Dive In Dive Out

As I grow older I realise what a fool I have been. If only I could relive my life it surely would have been better, wiser and more peaceful. However, it’s just an illusion. If I could get an opportunity to start all over again I would not have stopped making mistakes. It’s human to feel we can undo many things in life if given a chance. What we overlook is the fact that in doing so we may again make some wrong choices hitherto unthought of.

A Bengali to the core I cannot stop myself from being proud of my intellect. I have never done anything which I have not been mentally convinced of. Not realising that it has been my biggest folly and hurdle in the path of growing. This innate habit of trying to comprehend everything mentally is, now I know, my strongest drawback. The truth is learning is experiential. Our scriptures tell us to realise and not understand. We realise through our experiences. No syllabus can teach us how to go about life. It is revealed to us as we get along. The day we start believing in our paper degrees it’s the beginning of our downslide. Our educational institutions do not teach us to begin by knowing that we do not know anything.

Once, one of my superiors told me that I lacked preparedness. From that day onwards I made it a point to be proactive to the extreme. I would not only plan ahead but also try to preempt any disaster that could possibly befall in the way of achieving the results. The process required meticulous forecasting of requisite actions as well as imaginary hindrances that could disrupt attaining the desired outcome and their antidotal remedies. It was my idea of minimising the scope of failure. But what I did not take into account was in life things never happen as planned. In fact, what happens is sometimes so unexpected that all our detailed plannings fall short. At the same time going about unprepared is deviating from an age old habit. I am yet to figure out what is the best course – to be prepared for the worst or to cross the bridge when it comes.

In spite of the wisdom gathered in hindsight we still resent our past and wish to time travel to rectify our mistakes. We foolishly believe we are the most intelligent and invincible species in the whole of the universe. We worry, we dream, we aspire high, we feel anxious about our future forgetting that the journey is more important than the destination.

No wonder it is said that to err is human.

What we do not understand is that we are supposed to stumble along in life through pitfalls and  shortcomings, we are not supposed to know everything and life is too unpredictable for our formulaic approach. To be in flow is the order of the day.

Alas! As I write I think of setting the alarm for the day next to follow the routine….