MY OTHER CONFESSIONS
Nowadays nobody asks and cares for the birds and the people that are caged but people keep asking for and remembering those who have gone and flown away. We all are like the caged birds and no one cares or wants to know the real pain and sorrow that we endure. One way to get out of this cage is to build and have faith in ourselves and conduct our daily prayers and meditate regularly to liberate ourselves.
I found it hard to get out of the confusion of doing the right things and stop doing the wrong things. Whenever I said and did the right things in life I found that nobody really cared to recollect or remember those words or actions but whenever I said any wrong things or did any errors or did any wrong work, nobody forgot them.
WHAT IS IN THE NAME?
There are many names in this world that stand out and are well known to us however, the name that makes all of us stand up and start thinking is the name of the Supreme Being who created us and granted us this short life. Our God Almighty has been given many names by people of different groups but they all refer to one Being who we call when we are in need and He answers all our prayers with kindness and grace. In our times of greatest joy, our immediate needs, the deepest sorrows and our unbearable pains the name we all cling to is that of the Lord who created us.
One thing is for certain that He will never abandon us and His love for us will never fail. So why should we at times get away from Him and stop loving Him as well our people as we should as human beings. All these should happen because in every one of us dwells God. The answer lies within us. Let us change the way we see and perceive the world and the people around us then the entire vision will change for the better and all the names will bring love, peace and kindness for us to co-exist and inter-relate well.
Then and then only we all will stop dividing ourselves into different groups and learn to respect each way of life much better in order to co-exist and inter relate without any rancor and any discrimination. There will then be one way of life that will be known as the human life. I confess that at times I have fallen victim to allowing myself to believing in this division and disunity.
TIME AND SPOKEN WORDS
It is generally believed that time is the greatest healer of all sorrows and pains but the truth remains that we gradually learn to live with these situations to adjust ourselves and move on with our life. Whereas unkind and nasty words once spoken by people hurt us most as the act of remaining silent when there is need for good and kind words becomes unbearable at times and kills us.
It is not necessary that those who question our ways, our use of time, actions and words to reprimand us or scold us for our errors and rebuke our behavior, and become angry with us because I believe that such rights and acts of discipline and control are bestowed with those who really adore us and care about us. I confess that I was disciplined by my elders for not using my time well and I also constantly alerted my loved ones for abusing their time and that is the reason why my family members know how to manage their time well.
It has never been a wiser move or action to ever use our time and words carelessly because both these are vital needs of our life and they neither come back nor grant us another opportunity. So I gradually learnt not to wait to do all my tasks and needed deeds that had to be done for my advantage on time because I realized that time would never stand still for me while I procrastinated. So I confess that whether I slept, was awake or roamed or went on a ride somewhere, the time I had at my disposal would still fly at its normal speed and pace and would never pause for me. The ultimate consequences of this aspect of good time management were our peaceful living, our reasonable prosperity and our adequate progress.
THEY ARE NEVER MEANT TO STAY
I used to believe that the entire garden of my life belonged to me alone but after the few storms it became clear that others too had rights to share my garden. So I now believe in sharing and caring to enable me to enjoy life better. Now I keep moving on my chosen path of life in the hope that I will become an expert walker, find my new routes or become a good traveller to enjoy my living even better in the gardens of my family life.
In my frequent movements as a community servant, while I was enjoying my work assignments and family life and was happily doing my daily tasks, the whole world seemed to be with me but when I sustained some hardship, pain and sorrow to face some bad days I came to know that my well wishers began disappearing like the tears from the eyes. Then I realized that as it was normal for the tears to fall off the eyes and they are never meant to stay, so do some people during our bad days.
This realization assisted me to lead a better life, I confess.
