Daily Rust Needs to be Scraped off :Delights of the Ordinary No. 8

this week stretched me aggressively in my emotional and mental capacity.

Just like a rusted iron rod.

The rod may have structural integrity but since we have left it there the rust overpowers it. 

The stagnant water is so glued to the bottom of the ground, it fails to flow like a river. 

So I say that we all get to the rusted, stagnated state until the concrete falls down on us and we cry for help.

Today I write to you with a little more wisdom than yesterday and even last week. Each day when you grow older it is imperative that you should get wiser. Still, then I feel we do not because rust has taken the shine out of life’s extraordinaire.

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The daily affairs are monotonous affairs!

So until yesterday, I would have written you something else. But I will share with you a bit of my week’s story. 

The story

I accidentally discovered a smallish pin head-size acne on my vital body part. The obvious step was to get it checked by a doctor. I did. This doctor asked me to get the cancer test done, out of nowhere.

The mini heartbreak lapped at me. The gloom at the moment was precisely like that rust. In my body, mind and spirit. “It’s just a condition,” I tried to pacify myself. But even then, you can’t help sliding into self-pity and doom and gloom for eternity. 

In tragic times like these wisdom comes from heaven. And it did. The in-that-very-moment heavenly discernment befell my logical brain. I paused. Took a deep breath. And decided to go see another doctor for a second opinion; who looking at my previous medical history and after examining me said, “Your other reports are normal and this is not cancer.”

The Mini-Reminders of Life

We have to remind ourselves on days like these that we sometimes need fear to really understand love and fearlessness.

Daily rust needs to be scraped off. It will be difficult to bear but it is the best thing to happen. As Hannah Arendt puts it, “Fearlessness is what love seeks. Such fearlessness exists only in the complete calm that can no longer be shaken by events expected of the future… Hence the only valid tense is the present, the Now.”

Our scorched sagas of the past are so much implanted in our spirit and our ‘ability to tense into the future and everything that could possibly go wrong in it’ behaves as if we are the victims of all the tricky wickedness of the world. We may be. But sometimes it is our impulse, our inability to understand that our outlook matters the most regardless of our crisis. Rust will come, and fear will show yet we can find the fearlessness in our Today.

“This road has been walked before. Dance life’s dance, just a few steps at a time, and in the wink of an eye you will wonder to yourself, “What beast, what mountain? Was I having a dream?” — Notes from the Universe, Mike Dooley

We do not have to conquer all at once!

Things may not be as small a roadblock for others as it was for me this week. They may be mountains. Still, fearlessness exists which is not shaken by the outer circumstances. It is a matter of long-long practice and renewing the child-like-wonderment inside us to demonstrate fearlessness amidst fear.

Some Cool Internet Finds –

To read: See how ordinary people can interest you. In walking her memory lane, writer Deborah Rosario talks about the simple story of her granny’s home and her nostalgic moments. She reminiscences, “I look around the living room. It has hosted several histories…We would crack open the shells of the boiled peanuts that constituted casual tea-time hospitality.”

To listen and practice mental health: If you have not then visit earth.fm and you will find yourself amidst the soundscape, where birds and galaxies and waterfalls make their own symphony. Highly recommended.

To Learn: Artist Charlie Mackesy makes our senses doused with wisdom in ample tenderness. A picture is more than 1000 words and hence I leave you here.

You can shop his prints on his website or read his book here or here.

To end:

From Linda Pastan’s poem, Why Are Your Poems so Dark? 

When God demanded light, 
he didn’t banish darkness. 
 
Instead he invented 
ebony and crows
and that small mole 
on your left cheekbone.

I hope the coming week you will find the fearlessness and less of life’s rust.