invaluable mode of communication around the world. All of us have work and personal email accounts. Email clients, unify mailboxes to give us the convenience and that comfort sometimes causes us to mix one for the other. The rush to reply swiftly can sometimes get better of our judgement. It is easy to get on with an email exchange at a time when you should be working/creating/ solving a problem, instead. The situation with data files are also similar, we end up accumulating a lot of them. We become data and information hoarders without any good reason. Information and data which we do not even index, well for future use. We mindlessly create digital junkyard.

Here are a few things that I have tried.

• Common tricks for both email and data files.
  • Colour code work and personal email IDs and file and folders. Try and use different and distinct email clients for work and personal emails.
    • Apple email for work.
    • Spark for personal email.
  • Mark calendar for work and personal account too, separately. Do not unify the two, it does not help.
  • Visual differentiation of colours will keep you from mixing, the categories.
    • In electing the colour-codes make sure that you pick a distinct and opposite colour, not just for email and calendar but and also for file and folders, related to different areas of your life. (Here are the colours that I go with)
      • Blue for work.
      • Purple for personal.
      • Green for learning.
  • Unless you work in email support in which replying to incoming emails with speed is vital to your job role, you do not need to be hooked on to your mailbox all day. Set time, one that suits your routine and work urgency. I check emails three times a day for not more than 2 hours combined each day.
    • You can create custom alerts for important clients and other important people/matters/projects, and allow them to bypass, everything and everyone else can wait, it is ok.
  • Naming your data files on the project that they belong to will help you find them quickly later when you need them. Because you will always need information in relation to a project. Also, never keep files in the email or floating around on their own. You should not have to dive into the mailbox or hard drive to find a file, always save files as they come to you in their designated folders. Create a shortcut for the folders of the current projects so that you can get to the current resources in no time.
    • Do not create duplicates.
      • Final1; Final 2.0_XYZ, Final final new - these are not the best ways to name a file.
      • Use better version control nomenclature, learn ISO; it is a good standard to follow.

Browser

Most of us spend most parts of our day in a browser, therefore organising it becomes significant, too. Here are a few things that I do.

• I port the colour scheme from the email and folders on to website bookmarks for work, play and learning life areas so that I have a visual reminder in front of me which stops me from mixing work for play and vice versa.
  • If you have the luxury to, separate browsers.
    • Let Chrome/fire-fox be the workhorse
    • Safari/Brave be the place for play-related internet excursions.
    • Explorer for learning.
      • Or whichever you like, the idea is to create visual reminders that you are in a certain zone.
• Do not let news/ social media notification be on. You do not need them. if something is big enough, the buzz it creates will find you.
• Be mindful about the extensions that you keep on your browsers, the idea is to only keep the plugins that help you do your job better. You do not need FB lurking on you. It just does not add any value to your life, get rid of them.

SmartPhone

One of the greatest inventions of our times, this single device has effectively replaced so many things, from physical calendars to notepads to the phone book and so much more. But let us not forget that this always connected tool is also the greatest source of the disturbance, that we come across. It has games, social media, endless feed of news, YouTube and the mother of all a browser in it which has the ability to keep us entertained all day long. And not to forget it is always with us. Remember, the goal is to be intentional about the use, we should not let unplanned and mindless entertainment get in the way of our being productive.

• DND (Do not disturb), use it at every opportunity that you get.
• Messages and phone calls barring from key people are best returned at a time when you find fit and not when your caller finds suitable.
• Grayscale (I use it to on my iPhone) it makes your phone unattractive black and white, you miss the colour so much that you do not wish to use it, more than you should. It is a bit extreme but it works. Try it.
• Your iPhone has a million application and each of those is a 'business' that wants you to spend on them. You do not work for them, so turn the notifications off. Review the apps that you do not use frequently - delete them. Let the applications not enjoy, rent-free space in your life through your phone. You do not need them to disrupt you with a rubbish offer notification which you do not need, while you are at work or with your family.
• Be very selective with notification permission, only allow, those that you absolutely need.
• Do not have duplicates, for instance, at a time when you are on your computer there is no need for your phone to buzz with the same notification with which your computer has gone abuzz.
• Set a limit for screen time and stay committed to it.