MY GIFT TO EVERYONE ON MY 80TH BIRTHDAY
Today is my birthday. Like many other simple people I am fortunate to celebrate one birthday on the actual day I was born and the other which is my official birthday. I turned 80 on 27th December last year and had a quiet celebration. I have enjoyed that milestone and exciting moment at home doing my prayers and other normal peaceful activities. In the last eighty years I achieved a lot of success and enjoyed many pleasant moments of my life but there were days when like other normal human beings, I too faced some pain, sorrow and hardship and came to know that these moments have their own style and conduct because they only come to and love those people who have the nerve, strength and courage to endure, tolerate, forebear them passionately. I confess that I endured.
During these past long years of my living I have learnt to count my days by my proactive stance, my smiles and many faithful friends. Some fears, tears and jeers came along the way but what gave me a lot of cheers, effective gears and successful years was my belief to count my age by friends, not years. I did not take age as just a number value because I felt the higher the age, the higher became my value. God Almighty has granted me the greatest gift of human life and it was my duty and responsibility to use my life well. Today the best gift I could give the rest of the world is to let them know that we should offer our women folks the best respect and honour that they rightfully deserve as our mothers, wives, sisters, daughters and all other similar relations. I confess that this creed is not properly followed by many people unfortunately.
Today was Sunday. This beautiful Sunday morning when I went on my social media page I collected a lot of old memories that made me smile and brought some emotional effect as well. These notes, comments, likes, postings and photos have nudged me towards more prayers and gratitude and made me appreciate everything a little more and better in life. I have never made friends by just looking at the faces of people but gradually gathered what was inside their heart and mind. I always believed that a friend in need is a friend indeed. It is a fact of life that when we have a lot and are full of affluence we sometimes forget who we are but when we haven’t got much then the whole world gradually forgets us. That is the time when our faithful friends rise up to the occasion.
GOOD RELATIONSHIPS
I admit that I am not a rich person but whoever has become my faithful friend I tried my best to minimize their hardship and managed to buy, share and minimize some of their worries, pains and sorrows. I found out the hard way in life that it takes a lot of effort to make our visions and dreams come true. But when we do, it feels great excitement to reach the limit of our achievements, It takes years to build worthwhile life and live well but I confess that our whole life is not enough to maintain and appreciate good and sincere relationship be it of our family members or friends.
Today was my busy day and when I came home to rest in the evening I found that good relationships were vital to live well and enjoy life. Anger and ego are the greatest enemies to sustain and manage all our relationships well. To spoil the existence of harmony in our relationship these two human demerits and misconducts namely our anger and ego, are enough to ruin our life.
A few days ago one of my dear friends had asked me a question. Ram, you have been sharing a lot of your views and opinions as an amateur author with people but what do you get in return for this? I stopped to think a little and with a smile on my face I replied that to give freely and to take whatever is offered to you, is a simple understanding or business in life. If we give and do not expect any rewards or do not want anything back then that becomes our best practice and strengthens our relationship as well as our creed. There are variety of arts and talents for us in this world and the best talent is to love our family members and make them happy by teaching them to give the needy whatever we can and receive or expect nothing in return. I confess that I have tried my best to fit into this creed.
WHAT IS BEAUTY
I have felt in my whole life that there is beauty in everything but it is sad that everyone is unable to test or see that beauty. That is why whenever I see a beautiful thing, I try to test it properly so that even some splashes of that beauty will make me happy and give me a feeling of happiness, peace and tranquility. Now whenever I am in good mood every morning of my life keeps bringing many new conditions and giving me many tips through which I am able to get many golden experiences every evening of my life.
Through these experiences, my whole life continues to be happy and I keep seeing myself climbing the stairs of success. I was so sure that my unwavering determination and faith in God continued to grow and I live happily. Difficulties kept coming in my life, saying that difficulties only come on the part of those who have the power and skill to solve all those problems in the best way and do the right thing. I also used to tell all my difficulties clearly that I have the courage to solve all my problems correctly and I used to solve those problems firmly.
