Dhaka, Bangladesh.
I do not know how to meditate, meaning, I have never taken any classes on it. But I am going to this weekend. I am taking the Butthan Meditation course for 2 days, hoping that I will see the amazing changes that everyone claims manifests in their lives immediately following a meditation course. I guess what I am hoping for is more clarity, logic and a clearer picture in my head of where I am heading and how to travel down that road.
Since I do not know how to meditate, or maybe I do. After all... what is sitting in silence? what else can I call it when I spend time in solitude, letting my thoughts run around in my head. Taking note of them without getting involved in them? I guess that's my own way of meditating. Its the way that I like to think before making any decisions. Before any major decision, I need a couple of days time to think, to cover all my bases, to look at every possible scenerios. And when the decision is bound to have a major impact on my life... I need those days of solitude more than ever.
I had written a little about this in my post "Karma, Prayers & Others" that I was doing some thinking... that I needed to make decisions that I have been putting off for over a year. ME, the impatient pro-active person, suddenly felt like I had procrastinated on this decision for far too long already. However 2-3 days of thinking and here's what I realized: I wasn't procrastinating, I wasn't making the decision simply because I wasn't ready to make that decision yet. I needed to make the decision now because I am finally in a place in my life from where I can make this decision.
It made me realize the importance of waiting for the right time and place in our life to make certain decisions. How often have we tried to rush in our decisions? How often have we known that we are not yet ready to commit to something and yet still gone ahead and committed? How often have you made a decision that you knew in your gut was the wrong timing or decision?
Who doesn't want a promotion at work? Everyone does! Question is... are you ready for that promotion? Have you really learnt more? contributed more to the team? do you really deserve it? are you ready to soldier the additional responsibility that will be yours with that promotion? Or are you just pushing for the promotion cause you need the money? you have stayed in your current position too long already? I see this a lot. People jockeying for higher position with neither the capacity nor the ability to grow into that position. An incapable fool is the worst possible promoted boss to work under. Trust me, I have and its not pretty.
But this is not a rant. Its a realization. Sometimes we want things because we want them. Sometimes we force things to happen before its time for them to happen because we think thats what's suppose to happen now. But maybe, just maybe, things aren't suppose to happen. Maybe events should be given the chance to unfold on their own time, in their own way, like a flower blooming, you can't force the bud to open until it is ready to. And maybe this decision is not a year and a half late, maybe I wasn't ready before and now I am making this decision because I am ready to make it, to commit to it. I think that actually went along the lines of one of Anais Nin's quote “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
So I guess the time has come for me to lay down some roots, to bloom right where I am planted. To allow the beauty of life to unfold right here and now and to quote Anais Nin again "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." I guess going forward, my life will be affected much more by the courage I master and not just my best laid plans.
It is not going to be easy to live in Dhaka, a single divorced woman who lives on her own and is hell bent on curving her own life. To live by my own rules, my own laws, to respect none other than my own soul. No sir, this society will not like it. But now I know that I am not going anywhere else. I am staying right here. To fight it out, not just for myself, but others who might decide to follow the path that I lay. I know that I will have many repititve and downright depressing fights with my family over my decisions to continue to have male friends, to allow them into my home and to continue to resists being married again for the sake of that sign board titled "husband". I don't need that. In fact I don't think that there is anything that a man can give me that I can't give to myself, so instead of the signboard, this is what I chose for myself:
I cannot resist sharing another one of my favorite quote of her's that I just can't get enough of now. I find the ending beautiful since it declares the absence of pain.
