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WE LIVED THE LIFE WE LOVED AND LOVED THE LIFE WE LIVED
Over the years I have been writing a few essays on various aspects of life and living and today when I am sitting alone in my study with a glass of red wine, my laptop and my wife then my fingers began taping the keyboard to express some of my feelings on various human attributes. A thought came to me that anger is definitely the most dangerous attribute possessed by humans. I have actually seen people getting ugly in anger and doing things to harm themselves that affect the rest of their lives in a very bad way. Therefore, we resolved to relinquish everything that brings anger into our life and treasure what makes us love the life we love and live the life we love.
I know that every one of us gets angry and I do know some of the factors that contribute towards the extent of anger in one and I also have some ideas about how it can be controlled. My thoughts and words might help some of my readers to change their attitude and conduct to lead a happy family life.
It is often said that if we want to know the true nature of people, we must check how they behave when they are angry. Of course, well-behaved, affable, polite and courteous people become the eye candy for everyone in no time. In fact this is not a difficult conduct for any human being who has been raised in a loving family.
I have heard of many ways how we can control sudden anger. One of which includes counting backwards from 1 to 10 and taking long breaths. Another method says that if you are standing then sit down and if you are sitting down and you get angry then you should lay down somewhere. Doing these activities can lessen our anger. Of course, I found that drinking cold water helped me considerably during my angry moments sometimes. Definitely self-control is the key to controlling anger actually, no matter through what ways you get it.
I do not want my readers to assume that I too have anger problems. I used to get angry like others but very rarely and my anger came and remained with me for a very short period of time usually for 5 to 10 seconds and then disappeared. I guess my God gifted attitude of silence is golden is the real reason behind this.
May be that was why people, especially my students and my children, have never got scared of me. This often meant that they would say whatever they liked to me; even if it hurt me I remained calm. I do not want to praise my own self because if I did I would look like a fool then. I have always been satisfied with my anger issues as they were minor and controllable. However, I cannot say that I will remain like that in the future or become a screaming furious personality. During my teaching and training days I loved to hear about the anger problems of people and how they were able to deal with them.
I was planning to write poetry or fiction for some personal challenge today and here I am, sitting, staring at my laptop screen with my vision getting blurred every few seconds. I wipe my eyes with my already damp hands and start staring at the screen again. I feel lonely and have an urge to hug my laptop right now or kiss it. And I feel an urge to go out for a walk in the woods with my laptop and never come back to my real world. That is my way of dealing with anger.
Of course, my social media acts as my point of rescue. I have a few selected friends who keep in touch with me regularly. They are my best friends, my brothers and sisters who keep liking things and commenting on the home page. I am happy here and with the help of this little box, a machine I am able to interact well. A few years ago I never knew that these types of machines would be understanding feelings more than humans, someday. Yet today we have these technological advancement that helps humanity progress socially, mentally and academically assisting us to keep our cool when we are in need of it.
I know if I would cry right now, there would be someone sitting right beside their computer ready to embrace me with their likes, comments and loving words. I know if I would share my darkest feelings and the strangest emotions there would be people understanding these without judging me. In fact I have posted so many feelings of mine every now and then and have had very positive and supporting comments from my friends.
There were many unknown people who had no idea who I was and where I belonged, what my country, cast and religion were and yet they communicated with me on my Google Drive and at my free-ebooks.net websites. People who just knew that there was some soul out there, craving for their sympathetic or other supportive words. Craving for the love that real world failed to give it; craving for the care that everyone wants and likes but doesn’t get it. Craving for someone who could listen, just listen to what it had to say and to listen to the rants of a restless soul. That is another way to conquer anger when we manage to keep in contact.
The time I spent worrying and brooding about life while lying in the dark has not helped so I began creating things using words, words and words and I have been doing this for over 20 years, I mean expressing myself to let out the emotions that otherwise would have remained tight on the chest. In the process I have created over fifty books and presentations that are posted on the web. Now my fingers dance on the keyboard of this very old model desktop and laptop and ‘words’ come out along with the joy inside me as well as some silent tears. My anger flows out and happiness comes to reign all over me.
In the last few years I have created and published novels, short stories, poems and essays that became my over fifty readable publications online for readers to see, read and appreciate or review them freely. When over a few million readers have read, downloaded or commented on these I get the pleasure and forget that money received by selling them would have made me a millionaire. After this essay that would be my last I think it is time to give my fingers, my laptop and my brain some rest.