I know that one day my heart will take me to my ultimate destination and I will be peacefully dwelling with my beloved, my Creator, my Protector and my Destroyer. He will get rid of all the pains, sorrows and worries and I will reach my Nirvana when He finds the perfect cure for me. My home has been where my heart and soul kept smiling, laughing, playing, praying and singing without any shyness and shame and all my tears kept drying at their own pace. That is beauty for me.
HAPPY LIVING
I made sure that all the good people that lived with me stayed happy and we were able to make their lives better with a little assistance from each other. In my happy living with my loved ones I found that there is within all of us a healthy potential for truth, beauty and goodness beyond our imagination. Accepting, preaching and practicing these great human qualities to seek no rewards for anyone except making them well groomed individuals is in my belief what is known as a happy living.
These qualities of humanity make people listen well without judgment and love unconditionally. I would soon make my departure for peaceful and better living in heaven but a voice that will still ring in the ears of people who cared for me will miss the touch of that loving hands and arms that have vanished and the sound of that helpful voice is still going. I am leaving a lot of my thoughts as a legacy for my present and future generations to ponder when they come to those moments in which they feel completely alone because as I have found in my life time, patience has been my good companion of wisdom.
I know that a lot of what bothers us that too will vanish with the time and all the sadness that makes us despondent will gradually fly away on the wings of time that waits for no one. One thing I always remembered in spending my life as a confident individual was to ask whatever question we have in our mind and an appropriate answer shall always be given to make the heart and soul ring and sing with joy. We must keep moving with confidence and never stop our enquiries and discoveries.
In my family life of many years I am grateful that I was able to learn a lot from the silence around me, from the talkative people with me, by being tolerant and from the intolerant. Of course, whatever kindness I possessed came from being unkind and I confess that I never failed to be grateful to all these gurus that made me what I am today. I do not cry anymore because a lot of hardships have been taken away by my saviour and now I keep smiling because many things have happened in my favour. I thank my family members, friends and God Almighty for making my life and living a much better and worthy experience.
INDIVIDUALITY
My ancestors often gave me another obvious knowledge to say that I was unique. They made me believe that since everybody is an individual nobody can be you, so definitely you are unique. I was convinced that no one can tell me how to use my time because that was mine alone as was my life my own, so I needed to proceed confidently to mould it and make it the way I wanted. Therefore, I can now confess that all my life I kept hoping for the best for me so that I could live my life well and have all those necessary things that I needed for comfortable living.
When I leave this world I want to be content that I have done my duties and responsibilities well as a father, as a friend and as a good human being and I made people in my life happy. Of course, this would be nice but my soul will be more complete because I was able to lead a life that made me happy and content as well.
I never wanted to hang on to every word other people said because I knew that could have made me feel like I was living my life with the brakes on. The objective of being happy and free during my life made me to move forward without approval from others and finally I was able to take charge of my life and accelerate forward.
Sooner than later I found out that it was not possible to please everyone every time because I realized that different people saw the world in different ways. I knew that surrounding me with only people pleasers who went along with everything I said or did will not solve my problems, as it created an unrealistic view of the world I was living in.
In the end I came across some people that would try and change the way I did things but I wanted to be genuine and true to let them know who I was, so that I could live my life based on my values and what I believed was important for me. I was accepted as I was and kept moving forward.
I confess that to grow and change in a positive way I needed to learn to truly respect what I liked and not worry about what other people thought. This was not an easy process so I had to work at it every day. I had to re-programme a lot of my behaviour and made sure that I was not slipping back into old habits.
I had to start to be conscious about what I did and often looked back for reasons as to why I did things in a certain way. The reward was a completely new life and attitude. It was no magic pill because I had to work on myself and gradually detached myself from many other routine. For me it was tough but it was worth it. Gradually but slowly it all became clear to me that I needed to make a change if I ever wanted to be happy.
