THE SOURCE OF WATER RUNS DEEP

 

“Sometimes, truths are what we run from;

sometimes, they are what we seek.”

R. D. Ronald

 

“Look at me when I teach; your eyes listen more than your ears.” Invariably, I say this to my young students, a dozen times, every day. From my teaching experience of nearly five decades (I started teaching when I was about 17… and, this month, I will be 67!), I have come to realize this: We fully ‘listen’ when our ears and eyes both pay attention. In fact, eyes do a better job…

But, then, I have realized this, too… The ears may hear and eyes may see, but true listening takes place only when our hearts are open, only when we listen from our hearts…

So, fifty years or hundred years – I wonder, how many of my students have really ‘learnt’, really paid attention to my teaching…

And, that applies to me as well - to their teacher…

For fifty long years, have I taught those thousands of young kids with my full attention… with the clean intention to help them, guide them, empower them, motivate them… Or, have I just tried to do a ‘job’, so that I feel secure, both financially and emotionally. Is it my deep insecurity about myself that’s been driving me to keep doing what I have been doing – every day, every year, over and over again?

I know, that this kind of question – call it introspection – can be very unsettling. “Why on earth a teacher has to ask, after five decades of teaching: ‘Have I been really teaching, or just dealing with my insecurities’?”

I do not know about others… But, I get into this reflective mode, time and time again: “Why am I doing this, so repeatedly?” “What will I be if I stop doing it?”… Like, my teaching of academic subjects… Or, blogging about these life-related issues… Or, publishing books year after year (though not for sale)…

Yes, in the thick of this frantic ‘busy-ness’, my heart, sometimes, tells me: “Buddy, take a pause… take a long, deep breath… look outside the window … listen to the silence, both outside and inside… Can you feel the insecurity? If you do, feel it fully till it passes…”

When insecurities pass, it’s a very liberating feeling. You feel truly authentic… secure in what you are… There is no need to prove someone, something… You feel the quiet space from where the need to do what you want to do pops up…

It’s been more than three months since I last posted my Blog… Yes, during these three months I was ‘frantically busy’ with doing what I had been doing every year – conducting the long summer programme for young kids on personality development, working on books (this time two of them)… working towards the ‘grand finale’ on the certification day etc. Yes, while all these things gave me a ‘high’, deep inside, the question kept haunting me: “Why all this? Still trying to prove someone, something?”

During this period, when I wasn’t visible here on this site, many of my well-wishers have checked, if all was well at my end… Many have been requesting me to keep writing…

Last afternoon, a very old student of mine, now the father of a teenaged girl, made this earnest plea: “Sir, tomorrow is Guru Purnima… Let the river flow again… I am parching!”

Well dear, I, too, am… The river won’t dry up, let me promise you. The source of the water runs deep… much deeper than the seemingly dried riverbed…

But, then, it’s good for the river to experience this dryness, time to time, and get in touch with the ‘source within’… That is good for everyone – those who long to drink the water, or sail through it, or just sit by the sides and bring their hearts to silence…

These wise words of Soren Kierkegaard are for all of us – the rivers and revelers:

“Life can be only understood backwards;

But, it has to be lived forwards.”

May the river, now, flow forwards…

 

GERALD D’CUNHA’’

Pic’s: Pixabay

Video: AGT/TALENTKINGHD