The Right Questions

Another week, another set of interviews that left me tired and dejected. When I was chatting with my supervisor later, she said she was worried I wasn't asking the right questions. I told her I was pretty sure I wasn't. I feel reasonably certain that the topic I have chosen is worthy of study although I cannot yet put my finger on why. And, then, I run into a wall of certainty, which is the dominant paradigm I am interrogating. My as-yet-rudimentary and poorly-framed questions are no match for it. Questions circumscribe an issue and set the boundaries for  "reasonable" inquiry. Questions lying  outside that boundary are dismissed as irrelevant or silly, or worse, already answered. I am at that stage of my research where I am not satisfied with the interview answers I am receiving, but can't fully articulate why. It is easy to think of blunders as pointless detours from the  research process or even regression. In fact, blunders are milestones on the research path. When you are feeling around in the dark, you are bound to touch some thorns. The important lesson is to try not to touch the same thorn again, but to also resist the inference that the world is full of thorns. 

Vipassana

As I was doing a short meditation session this evening, memories of my 10-day-long meditation course came to me. I had enrolled in the course in August 2011 to fix a nagging headache problem exacerbated by what I later realised was existential angst. The course itself is intense. We meditated for almost 10 hours per day for 9 days and were supposed to be silent at all times, except if we needed to communicate with the staff. The general expectation was that we would feel tortured in the beginning but by the  end of it we would be transformed into temples of equanimity. That didn't happen to me, but I know it happened to some. We all had fixed meditation spots, and the young lad meditating beside me couldn't sit without shaking his legs in the beginning. But, by Day 4, he was sitting still as a stone.
I didn't do myself any favours by hurting my back in a completely avoidable accident. Following that, I sat on a chair instead of cross-legged on the floor, and regret over the injury coupled with guilt that I was cheating by not sitting on my floor hijacked the rest of my course.
The essential teaching of the practice is the same as many that I tried after. That thoughts, emotions and sensations are transitory and one can train one's mind to not react to them to find a place of calm. Just let them pass (there was one practice that encouraged one to change one's thoughts by repeating affirmations and that didn't work for me at all). But, the fact that the gist of the messages are the same doesn't make the task any simpler. There is a world of difference between understanding a truth intellectually and being able to internalize it and make it's one own. To feel it. What meditation and a brief sojourn with a Bristol cult couldn't do for me, an abundantly wise therapist and yoga with Adrienne did. And, my only advice is, when you find something that works, embrace it and keep returning to it. There will be times when it feels like a drag, when you don't feel any different after. Soldier on. The benefits are incremental (sometimes marginal) and cumulative and trusting and surrendering yourself to a ritual (yes, you can call it a ritual) has its own benefits. That doesn't mean you have to do it for life. When it stops serving you, trust that your inner wisdom will tell you and you will let the practice go.

'If You Can Breathe You Can Get Through Anything'

This morning, I read a stirring story about a former Black Panther who had spent 40 years in prison, many of them in solitary confinement. Prolonged solitary confinement is regarded as one of the worst forms of torture and it takes extraordinary resilience to come out of it intact. The story went on to talk about the numerous hardships he faced and his personal growth. But what stayed with me was the phrase, 'if you can breathe, you can get through anything'. I have been trying to focus more on my breathing, as part of my yoga practice (I should probably do a separate post on the significance of the breath in yoga practice). Sometimes, just by focusing on my breath, I feel a wave of relief pass through my body, but not as often as I would like. Focusing on your breathe is the ultimate means of nourishing the senses without external support. It is a technique available anywhere and at any time.
But, coming back to the story I read, which was a tale of fortitude. The title of this blog post really stuck with me, because immediately afterwards, the author talked about how you can't take your breath for granted. When he received news in prison that his mother had died, he literally struggled to breathe. He felt like he wouldn't make it and he took more than a year to feel like his normal self. The way I interpreted it, the fact that he is still here is down to luck more than anything else. Which is why the phrase is so powerful--it is not a truism. There are shocks that can literally stop you breathing--not just physical shocks but mental and emotional shocks. You and your darned breath are powerful, but not all-powerful. 