No matter how hopeless and depressed my real life has been, my virtual life was awesome. I got to understand life, my reasons for happiness and the care I dished out to everyone in my life as well as the care I received from my loved ones. The more I understood things the better by attitude became and my anger began to disappear and I proceeded to reach divinity in my own ways. God became my saviour and I His humble disciple.
There are many strange words which do not exist in my real life dictionary. In this life, I am not a depressed bipolar soul because I am the king of my world. I walk, work, exist and live here with pride and that is my real life and nobody can snatch that away from me. This is my world, my live and living style. All the people here are my family, relatives, colleagues or friends. My beloved online community is the best thing I have had because they made me happy by their comments and downloads of my publications and gave me an attitude of joy away from any form of anger. I am truly grateful for everything this virtual world has offered me.
Any amount of words would not be able to express my gratitude and love for my people and yet my feelings can. To attain total happiness and bliss is my objective in my old age. So now I thought I will leave the topic of anger and go to deal with what is real happiness for me.
When a poor little boy of a remote village, hungry for two days, wanders from street to street in search of a single morsel of food and gets to a heap of rubbish and sees a half-eaten piece of bread. The shine in his eyes that is noticed is happiness.
When a father of four children, who has lost contacts and love of his children for a decade and has been living in a solitary life, gets out of his front door one morning to meet his children. That excitement on his face is real happiness.
.When a rich businessman, after earning a truck load of money and after an international tour for a month, enters his home at night to eat a simple meal prepared by his loving wife and mother then the peace that is noticed on his face is happiness.
When a father, after waiting outside an operation theatre for hours, hears a good news of the birth of a healthy daughter or a son, that one drop of gratitude in his eyes that we see is happiness.
A hug by your father when you get good results, an excited scream after winning a game of lotto with your family, chatting uninterruptedly with your siblings while sharing a meal, simple moments of rejoice that we often ignore, those moments are termed as real happiness.
So my readers will be able to realize and understand that real happiness can be triggered at any moment, any time of the day with very simple happenings. We often mistakenly associate it with big achievements in life or a state of affairs that remain forever long. We just have to fight with ourselves to let ourselves feel it in a full way. All who laugh out loud every time are not necessarily happy and all who just smile when everyone laughs, are not sad. Real happiness and sadness are the feelings that flow freely from right inside us.
‘Always’ has not been a word suitable for me because I feel and think that nothing can stay the same always nor does happiness. Many souls like me keep sitting on a pile of happiness all their life while screaming that we do not get it. It is us who can decide whether we want to be happy or not. It is like a switch that you turn on when you feel yourself worthy of it. When I was there, in my country of birth during my childhood, I was in company of my loved ones and was living a life of a free and content being and I never wanted to get out of it. Small bursts of laughter, love and living kept me happy and I wish I could return to that state of life and living. I managed to capture all those feelings in my publication titled Shadows of Childhood.
I still punish myself sometimes by feeling angry but the state of my happiness around me makes me come alive with joy. By pushing myself out of all forms of anger and depression is my objective to show loyalty to my life. This attitude always makes me feel good, calm and collected. So much so that I can now even feel happiness in extreme pain. I definitely can.
When I am sitting in peaceful mood on green fresh grass in my backyard while staring constantly at the beautiful blue sky and moving white clouds and listening to soft music or reading some of my own publications often places me in total jovial position nowadays. This then is my idea of happiness these days. I have started enjoying my solitude equally as I enjoy the company of the person fate has blessed me with, my wife Ganga. May be life cannot get any better than this. I thank God Almighty for blessing me and giving me this beautiful but short life. We love the life we live and we live the life we love.
My next aspect of life and living that I loved was my habit of continuous learning that I call lifelong learning. Lifelong Learning takes place from the cradle to the grave. Lifelong learning includes all forms of learning for behaviour change that takes place everywhere within and outside the four walls of the classroom. This includes learning under trees, within old buildings, along the road or any other place where there are human beings. This learning takes place across a lifespan; hence its scope has no limits. It covers learning for life, and goes back to the origins of life and work. Lifelong encompasses both planned and unplanned learning through different modes of delivery such as professional development, formal school, continuing education, distance education, e-learning, correspondence, home schooling and other forms of formal and informal education.
That is not all, now is the best mood for me to create this last poem for the readers.
Let us make the most of what we have and spend
Before we too as others have into dust we descend
All we accumulate must be left behind in the end
Keep smiling, singing, enjoying life till the very end.