Remember, our limited time on earth is not to be wasted chasing digital villain on a game of PubG, or crushing candies (I'm not against gaming, but I do stress that it must be enjoyed in moderation), it is meant to be used judiciously to achieve our life goals. Technology is not the enemy here, our indisciplined nature is. The aim is to live a mindful life, to bring intentionality in whatever we do, we should employ technology, we should not let the technology contract us.

A decluttered and minimal digital space is a must for an essentialist lifestyle - when you get there, you'll feel good and in control, I speak from a place of personal experience.

Here is the link of the article on essentialism I spoke about.

link : http://www.lavkush.co.in/essentialism-care-to-try/

Till we meet again, take good care of yourself and stay safe.

Essentialism, care to try?

People have, I’d assume unintentionally, made possessions the yardstick of success. A large part of who you are gets defined, at least, socially, by what you own; consumerism is a powerful force. Trade and commerce control society in ways that we do not often imagine. Patterns of consumptions are studied, newer consumer vulnerabilities are identified and then products and services are conceived to play into that sentiment. Not all of what is being sold is sinister, we aren’t nomads or cave dwellers, we surely need things to comfortably live by but the question is that do we only own stuff that we need or are we surviving with less or have we amassed a lot more than the need? What we ‘need’ is a rather elusive question, people are almost granted to answer it in affirmative when asked on conformance. Let’s agree it is not easy for everyone to concede that they are ‘hoarders’. The place of courage from which such an admission might come is as prized as it is rare. 

Let’s test ourselves, shall we?

Make a list of all your possessions, everything that you own, down to the smallest pin, both inherited or bought - everything! And then map when was last that you actually used the article. Creating a simple table like the below one should help you get a handle over it.

Serial Number	Article	When was it acquired (approx)	Why was it acquired (vaguely)	When was it used last(approx)

Do not intend to finish this in quick 30 minutes because you’ll not be able to. When you start documenting items you will end up listing most frequently used items first and as you exhaust such items your pace will grow weak. At this point take a break, make yourself a nice cup of coffee and start from one corner of the house, or let’s say from one of the rooms and start listing everything that you see. Open drawers, boxes, suitcases, cupboards, everything. It will be an excruciating exercise, you’ll certainly want to give it up. Midway this exercise may seem pointless and a colossal waste of time too but trust me, keep up with it. Do not give up on it. It is ok to finish it in the course of the week or even a fortnight. There is no rush to reach the finish line the same day. While if you can do it there is nothing like it.

After you’ve scanned every corner of the house and listed everything that exists in your home, take a count of total items, and then put a filter on all the items that were used at least once in the last 90 days. Divide the count of items used at least once in the last 90 days with everything that you possess.What does that %age look like?  

20% ? 

30%? 

Or somewhere in the middle? 

Let’s say that if you have scored anything more than 50% then you’re already in a great state of health. Lower the % deeper the hoarding issue. We are good at going with the flow, we give in and try to compensate for emotions with items, the only sad truth is that articles do not compensate for the void, at its best it only distracts us from the core issue temporarily, but that is all that it does. Think of it if what you do not use regularly actually doesn’t add any real value to your life and therefore if it were to not exist your life will not be any less good or bad or any different. 

Clutter is easily the item that you have not used in the last 90 days and yet possess. It not only takes physical space but also attention and much more than that by means of housekeeping. It also tells us that we have not been intentional about acquiring stuff and in the process have created a heap of unused and therefore unneeded items. This is just about you, now think what this might be doing to the ecology and the environment of the entire planet? Imagine if all 7.5 billion of us only possessed items that we actually used, the world would be free of at least 60% of the stuff and therefore the burden. 

