बुद्ध्या विशुद्धया युक्तो धृत्यात्मानं नियम्य च |
शब्दादीन्विषयांस्त्यक्त्वा रागद्वेषौ व्युदस्य च || 51||
विविक्तसेवी लघ्वाशी यतवाक्कायमानस: |
ध्यानयोगपरो नित्यं वैराग्यं समुपाश्रित: || 52||
अहङ्कारं बलं दर्पं कामं क्रोधं परिग्रहम् |
विमुच्य निर्मम: शान्तो ब्रह्मभूयाय कल्पते || 53||

Endowed with a pure understanding, restraining the self with firmness, turning away from sound and other sense-objects, and abandoning love and hatred;
Dwelling in solitude, eating but little, controlling the speech, body, and mind, ever engaged in meditation and concentration, and cultivating freedom from passion;
Forsaking conceit and power, pride and lust, wrath and possessions, tranquil in heart, and free from ego— he becomes worthy of becoming one with Brahman.

– Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 18, verses 51 to 53

Hi Reader,

I understand it is quite late, but a very Happy New Year! I hope you are healthy and making the most of your time and resources. How fascinating and surprising at the same time it is, that how we feel in December, believing we will finally put all the burden to rest and hoping a change in digits in the year will make things better. In January, we start on a positive note, believing that the universe will listen to us and we will be able to manifest and make things happen as we want. But when February comes, the reality hits, that nothing has changed since November. And then, the whole year follows. 

For me personally, January has always been a mix of emotions for the past few years. Most of the year, I try to train myself on how not to get external factors affect the inner self, and when January comes, it becomes like the evaluation time, because January always brings up a new challenge, a new hurdle, and then the same cycle repeats. The good thing is that I become stronger every January, as there is no overlapping burden (always a fresh one 😉). 

I’m sorry January, but you are not evil, as you bring up some great memory-building time too! For the past two years, I have been attending the Lollapalooza festival in Mumbai, India, which happens over the last weekend of January, so while signing off, January does give away some happy moments. From artists like Imagine Dragons to One Republic, Keane, Anoushka Shankar to Sting, all the memories are from January, so thank you January, for all the learnings and experiences! 

Honestly, I wanted to write the blog from the first week itself, but with some ongoing experiences, it felt like taking a longer break. A break to capture all of the emotions, learning, and experiences from the joys and turmoil, and bind them together into a blog, maybe it could help someone someday!

Friend, adulthood is tough! We often talk about childhood struggles, from having limited resources to creating a fortune of your own, and I am not talking about the family situations, but counting in the overall Geographical, Geopolitical, and Natural factors too. We also talk about how as we grow older, in our 50-70s, there are health concerns and technical and generational gap challenges. But adulthood? I believe it is a mix of both. Both childhood, as well as upcoming old age challenges, start to make us concerned about life.

Whatever we faced in childhood, good or bad, we created a (mental) path to navigate our lives through it. While creating those paths, we might have overcome one hurdle but unknowingly neglected something else, which with time always kept growing. This could be something we are aware of, like the anger or the anxiety before any event or exam, or the lack of good friends, or weak relationships, whatever it could be, but it kept growing, and whenever we thought of it, falsely assured ourselves that with time it will resolve, or maybe when we reach to that particular summit, this will resolve. And it kept getting bigger and bigger.

Since childhood, we are also under the burden of our rising hopes and desires. We are often asked to dream big and follow that dream. This advice is very inspiring, but there are times when our environment doesn’t allow us to follow the dream, and when this reality hits, we tend to follow a path, which is safer for the future. We HOPE that following this path will fulfill our DESIRES. But does it happen? How many of you are living the life you dreamed of? How many of you chose the alternative path with hopes and desires? Are those desires fulfilled? I wish that most of you could answer YES, but if not, then this is a concern, and should be addressed.

