SLOW DOWN... LIFE IS CROSSING THE ROAD

“Slow down... Life is crossing the road.”
― Debasish Mridha

Right now, my body, mind and heart – all three yearn to rest. “Enough of aggression,” I hear them remind me, “Slow down… Keep your tools down… Just yield.”

Almost four to five hours in the morning, today, I found myself in an aggressive mode – aggressive in the sense: I was result oriented, my words were piercing, patience was on the edge… and I could feel I was getting the work done from my students. Yes, there was that immediate sense of achievement…

But, when it was all over, I could also feel the vacuum… the energy was all depleted… all my students gone and I was left alone, here, to wonder: If there was another way of going about it… A way where my energy would be conserved, words not as pricing as they were and patience not as edgy as it was…

So, now, when I have dropped my tools and aggression and able to reflect, yes, I do feel, that there certainly was another way of going about my work….

But, I see my heart smiling… “Hey, was it not because of your ‘speed and aggression’ that you now value this state of yielding? How could you know what aggression and speed did had you not been in the fast lane?”

So, no regrets for being in a hurry. For, I am not glorifying hurry… I am only saying, without my speed, hurry and aggression, I would not have longed to be contemplative… I would not have valued the slowness and solitude.

I don’t think, Life can be sustained only in the slow lane. Yin and Yang – call it male-female, negative-positive, dark-bright, fire-water, whatever – are opposite forces; but, they are actually complementary, interconnected and interdependent in the natural world. Therefore, I believe, we need not worry too much about the fall out of our speed and aggression, so long as we are able to reach the other hemisphere – slowness and solitude.

I had been a massive fan of Muhammad Ali. I saw the lightening speed of his glorious boxing-days dissolving into a painfully slow state, later in his life… Nature did it. “I am the Greatest” dissolved into “Allah O Akbar”… God is the Greatest! All his life, Ali took stupendous pride in being the fastest and the deadliest… only to realize, as Parkinson took a toll on his body and mind, that every step he took, every feather he lifted, every breath he inhaled… yes, needed the mercy of Allah…

So, like Ali, even if I do not wish to yield, the Nature does it on its own…

There is a time to slow down… Yield!

Everything around me has the mystical two sides… The sky explodes and the sky shies away… The Sun burns and the Sun calms down… The Moon blossoms into full glory and the Moon goes into hiding… The waves of the ocean come crashing mercilessly and then they go back as if they are powerless… The wind blows and the wind bows… The eagles fly and then they go to rest… The breath comes in and the breath goes out… The Lilies bloom and then they shrink… Even the lovers draw apart after their intimacy… And, yes, no one would have known what heaven meant if hell was not here… Without devils, angels would have never assumed their place in heaven…

Therefore, drink slowly, eat slowly, walk slowly, talk slowly, do everything slowly… But, not before you become strikingly alive to the speed, hurry and aggression within your body, mind and soul. The road to heaven is always through ‘temptations and sins’… Should our worldly imperfection be branded so!

Mike Vance said, “Slowing down is, sometimes, the best way to speed up.”   May I dare to say, “Speeding up is, sometimes, the best way to slow down”? 

GERALD D’CUNHA

Pic.:Kamal Kishore Rikhari