Intense Problem

It is about being ‘intense’ that is the problem, and therefore, may be this problem has now become an intense one.

There was an ‘ad’ on the TV… A kid requests his dad to become a ‘horse’ so that the kid can ride on his back. But, the dad tries to offer himself as a crocodile, instead! It takes much less effort for this dad to ‘play’ the role of ride-vehicle-crocodile (all he has to do is just lie down on his stomach, and continue his mid day nap)! The kid’s face shows disappointment.

As we grow into adulthood, we simply drop games. The transition is cunningly dubious. We first drop toys, then kid games, then replace with youth games, adult games, and then retire much faster than any professional sportspersons. Even that indoor couch-potato game with playing cards, we simply cannot think of playing for pea-nuts.

We forget how to become intense without any result to be chased. Not that children are doing it without any goal. But they can afford to forget the result no matter which way it was. But they also are not aware of their capability to become intense. What ever they do, they are intense at it.

The shift that happens in us is very subtle. We first become result-oriented, when we receive incentives, motivation speeches, advices from elders around. Even a romance offers us that ‘drive’ to go to any length of stupidity or madness, to become intense. We become intense in social work to achieve that ‘feel-good’ factor when we get appreciated.
Slowly, our intensity gets restricted to areas of our own ‘self-interest’. It does not just stay there. We almost forget how to become intense. Every thing, everyday becomes a drudgery, a dull-daily-routine. When we pay the poor fellow(rickshaw-puller, coolie etc) who carried our load as a casual laborer, he feels disappointed at the casualness with which we hand over the money. It is the helplessness of poverty and commonality that he sees with people around that helps him to compromise with our lack-luster body language response for his hard labor, which has forced a physical level of intensive labor that he experienced.

If we happened to know that, due to some delay, the results were approximated and compiled conclusively, and yet we are compelled to comply with submission of some periodical statement at work place, we find preparation of that particular statement to be unusually burden-some! The superiors at controlling office do not like to set a bad precedent, waiving the submission, though it is now redundant. Even tax authorities know, the tax payers do not relish preparation of tax returns and therefore expect the bulk of returns submission only at the last minute, on the last day.

This tendency to shed our intense capability too often takes a very heavy toll on the domestic front, where relationships and its bonds are purely based on the adhesive called emotions. Stubbornness is the only way the other person provokes us to become intense about something when love fails to invoke it. As the age advances, stubbornness becomes too glaringly obvious, and such people pave their own way to homes for the aged. At this age, it becomes too late to become intense.

We try to mix up some other qualities to make up the short fall of intensity. We become serious, tense, rigid etc, when all that is required to become intense. When scores do not enter the mind, that cricket batsman never pardons a loose ball! But, when he starts chasing scores, he becomes serious, tense and rigid, and that is when the ball finds it way to mid-wicket. Even the duck-out batsman is fortunate compared to us. The game is over for him, when he leaves the ‘pitch’. We remain ‘pitched’ all the time.

For dramatized examples, please look at that character of Omar Sharif in “Meckana’s Gold” . He seems casual throughout the movie, but is very intense about his goal, throughout the journey. His expressions change only when he becomes alert to any threat, otherwise, he maintains a villainous-smile throughout. He is very intense and relaxed.
In real life, we see an expert surgeon requesting his trusted colleague to do the job when the patient in that operation theatre is a very close relative of that expert surgeon! He knows, he cannot be intense and relaxed at the same time. (I could have my bit of experience, when I noticed that I am not “entirely” relaxed when it came to counting out my own salary, during my early days at job as a cashier. Cashiers can’t afford to be casual, but can be relaxed with practice, even when intense in their precarious hazardous job of counting currency notes.)

Well, spiritual growth, to a very large extent leans heavily upon becoming extremely relaxed and extremely intense simultaneously. Without either of this, the physical aspect of the practices could be counter-productive even. With just intenseness, we turn some of the exercises into muscle-building aerobics. And with relaxation alone, we become ‘senior’ yogis in the eyes of others, with no worthwhile progress within! There are stories to demonstrate this. That full time dacoit(angulimal ‘wearer of human-fingers as garland) got his mind-attitude transformed in no time(into later becoming a saint/sage-Valmiki), because he looked at “life” in a very intense way, with a calm and relaxed mind, and the futility of amassing wealth by plundering others dawned on him. A devotee enters the temple of worship with tremendous intensity, giving up all rigidities, with a sense of surrender (a forced relaxation), and experiences divinity far better than the priest who performs the rituals on a daily basis, but with some lack of intensity, in a casual routine manner! A yet another demonstrable example, we have seen a few, though not all or many, of the physically disabled people when they decide to live their life ‘intensely’ they perform miraculously with their legs, what we struggle to do with hands(painting with fingers on legs, holding the pen between teeth to write, etc).

Intensely yours,
Psn(14th July, 2010)