Global warming and increased risk of not creating sustainable living would not have been an issue, as grave, as it is today.

Creating a sustainable environment is a result of creating a mindful lifestyle and in that direction minimalism is a great step. I’m not professing for sainthood here, nor I’m asking you to get rid of everything .. it is not recreating ‘the monk who sold his Ferrari’. My pitch is for us to become intentional about what we own, and by extension what is that we let accumulate around us. 

Coming back to the exercise, that we spoke about: 

#1 Try and sort the list in descending order, that is, items that you have not used in the last 90 days should appear first in the list.

#2  Start from the top and go to the middle point of the list.

#3 Pack the least used items in boxes/containers/suitcases and stash them away in a safe & dry place.

Spend the next 6 months on the items that you are left with, that is all that you use on a day to day basis and some more. Remember you do not have to deprive yourself of things that you love and would want to have. In this exercise you are only trying to be a little more mindful of what is around you, that is it. Should a need arise, you can always dip into the storage and get the items that you wished away as part of this exercise. It is an okay thing to do.

The thing to note here is that you will need to keep updating that table that you just made. So that you have a view of what has been happening with your usage and items.. A log of all additions.

When the six month period gets over, take another stock, which is another look at the table.

You would have by then lived 9 months with items that you frequently use and a little more. Think, is it going to be possible for you to give away/sell the rest 50% items that remained locked in the storage for 9 months (barring seasonal clothing/items)? If you can, it will be a great start to a good life, a life without clutter of items that you may not need.

It is not easy but if you can get this straight, you will be on the path of becoming a minimalist, which is a great thing not just, ecologically, environmentally but also economically. The mindful living will teach you the important virtue of abstention; hopefully, you will be able to control your urges to buy and hoard, better.  Remember you still have 50% items that you had available to use, again make a list of items that were least used and try and give up about 10% of those to the storage.

Living with less, creates more of things that matter, like free spaces, lesser economic burden, and more happiness. When you declutter you give yourself an opportunity to wander less and concentrate on things that matter most. I’m not an expert at it, nor have I become, a minimalist completely but I have made some good progress, a few things that I've accomplished are:

1. Simpler wardrobe: I wear similar clothes at least 20 days a month, that is a white shirt and black trousers. I haven’t gotten over my love for shoes so I still have quite a few of them out. Gotta work on it.  
2. Digital decluttering- I was in a mindless upgrade game, I used to hoard every gen item that I could lay my hands on. Multiple items of the same category. Many phones, computers, tablets, headphones, smartwatches, etc. For over a year, I have been able to become singular, one MacBook, last-gen iPhone and apple watch, one pair of headphones, one iPad and that is it. One item each category.
3. Subscription - I used to hold more than 30 annual subscriptions of all kinds of services, from music to application to platforms. I’ve simplified it, to one subscription per service that I like and enjoy. Thereby cutting about 60% of the mindless digital hoarding.
4. E-Reading : I pride myself on being an avid reader, as a result, I would easily buy close to 200 books every year, I have reduced it to less than 50, I try to read more digitally now.

My life has become objectively better not just clutter wise but also on the level of finances. Not having clutter makes me feel more fulfilled, focused and usually relaxed. 

On the work front I used to be obsessed with information, I needed to know everything that was happening around me, every version of it. In the last two years, I have been able to actively reduce useless information hunger and have tried to concentrate on the job at hand, just that, it has improved my productivity.  

I no longer obsessively check and refresh email every now and then, I have a routine for it. I check emails three times on a typical workday. I still end up replying to everyone but now the emails do not interfere with my creative work. I’m able to focus. My phone used to be full of notifications from social media, news, and other applications, I have turned off notifications as a result, I now check on them when I have the time for it.

These small alterations have made me a little more aware of my surroundings and have helped me focus better. 

It is definitely worth a try .. I recommend you give it a shot.

Until we meet again!

Decide like Mahatma!

Defining a decision is easy, let's take the task of putting what is a good decision in a frame and how are they made, shall we?

