To deserve

I found that... “The being-within, does 'deserve' to be dealt with 'being-true-to-oneself' always!” ...

Though I did practice this in crude and primitive ways, out of total ignorance, right from my kid days, it was only later on, that I discovered (I may be wrong, but it works for me!), the multi-dimensional aspects of this, in a bit 'programmed' way...). I would not go into details of something that I am not too sure of, as to whether it would work similarly for others, when it has worked for me... But I did feel like making a 'mention' to quell the doubts about 'why now, ... this?' .... kind of doubts in a reader.. ...

I had to look at the 'deserve' aspect, yet again when the temptation was too strong to yield to some temptation!

I could see, it was not about meriting something... not in the sense of eligibility, qualification-for-it, or even that capability.. It was about 'de-serve' (“ < Old French deservir, Latin dēservīre to serve zealously” )...

A chance 'encounter' with kid age friends, who also happened to be classmates for the entire schooling days, and that too after a gap of some 44+ years...

We did not feel quite contended with mere 'chat' on a virtual platform... The feel, when it was face-to-face, was the highest possibility we knew of(right now! We do not know anyone who is spiritually so-evolved, as to bypass such constraints!), that can give that joy of togetherness..

And so, a travel for a fellow who is located far away from the bulk of them, became a must! It is here, that the 'mismatches' started surfacing.. We call those mismatches as 'situational constraints'!

For instance, when the body of a very close person is suspected to be floating somewhere in the mid-ocean, post-disaster of an airplane, we just 'drop-everything' on hand (see... we do 'match'!.. the plane dropped down, and here we drop our tasks), and then rush to 'see' if that floating mass of half-decomposed body is/was that of our dear one! But not when we are invited for a social gathering! We have a whole-set of 'valid' excuses, which we 'religiously' practised, tested and it worked while at work place, having 'submitted-humbly', those excuses to our bosses, for not having done something duty-bound by us! (Yep! Salary is already 'bound'.. so the action is merely 'duty-bound' in an exclusive sense!)..

For me this 'travel' boiled down to choosing an expensive way.. a flight! What I had saved out of my 'humble' work-profile was merely like a check-dam, which can get emptied too soon, and not like those huge reservoirs of 'hydro-electric generation dams', the water stored being the meager savings.. Yes, the routine at home will get dislocated a little... the old-age home that it is now, will get reduced to a single inmate during the period-of-absence... a thing that weighs more-heavily, when age, by itself, tends to increase the gravity of everything, every situation, making it 'grave'!

I had to thus... turn towards the concept of 'deserving', deserved-ness... to see, if that criteria helps me to make a fair-judgement! (the decision is based on judgement!.. yet another irony!)

I looked back a little...

I had faced similar situation quite early too....

Many of the simple things did look like a 'huge luxury item' for me, in those kid days too! (when milk goes bad, we kids have a 'treat' with its 'spoils'... it is turned into a sweet dish at home, treated with liberal dose of sugar particles... Yes.. ration sugar comes in tiny-particles, and doesn't 'deserve' its conventional name!)...

At work place, I simply never opted to travel by the class that I was 'eligible' for... The lowest class suited me too well!.. I could afford to spend the journey with those who were more closer to “life”.. the upper-class-travelers were busy with 'swallowing' the comforts of the materials that contributed to the cost of that class!

I even asked my Manager, 'Sir, can I not travel by 3rd class? The cost on our organisation would be ridiculously low that way!”... But he said, “No... you are on an 'official-duty', though it is for a 'training-program'... and you also carry-along the 'image' of our institution! It is not good to tarnish it, by the vulnerability of somebody trying to guess that we are an impoverished organisation!” Fair enough, I thought.. .. I would go by the diktat now... I was deprived of my 'luxury' of being with 'more-live' co-travelers!

Somewhere, I was perhaps misled by 'need-based' perception, when it came to the 'need' to decide between choices! (That need-based approach kept me too busy, to even find time to 'serve' the latent desires, wants.. and other 'likes'!!).

And let me confess... I did not have those 'standard' prescribed patterns of 'visions' about 'humility'.. I never made any conscious effort at humility, or 'trying to me More-humble than before'... such conscious effort seemed like a stupidity for me... Humility, practised as a bare virtue, seemed too burdensome... I looked at the word 'humble' as some kind of attribute, that 'serves' to describe the trait of a person, when he deals with choices... than some kind of an attribute “deserved”!.. A person labelled as 'humble' seldom gets 'served'.. rather, he gets 'exploited' more often !

I try to make wild guesses, when I try to describe my way of looking at 'deserve'.. A captain of a sinking-ship does not 'deserve' to preserve/save his own life, till the last 'soul' remains to be rescued (that is the 'prescription')... where as, he 'deserves' to be the highest decision-making person, so that he 'serves'/saves the lives of travelers, sailors, and his staff... Almost like, we are constrained to allot a single-exclusive seat to that humble-driver, even when the whole bus is jam-packed, and in our own interest, and therefore he 'deserves' to be served by our act of 'giving up our free space' in his favour!

Do I deserve to pluck a flower, unless I am competent to further energise it, with energies of my own, or with the expertise of drawing energy from a 'consecrated' store-house that people call as a 'deity'.. that carved stone?... (Oh! I do not interfere with anyone else plucking a flower, except when it is out of my own back yard... so such quixotic-criterion about 'deserve' need not trouble a casual reader, please...).

Some how, that 'reverence' culture which is believed to have been the befriending trait of ancient Indians, (as distinguished from the 'freedom-culture' of the west), seems to have also looked at this 'deserving' aspect, and left it to 'individuals' to decide and 'deserve' its merits for oneself !(the whole of the bulk of scriptures are addressed to 'individuals' and seldom to a group or a society! Perhaps that 'explains' the persistent diversity in the 'applied' format of those scriptures!)...

Deserving-ly yours,

psn (28th May, 2015)