The Mental Well-Being of Horrible People

One question that has also vexed me about (many) bullies is how come their actions don't cause them the mental suffering that many people who are much nicer to others face? And, the non-bullies can only imagine the paroxysms of guilt and misery that would follow if they were to act like bullies.
One of the hardest lessons of life is that as you sow so shall you reap but as they sow, so they may not reap. Someone of a gentle and sensitive disposition will wracked by guilt and regret if he hurts someone else, but people are habitually nasty to others might carry on that way for the rest of their lives without any physical or mental repercussions. Karma is a bitch, but randomly. And, I am not just taking about "damaged" people who have suffered  abuse in the past and lash out and everyone around them or people who are habitually nasty. I am also talking about people who are strategically nasty and untruthful. A prominent TV anchor in India comes to mind. I find it difficult to even watching as I feel forced to repent for his terrible behaviour, only because someone should. And, the frustrating part is that me might lead a very content existence for all I know. Some people can be  kind to themselves while being terrible to others, although its a relief that most of us can't.
Kindness and generosity are not seeds to be sown with the expectation of reaping good health and fortune. They ought to be ends in themselves or at least tools to secure one's own peace of mind, to  put it in utilitarian and individualistic terms.
We all have to figure what we reap when we sow a particular thing, and learn by trial and error. They best we can do is to wish mental torrent on the horrible people we come across in our lives. But, bad actions are no guarantee of bad outcomes and that's just the way it is.

Physical Defects

I am keeping a list of bodily things that need looking to before I return to Bristol and it keeps getting longer. Teeth, eyes, STD tests, Vitamin D tests, Vitamin B tests and now I am wondering if I should see a doctor for the nagging pain in my chest. I feel like I have broken my body down into a bunch of components which all need to be analyzed for defects individually. A very mechanistic view of the human body, which leaves no space for the head and the heart. No judgement there, but my mind goes back to two-and-a-half years ago when the troubles in my head had started to manifest as disquieting physical symptoms. I was thoroughly unnerved by the physical symptoms, yet I knew at the back of my mind that mental health problems were at the root of my physical troubles. At the time, a friend gifted me a self-improvement book that was an enormous influence on me at that time. The book's main message was that problems of the body could be healed by addressing mental issues, which required forgiveness and oodles of self-love. I don't believe so strongly in that message any more, but there is some truth to it. Just like most influential concepts have some truth/use but cannot capture the whole truth. There is a mechanistic view of the human body which sees it as a machine and there is the idealistic view of the human body, which focuses on perception and emotional states. Our health is nothing but our perception of it, and our perceptions are heavily influenced by mental and emotional factors. The key is to find which position on the mechanistic-idealistic scale works for  us at a particular point in time. The same thing may not work for someone else and it may not work for us at another point in time. And, it is important not to swing too heavily towards one end of the spectrum. 

Listening

I am trying to get better at listening. I believe we often place ourselves in uncomfortable and unwanted situations because we act against our better instincts. In the case of a fitness freak like me, that means pushing my body when I should be going easy on it. Thankfully, I haven't faced a serious injury as a result of this tendency yet. But, I have often wondered what's the point of exercising if one feels lousy afterwards. I don't finish every exercise session with my head swimming with endorphins, but sometimes after an intense session, I feel feverish and pop a paracetemol pill. Push yourself beyond the edge and then pop pills to ward of sickness. Not a very healthy way to live.
Knowing when to push yourself, knowing when to ease off and being kind to yourself irrespective: that is one of the secrets to mental and physical health. Which is why its not easy. It requires a lot of practice and trail-and-error--we often realizes our limits only after we have hit them hard and been floored by the impact. It also requires us to release ourselves from the weight of purown and of others' expectations. And, we doesn't always have that option if there are other people depending on us.
All we can do is try. Practice listening and have faith in ourselves that our mind, body and spirit will tell us when a particular situation is not serving us and its time to leave, if that is the option. That we will change a situation when we are ready to change it and there is little point in chiding ourselves afterwards for changing it too early or too late. 

Gyan

In my first job as a reporter, my boss was an relentless newshound. Since I am temperamentally the opposite of that, I relationship was rocky in the beginning, but once he saw my skills as a writer the sailing was smoother. I remember he would always caution me against interviewees who would give "gyan". By that, he meant their views on the Indian economy or the markets, instead of cold, hard news about the business they were running that could be turned into a new story. Since most bankers wanted to see their name print without revealing anything about their business, steering them away from gyan required some skill. 

Sometimes, I feel like in India we all treat gyan like a Bollywood movie. You (sometimes) enjoy it, but don't seek life guidance from it. As a markets reporter for a wire agency, I was at the centre of the gyan industry. A raft of professions are built around trying to predict where the markets will be a few days, weeks and months from now. But most people rely  on the same/similar models for their forecasts and essentially say the same thing in marginally different words. Being in that giant echo chamber began to grate on my nerves, and I left when it all began to get a little much. To be sure, not everyone is a muppet. There are some sharp commentators out there, but they are few and far between and one of them told me "My job is not to be right, it is to be entertaining".

I wonder what it would have been like if I didn't leave when I did. Would I have started to buy into the moonshine? Someone wise said "It is difficult to get a man to believe something when his salary depends on him not believing it". Who knows what would have happened to me.