What separates a good decision from a bad one? Is it the richness of the information that is considered while taking the call? Or the ability to see the future more clearly? Or the purity of intention? Or the morality being on the side of the decision? Outcome sure is the ultimate yardstick with which all decisions must be measured and then the tone of the outcome should then be picked to name the decision one way or the other. But when we have the outcome in front of us, with it, we also often have the benefit of hindsight, which we may, not have when we're in the moment in which decision was being made. And this awareness makes a big difference. Like it is rather naive and one thing for Modi who carries a Mont Blanc pen and yet call himself poor to criticize the policies of Nehru to say that he wasn't as great as Congress makes him out to be but not quite the same thing, leading a nation when it was born and was grappling with a literacy rate of 17% and a life expectancy of 27yrs with over 90% of its population under the poverty line; leading a society which was burning in the communal hatred and lawlessness was being personified on the border like nobodies business. What Modi and his supporters forget that admits all that visionary Nehru not only led the foundation of creating an India that considers education paramount, germinated the seeds of healthcare, made institutions that hold our democracy together a reality: Let's not forget he was a first time PM, with no experience of his own or someone in the country to learn from. He led on principles of plurality, social justice, and inclusiveness and thus we grew into a country what we are today, which allows for a chai walla to grow into a PM.

I pull the Nehru argument to underline the importance of siding with principles when precedents are unclear. Well, most of us are inconsequential and do not even come close to the magnanimity of the job that Nehru did then with a supreme degree of sincerity and what Modi does currently with all his ability, intention & hard-work. Both are great men, part of that 0.5% of humanity; this article is about the balance us, the ordinary people who have a day job, set of finite responsibilities and limited aspirations from lives. The goal is a good indicator of the decision too, someone who wants to make Mars a tourist destination will quite possibly take different kind of decisions than someone who has to worry about how to get more visitors on their website or increase footfall in a certain retail unit of their organization.

Some decisions are more important than the others; to give you a stat, roughly about 73% of the decisions that an average person makes every day is for things that do not matter, not in the least bit. Let me give you a few examples; which suit to wear, what tie, what to eat for the breakfast, which route to take to work, where to order lunch from, which elevator to take, to smile at this person or say hello; these are small decisions and things as silly as these take over 70% of our cognitive bandwidth; yes, our ability to take decision is limited. One of the reasons why many successful people bring defaults in their life is to conserve their cognitive bandwidth for more meaningful things so that they take better decisions at things that matter. Let me give you a few examples, reason why Mark Zuckerberg took the habit of wearing the same combination of cloth every day from Steve jobs is to limit the number of daily decisions that one is required to make.  People argue and harshly criticize Apple products, call their ecosystem a walled garden and yet they are most popular and arguably the most successful brand of all times; because they offer minimal and streamlined experience. No matter which iPhone or Mac you choose, in their default mode they all look and feel the same, there is no other kind of iPhone experience that exists, there is just one kind, and because it is just one, people find it simpler and so it becomes popular to the point of becoming happy loyal cult. On the other side of the wall, there is variety, richness of features, price classes a hell lot to choose from, so much so that there is clutter. A Samsung phone, is feature rich, cheaper, and perhaps better looking too, yet doesn't sell very many, reason, within the line of Samsung phones, there are so many variations that it gets confusing. As a result, despite Apple making fewer kinds of products every year, they sell more. They have been doing it for over two decades now. Lesson: Simplicity shines!

We can, therefore, say to make a better decision we should:

Declutter – Look at only those things that matter (preferably in the long run).

Simplify – Decide to make things simple, what is understood easily is followed better.

