This title is meant to sound like the first chapter of the Gita.. the despondency if Arjuna.
Well, here are the reasons for my despondency…
I do not have any tools do deal with unreasonable, unfair people with vested agendas. These people exist outside the home and must be dealt with if I have to work. They also exist at home and must be dealt with to live in extended families.
How can you appeal to the decency of the indecent, sense of justice of the unjust, reason with the unreasonable?
You can avoid and withdraw: I do this a lot. You can teach, does not work for me. You can negotiate which requires some limited reasonableness and decency on the other side and at least some short term committment to the contract.
You can threaten and fight, I have done both successfully in the past.
Yet, I have changed now. I do not have the skills, health, energy, patience or optimism of my youth. I guess I am powerless in a sense.
I have great understanding and learning about many things… and I can write those things. There are not many or any to read them. I can do many things with ease. I have other skills now.
I have more courage and integrity now.
I can no longer live on my technical skills or knowledge any more than an old model can live on her looks.
I have aged, the world has changed, my situation is different.
Perhaps I can no longer occupy the places that I used to occupy in the past, or accomplish the things I have done before. I surely cannot bear and raise another child.
I have few friends and definitely none in my neighbourhood. And yet, I am befriending myself, understanding myself, standing up for myself, speaking for myself. So this is good.
Though I have great pain in looking at or thinking about others, I have great joy in turning inward and looking at my own heart and mind and at God.
This is a reversal of my situation 13 years ago. Then there was pain in my heart and fun in the world. Now there is love, beauty and understanding in my heart, but filth in the world.
And I want to withdraw from the world of people, in a sense. I guess this means that I am not open to teaching, negotiating or fighting. I just don’t want to deal with them. I am not willing to give anything to anyone.
I must have been hurt very badly. I may have hit total disillusionment, or vairagyam. Vengeance would not be bad, but I do not want to do anything. Justice would be good. People must acknowledge their fault and publicly apologise to me. They must recognise what I have done for them, feel grateful and show it. They must repent from their hearts for the wrong they have done to me. I should be re-instated with full honour. That may be good.
I don’t know if that will happen. It does not appear likely. And if it did, I don’t think that is what I want to do with my time.
My ill-health gives me a sense of early death. I want to live as long as my son needs or wants me. I somehow think that it will be better for him if I live for another 15 years at least. I think it will be nice for him to have someone on his side who understands him and I think that he and his wife will need help in raising their children at least till they are 10 years old. This is how I see myself in the context of my son’s future. I don’t like people who see me as a burden on him. Maybe that is how they see their parents. I have always seen my parents as a source of love, understanding and strength all these years. It is only in the past 4 years that I am seeing their weaknesses, selfishness, fraility and unreasonableness. More than anything, I see their lack of understanding of me. As I am and as I have been and as I will be.
Sunday August 20, 2006 – 01:55am (PST)