When the desires are repeatedly not fulfilled, the hope starts to die. It becomes tough how long should you keep faith! One of the biggest learning we get in our adulthood, sooner or later, is that not everything will happen as we want. We can keep our hopes and desires as long as we want, but the day we accept the fact that there are chances they will never be true is the day we become mature. And this is where our hobbies and passion help us a lot. These are the days where expressing how it feels is not as simple as it could be. We try our best to find and meet a person who could understand. Finding such a person is itself a challenge since everyone has their demons to fight with. And with a stroke of luck and good fortune, even if we find such a person, the chances that the right words will fall into your mouth are very low.

We will try to explain one thing, but when we hear ourselves, it will sound completely different. We are too conscious of what we want to talk about, that the expressions (coming from the subconscious) are lost. But with hobbies, like reading or writing a journal, any sports, dancing or playing a musical instrument, or listening to live music, our subconscious is more active and the emotions and expressions come out naturally. Suppose you are upset about the things not falling into place how you desired, and you feel a burden on your chest. You have trouble sleeping, and you have already tried to talk and still, it feels the same. Then you decide to wake up one day and go for a 5K run. The emotions will start to come out as your muscles contract and relax, you start to feel your breath. Or if not running, you decide to go for a concert/live music. You are standing in the middle of thousands with live rock music. You watch the lights in the dark sky and then close your eyes and dance your heart out. 

These emotions are not easy to express but certainly not impossible thing too. However, I categorize people into two categories, one with depth, and the other who is shallow. If I shared the blog link with you, and you are reading this right now, knowing that it is a long blog, but still reading, you have a depth. I do share the blogs with the shallow audience too, who might open this page, read the heading, and maybe an intro, or the quotes within, and then scroll through looking at the length, and will go back to the message and do a thumbs-up! I have met people who are very busy, with their jobs, families, and kids and still manage to make time and read, while there are people who scroll Instagram one reel after another and then complaint of busy schedules and hence can’t read, which is fine, everyone has a choice, like I have to categorize into two, depth and shallow!

With my recent observation, I was surprised to experience that people who are shallow, shallow in their mindset, and shallow in their emotions, are often the ones who are most liked by society. They are often dressed up following the latest trends, have sweet-toned, pretty innocent faces, and are very clear about what they like and dislike. They could even make you doubt yourself, no matter how sorted you are. They would easily find the demons in the others, and make them feel guilty about it, all doing so while hiding their demons. For example, a person might come up front saying “They don’t like people who hurt others and then just simply say sorry, as if their sorry would make up everything”. And in the next few days, you find the same person doing the same thing, changing in a snap of the finger. Hurt people and then say I’m extremely sorry. This is just one example. We all know, that to meet our interests, we might hurt someone with no wrong intention, so why live with such principles of not hurting anyone, when we all do?

The opposites attract, I do have read, but it’s the time when realize it in life as well. We can see many people with depth with the shallow people, jelling up faster than anyone else. However, whether will it go great or not, could vary. Whatever I have seen, I could say that a person who has depth, when looking at a view, be it a starry night, or the hilltop picturesque sunrise, will have deep thoughts about it relating it with various other things, but who could that person share it with? The other shallow person, who is busy capturing the selfies? What is favorable and what not, I don’t know, but I believe this is something people should talk about more, and there is nothing bad about being a person with depth or being shallow, it’s all about how you were brought up, what challenges you faced, and how you grew with it, and based on it you will have the depth. 

Depth must be hidden. Where? On the surface.

– Hugo von Hofmannsthal

So be mindful, of who you are sharing your emotions, hurdles, and challenges with, and who you are expressing with, as there could be people who will see no problem in it at all, and make you doubt even more if you are overseeing a problem, or just too bad in expressing. 

There is so much more to talk about the expressions, but if I keep talking, I will not be respecting the limited time of attention I have got of yours. Thank you for staying so far, and when we talk next, I will try to talk more about the expressions, the art of expressing the depth, and maybe how it helps in healing from unfulfilled desires, and how staying in the Vartamanah, could help with more of the references from the book, The Power of Unwavering Focus!

Until then, take care and enjoy the present!
– Navneet