You can use the above two in a situation that you control but there are also going to be setups that you do not own completely, like situations where your interests overlap with others or are in conflict, an environment that demands you to open yourself up to the complexity of the world. You must have a tool kit for that too. The thing that we said about hindsight earlier in this article must be usefully reiterated here. You will not always know for sure, there will also be situations where you are pressed against time limiting your ability to spend time on learning intricate details, the information at your disposal itself could be wrong, you may have your own strong opinions and biases for or against a certain matter. The unknown and the unclear will dwarf your courage, one argument is to say let's take the risk and see and another is to say, why rock stable steady boat? Both viewpoints have merit. Ours is a huge world, one in which both academic success like Dr. Tharoor and semi-literate like Mayawati get to taste success and gain prominence. College dropouts like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs & Mark Zuckerberg create magic just as successfully as people like Neil Degrasse Tyson, George Smith, William Nordhaus, Raghu Ram Rajan who not only did brilliantly in their schools and colleges but also went to become popular educators and inventors. You have to decide what works for you!

When dealing with the unknown, the unpleasant and the unclear: data and gut, will be of little use. Let me give you an example, not too long ago in history, our nation was reeling under the brutal, most inhuman and immoral rule of the British empire. 200 years of extortion, degradation, depredation, loot, and plundering had left the country, weak, ill, demotivated and decapitated of strength. Everyone knew that driving British out was the solution not many knew which of the various methods known to mankind should be applied and in what precise force. The problem was not just knowing how, but getting mass support for it, so that the oppressor is forced to notice and then pays heed. The challenge was of finding a method that required resources which could be fed with the scarce reserves that Indians had then, communicating it to the masses effectively and then winning them over to the idea for life; so that the movement gets critical mass and then keeps on growing steadily as time progressed. A huge amount of respect for everyone who tried their own methods .. irrespective of the success that they met with. That is when our country got the gift of Gandhi, the son of the soil had returned completing his education from the very west he was about to take on most ferociously and having tasted failure in his career as a barrister in South Africa. He like everyone else knew what the problem was but did not for sure knew the way out. Of course, contemporary events unfolding in the rest of the world did come handy and Bapu used them smartly to sharpen his attack. But then when he started, he was looking into the unknown which was unclear and scary.

In our own lives we often face situations which are excruciatingly difficult, mind-numbingly taxing, shitlessly scary and dangerously deafening: none of us are freedom fighters, our causes are also not as meaningful or historic but in the small personal world that we live in sometimes things do get intense, harsh and complicated; there we could use lessons from the principle that Mahatma applied to pick up his weapons; He choose truth and non-violence, as all of us know. What happened thereafter is a pleasant history.

Father of our nation, decided to act in accordance with his value systems, principles that he held dear to fight the mighty challenge and came out victorious. He had the skill, he could have chosen to remain in the confine of the comfort that his western education and the degree in the bar gave him. He could have led a luxurious life with grandeurs of wealth and safety. But he elected, instead to, remain half nacked for the second half of his life, got beaten, jailed, humiliated and even mocked but because he was sincere, consistent, truthful and honest he pursued what he thought was right and emerged as a winner.

If he picked the simpler path he would have lived longer and better life remaining: Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi but he wasn't meant for the ordinary; he live the tough life, made uncomfortable moves, which many wise men then called foolish choices but in the process, he became Bapu, the Mahatma, father of a nation as glorious as ours. He earned a place in the history of mankind forever.

We can, therefore, say to make better decisions in strange unknown circumstances, we could look at.

Principle and Values – Hold your principles and your values dear and remain consistent with it.

Tough is cool – Should situation get nasty do not shy away from taking the tough call.

With that I shall end this, you have a lovely Sunday, ahead!

For what its worth!

One thing leads to another and that is how life happens, at times isolated events may seem connected in weird ways and there are also moments when even connected and continuous events appear definitely and disturbingly unrelated. They say the mind is a mystery, at the risk of sounding dramatic, allow me to add, what poets like the most to the equation, 'the heart' to make matters a little more interesting, though strictly scientifically speaking even emotions what is often referred to as related to the heart emerges from the mind so it’s actually not a conflict between the mind and the heart but potentially a disagreement between two arguments generated by the same brain. Lesser the stake simpler the choice, isn’t it?

