Acceptance

Having crossed the mid-point of my life there are a number of things I have taken stock of. Of course life does not end after mid-life – for some it becomes better. I don’t know what it is becoming for me….

I have always thought of myself as worldly, experienced, comfortable in dealing with diversity and most of all - fairly mature in my thinking. Through my years of education (through PhD) and now working for a number of years, I think I have seen and been through a lot things/events. My personal life has been always be series of turmoil. Just when I think I can breathe now, a storm comes and everything is back to chaos.

I want to believe there is higher power somewhere who is doing all this. I have always believed in destiny, because no matter how hard I try to prevent something from happening or want something to happen, it will not happen that way. For some reason, this higher power has decided that I don't ask for anything meaningful. Or that my life should go smoothly. Nope! All these ups and downs of my life are giving me nausea.

I also think there is a time and age for events to happen otherwise they don’t have the same meaning. Timing is everything in life.  At this point in time in my life, I have to learn to accept a number of things that I have and somethings that I will never have.  There are also human behavior that I have to come to terms with. So many people have come in my life and taught me so many different lessons; sadly most lessons are through negative experiences.  My life has not gone in any way that I had thought it would go; nor do I have the relationships that most people have.

In one of the most positive events: I had never imagined I would ever own a house! Fifteen years ago I was happy to own a car, and now this house - MY house - who knew??

Through all the positive and negative events – I have come to accept that:

•  People will lie – they will cheat. No matter which country I go to and however many new people I meet, there will always be liars in this world.
• People are selfish, they are all motivated by their own self-interest.
• I really cannot trust anyone. I have learned this the hard way. And I still keep learning this, because deep down I want to believe that people are good – but most times they just are not. 
• No matter where I work I will always have a nemesis. 
• I have always found one or two truly good friends wherever I have lived. They may not love me, but they will not do anything to hurt me either.
• The kindness of strangers is always there for me. I have found help in the darkest of my times from some really close friends and sometimes even strangers.  I really feel these are angels sent just to help me.
• I will never know some relationships….the time has gone…
• Life will go on, no matter how I feel today. It is up to me to get up and get going.  I am Arjun and I am Krishna – all in one.

I am reminded of a blog I wrote a while back on Anhinga - the beautiful bird of Florida. So yet again I am reminded that its all me.....I have everything in me - I just have to find it (that's the tough part!!) and accept it (also hard to do!)

Lesson from Anhinga

Anhinga is a bird of Florida.  I had never seen it before in my life and now I see it all the time.  The stream next to my house brings plenty of wildlife around the house and most days, when the weather is nice, I just sit outside and enjoy nature.

(the stream/canal next to my house...with egrets in this picture)

Anhinga is a beautiful black bird with a beautiful long neck, so elegant.  I was sitting out one morning having my usual morning tea when I noticed a quick fluttering in the water.  In dove an anhinga into the water and its head came up in few seconds to breathe and then it dove into the water again.  It did this a few times.  After this ritual of finding food under water, the anhinga came on the grass, spread its beautiful black wings, dried itself in the sun only to get ready for its next dive.

(photo by Sapna Gupta taken at Loxahatchee Refuge)

Anhinga don’t have oil on their wings like other birds to repel water and keep dry, and that is how anhinga can swim under water unlike other birds.  Because of this it has to periodically dry its wings in the sun.  You can read about them here.  See an anhinga in underwater action in this video (I did not shoot this - I wish I could...it's so beautiful)

Looking at this cycle of getting wet and drying of anhinga, I was thinking to myself that I have a lesson to learn here.  Anhinga lives both in air and water, it needs both to survive.  Going under water makes it wet and soggy, but it comes out and dries itself in the sun and goes right back to what it has to do – get under water to eat!  Why can't I be like that?  I have a part of life that I enjoy and some parts of life that I tolerate and get through.  Sometimes I feel that a lot of people are tolerating a lot in life and enjoying very little of it...(although I do hope we always have lots to enjoy in life!).

On occasions there are incidents that get me a little depressed or frustrated.  This is where I need to learn from the anhinga: I should find my sun, dry myself off from these feelings and dive right back into life.  Then the big question is: who is my sun or what is my sun?  Is there something I can do that will make me feel better?  Who can lift me up when I am down?  Who can I trust enough to tell them how I am feeling?  Who will give me the right advice?  Who will be true to me and help me dive back into life?  Do I need someone else’s help to do get up in life?  Or maybe my sun is really inside me and I don’t need to look outside for help.

The last option is of course the best one.  We should look inward to make our own sun shine for ourselves, whatever our sun might be. This can be very hard for an extrovert (like me), but we have to balance our introvert and extrovert personalities so we can learn to shine perpetually.

What I would really like to ask the anhinga is whether it likes being under water or in the sun!!