LOOKING FOR ANSWERS IN OUR QUESTIONS
I still clearly remember the message of one of my favourite teachers, Pundit Rohan Prasad who said that your words, actions, thoughts, character and heart have strong wings so always speak, do, think, conduct yourself well and feel good in life and conduct yourself like the pretty flowers and turn your face to the sun for good living. Those of my readers who have read the contributions of my nanny Radhika would have found out that she always wanted me to look for the answers inside my questions by putting my ears down close to my soul and listen hard enough until I was able to get what I was searching for.
This skill made me act mindfully, accept good things with sincere belief and hope entirely, move forward strongly, think well and clearly, speak confidently and articulately, live simply with pleasure and love all and enjoy whatever that you have been given. Very early in life I was told to take decisive action when there was a mountain of problems in my way. I was told that I had a few options such as relying on my own strength and trust the actions that I had to take to overcome my difficulties lying in front of me.
The second way to overcome all hardships was to develop a firm trust in the power of the Supreme Being. Only He has the power to level the mountain or give me the needed idea, strength and endurance to climb over it. There may be a bit of delay but never any darker moments if we gained and kept our patience, perspective and peace of mind. This is how my life and confident living gave me a lesson to be happy and do not worry but have faith and hopeful expectations in all my words, actions, thoughts, character and habits. I knew that my good and positive attitude will enable everyone to be kind to me, so I always tried to love my people and not care so much about their odd habits that did not conform to my way of life. Thus I developed a win-win situation for myself and my family.
CHOICES
I often said that I was always made aware that I will face pain, suffering, and hardship and even had to make some hard choices in my life however, my positive attitude convinced me that I cannot let the heavy weight of all these adversities choke and block the joy and success out of my life. No matter what came in my life I had to find the things that I liked and admired most and then I was always ready to run to get them. I realized and began to believe that anything that did not harm or completely kill me made me even stronger.
Of course, I do confess that there were times when these things made me sad and somewhat angry but I quickly learnt to overcome these by my habit of self-discipline. So gradually all my strengths in life came from all those good habits, my family and faithful friends as well as my belief in my perseverance, tenacity and my intention of continued hard work. These were some of my moments and things in life that kept me living as a whole person and hold on to everything when I faced my bad and sad moments that tried to break me and stop me from progress, prosperity and living a peaceful life.
Therefore, with every choice I made in life I was determined to create my future life. I tried my best to be happy and keep my family happy because to be happy in life was my own choice despite the truism that there was going to be a few stresses and some strife in my life. One thing that was my final goal was whether to let these affect me or not. I managed to succeed sufficiently to lead a fairly reasonable living. Thank God.
So I confess that living my life was always simple however, when I made my choices I was determined not to look back but have the courage of my conviction to see that what I decided was worthy of my living. Very early in my adulthood I had learnt to live my life with real purpose and began focusing on all my blessings and never on any of my misfortunes. This meant that I had to focus on my strengths and never on any of the weaknesses and learnt fast to be myself and do not wait for the approval of others.
However, most importantly, I confess that I had to develop a positive and humble mindset no matter what situation I was in. Consequently, I had to quickly learn to count on my will to live, my blessings and my strengths rather than any of my problems. Gradually I came to realize how beautiful my life was truly becoming. Then as the consequence of these positive stances I had to trust people who could see these things in me:
My life then gradually became reasonable as a result of all the good choices I made. If I did not like any aspect of my life I knew that it was time to make better choices because in my life it was all about choices I made and how all the direction of my life came down to whatever I managed to choose.
IMPORTANT CHOICES
I was often told that life was too short to waste any amount of my time on wondering what other people thought about me because in the first place, if they had better things going in their own lives they certainly would not have time to sit around and talk about me. What gradually became important to me were not the opinions of others on me but what was important to me as my opinion of myself.