We know that the ask of 4 runs from one ball, the last delivery of the match is always tougher than having to score 4 in an entire over: you get the point, I assume.

Everything expires, what is relevant today will with utmost certainty not be so tomorrow, no matter how important or meaningful is the article today. So, what is it all about then? Really two things:

1)    To hold on to it

2)    Or to let it go.

Art of living in many ways is about the art of leaving, leaving with peace without regret or remorse. All of us have had to part ways with things that we once held close and dear. And if we were to find a near accurate definition of who we are I think a sum total of how we dealt with all the losses we have had to absorb in our life, stacked one above the other, is the most appropriate one. Hindu mythology, offers getting rid of emotions as the first step towards, uniting with the higher power. It says that inner peace is built on the foundation free of desires and related feelings. I find this philosophy logical but impractical in so many ways. Human emotions are an integral part of being human, one can’t possibly eliminate ‘em and yet remain the same. Leaving things, getting separated from them, losing them are bound to have an impact; I think the key really lies in our ability to deal with them in ways, most would categorize as mature and if not rational, alone. Take a walk in the ward of the hospital that houses terminal patients .. meet with those, who wrestle with the idea of dying with so much unfulfilled .. who watch their near and dear once die every second of every minute of the misery that they live for real from all kinds of illness ranging from organ failures to undiagnosed conditions pointing towards imminent end. You’ll hear the noise of silence .. in the empty corridors you’ll see dreams and desires take on the reality in a bare hands showdown. Every story is unique .. every person is special and yet it will all end in similar fashion, the heart with stop pumping and in matters of minutes, the body will turn cold, each organ surrendering to fate irreversibly. That bed will soon get a new name, a new story .. and the struggle will begin over again.

I’ve recently started working with (on alternate Sundays) patients who are due for kidney transplant, medical science has advanced, success rates have improved, drugs have gotten better with time and so has been the experience of medical practitioners; what has remained unchanged is the fear that precedes the proceedings, the economic burden that the ailments brings with itself and the whole experience of the people who go through the trauma. Because I’ve had a successful life after the procedure, there are people who believe that I would be able to help those due prepare better. I do not know for sure if I’m the right example but what I know is that sharing helps, and so I do. In this engagement, I do not have to be anything other than an empathic listener sharing with them how correct they are in feeling the way they do and how closely we are related, therefore .. my present can be their future if they hold on to it.

This advice of ‘holding on’ in many ways is ‘giving up’; there is conflict in the message but not in the outcome, not in the least bit. It is one solid rock of hope that I try to provide them with, not to say that, they are entirely hopeless before our interaction and that I bring magic to the moment, but I do emphasize on the goodness of holding on. My past gives me authenticity, they take my word for it and I do not feel better doing anything else. There is a very high possibility that I might not meet these people in person ever ... yet, I feel I carry those stories with me. Their tales complete my narrative in unthinkable ways. In their giving up is my holding on; together we make it work.

Being on death row is an extreme example and also a rare one... but lesser things in life, most ordinary events are not very different in its core construct – there is no ‘rule’, the code hasn’t been cracked yet .. no one knows for sure how will the wind blow, will it be just tight to let the kite drift or will it be strong enough to blow everything that comes in its way. What we do know however is that we will have to hold on to whatever is important to us no matter what. We shouldn’t lose without fighting.

Not letting go of things is not the same as holding on to them. Conscious choice is required to be made and then when the time comes, one should gather the courage to let go of things. In these talk sessions that I have with these unfortunate souls, I try not to give them false hope .. I make it a  point to bring it up to them the possibilities of everything that could go wrong, horribly wrong. Being hopeful and being delusional is not the same thing, facts make all the difference. To make people believe in the possibility of good we must make them aware of all that is not good; because holding on is just as important as giving up. In the process what we do is making them aware of what is it they must hold on to and what is it they must let go, for what it is worth.

You have a good Sunday, see you in the next week!