If someone came into my life and had a positive impact on me but for some reason they could not stay for long I had to be thankful that my paths crossed with such helpful people and they somehow made me happy even if it was just for a short while. Life has been full of changes and challenges for me and some wise people really did come and then went away. I believed that just because a few people came and then left, it did not mean that I should have forgotten about all others who were still standing by my side. I continued to honour and appreciate whatever I had and kept smiling and enjoying about all those good memories. When I learnt to quit believing in the lies that were dished out to me, I began to search for the truth. For me often the hardest thing and the right thing were the same.
The last eighty years my life have taught me many things and one of the best lessons I learnt was to make peace with my past happenings so that none of them would ever affect my present living. Secondly, whatever others thought of me has never been any of my business. Thirdly, I found that time was my healer of everything but I had to learn to give those things enough time. For my next learning, I had stopped to compare my life and living to others and then never judged others because I could not properly assess their life and had no idea what their journey was all about.
Then I found out that it was alright not to know and have all the answers in life because when we need them they would come to us as per our expectation. Of course, I knew that I was totally in charge of my happiness and progress in life. Then, I had to keep moving and smiling because my problems were a lot smaller and manageable than the rest of the world and I accepted that the only people who deserved to be in my life were the ones who treated me with love, kindness and respect.
Thus I realized that it was all about choice because I could choose to turn all my regrets into my wise lessons that would ultimately change my life. So now I always have the choice to be happy and have learnt to fully understand and appreciate the purpose of all the bumps in the roads of this life and grow from them to always stay positive.
Like the rest of the people around me I had many choices in life. I could sit back and just watch things happen or I could get up and make things happen for the benefit of my family and myself. However, I did not ever want to just relax and wonder at all the things that happened around me. I had to become proactive and take all the necessary actions for the benefit of my family and myself.
I had to focus on three C’s namely my choices that I was going to make in life and then I had to take my chances if I wanted anything to change for our betterment. However, in doing all these and making my choices I could never give up or give in but I was determined to give them my all. I always remembered that falling down was part of life but picking myself up was part of my real living. Of course, when something odd or unexpected happened,
I also had some specific choices to either let me define my choices or even strengthen my choices and myself but never let these ever destroy me or my intentions. The hard thing for me was not so much making my decisions but it was thinking about the results of what I had decided. I knew that nothing was going to change in my life if I did not do things a little different from what I had been doing. I was told to close those doors of my life that no longer were leading me somewhere that was beneficial and rewarding for me not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance but they were not helpful for my life.
MY NORMAL MORNINGS
This is a normal Friday morning for me and like every other mornings I had my choices to continue to sleep with my dreams or wake up and chase my dreams to make them my reality. I spent my childhood in a remote village in Fiji as a successful farmer’s son, my adolescence with good friends and colleagues in school and my adulthood as a teacher in the community and found out that success was not any accident for me because all my success was actually my own choice that I made my habit that was compatible with my vision and dreams of tomorrow. Every morning when I woke up and found that I was alive and kicking I thanked God and asked Him for his blessings and continued guidance.
I knew for certain that one day my life was going to end so there was not much to worry about but to go on living to make the best of this short life on this earth. No matter what else happened in my life, I had two clear options to either handle all things well and live a happy life or handle them poorly and be miserable. I chose to live well and an enjoyable family life. I never wanted to accumulate wealth and properties because I knew that they could become one of the reasons for my unnecessary worries, pains and sufferings.
In any such moments I knew from my readings that there were two more clear options available for me: to step forward with greater determination into my future growth and development or to step back into safety and brood all my life. I chose to step forward and keep moving to meet reasonable people and successful moments almost all my life. I was content with whatever I could get and gain in life. I had a few difficult moments but I knew how to manage my living.
CREATING AND RECREATING
During my early formal and informal learning I was told by my ancestors and my teachers that I could rise up from anything or any place by completely creating and recreating myself and my life. So I believed that nothing in my life was going to remain permanent but would change if I made the right choices. I was not stuck at one location and mobility was inevitable. Therefore I began to think differently from my