The beauty of water peaks when it flows -thundering down the slopes, twisting and turning and falling from heights as if it seems to enjoy every bit of it and continues to flow keeping its form forever.
Water pours, flows, floods, lashes and can freeze to a stand-still.
When water takes this form of flow we call it a river – a creation of utmost fluidity that is divine in its birth, many a times peacefully flowing to create joyful lullabies for deep sleeps and dreams. We called it God’s creation and we then tried to compete with its creator. For some inexplicable reason we thought we can be Gods. We found a way to get water to wherever we could lead a life. We created water transportation systems to let the water reach us from its sources and we called the very first of those canals. We became so overjoyed with the power of our creation, we forgot rivers. By doing so, we forgot water and life and forgot how to live.
I say, create a life that is a river again. Please do not get constrained by our creations of canals! I am here to tell you how you can learn that skill. But first, we need to examine the root cause of our forgetfulness.
While both forms of flow provide life to those of us who are connected to either of those water-flow systems, connectedness is markedly different from river to canal. River flows with twists and turns and attracting all of the animal kingdom to its banks.Canals don’t have twists and turns like the rivers do. The amounts of water that can flow in these canals are pre-meditated. It is defined by humanity, powered with greed than to define and create the humanity forgetting that we are part of a bigger whole called animal kingdom. Those who have the power and the means can get the canals to their doorsteps and those who cannot need to either fight for it or become slaves to the masters who created it.
When we start tailoring ourselves to the systems that exist around us and created by us, we lose life. Those systems are man-made and hence they are canal-like. The life adjusting to that system will need to forgo all that glamour that life flowing like a river can bring to become an existential two-dimensional life co-existing with a want of existing in a multi-dimensional world. The frictional heat of adaptation causes burns and stress. Wrinkles set in before the old age can.
Can we fully enjoy the life that has been given to us no matter how old we are? We can, but not fully if we cannot let our lives run like rivers. Why so? The systems won’t let you do that, because the systems that we have created have encased you in the world that is defined and engulfed by other systems. Systems tell you that they need each other to support themselves and to create a meaningful day and night for the rest of the humanity. We think we are controlling the systems for our pleasure and enjoyment presuming that we can change them whenever we want to suit us. But we can’t.
Why not?
The first thing to know is that the moment of inertia created by the system is directly proportional to its size. Secondly, the complexity of the system is directly proportional to the number of connections it has with other systems. Thirdly, the integration of systems leads to a domino effect to implement changes rendering any changes to any one single system fruitless, unless and until we can see the domino effect into other systems – but in 21st century, we seem to have run out of time.
Why so?
Think and think hard on all the things that you want to achieve in a single day. What you want to achieve is entirely dependent on what kind of support you can get from the systems that you have surrounded yourself with. Start with the basic – the time system.
If for any reason the alarm does not go off, you miss the pace with which you prepare yourself for the day and the rush created will stress you. Even if the alarm goes off without fail, the body alarm tells you to lie down for few more minutes as the night’s sleep might not be enough to recharge your body for the day. You have to then deal with the delays that it creates during the course of the day. Either way, you get stressed and suffer the consequences. Only when your morning starts with canal-like routine, you are not thrown off-gear. But you still blame life being routine and mundane.
Now wind yourself back to the days when no clocking system had surrounded the humanity except by day and night. We divided the day into morning, afternoon and evening to bring in some sense of time and then we dived deeper and deeper into dividing time into hours, minutes, seconds and to Micros and Nanos.
Take some time now to explore the home and work systems.
The home you have created as a beautiful place to rest for yourself now becomes a distant past as soon as you choose to leave it behind to go to a place called work to earn your living – another support system to support the system that you have created as home.
The means with which you get to work to support that so called home could be a combination of private and public transports or either one of those systems. The mode is depending on the accessibility and comfort factors that you have chosen for yourself to start a process. No matter how comfortable it can be, it forces you to leave your home behind.
Do you get the drift?
We have created layers and layers of systems, all interconnected, and, all have to be sustained to sustain ourselves. We need these systems, but we forget that we need those who created these systems for us.
Those who created these systems are those who are none other than ourselves casted in different sizes, different colors with different religious and cultural backgrounds spread geographically all around this planet we call Earth. We forget that Earth is our home and forget how to lead a life on Earth. Rather we try hard to lead a life at a place called home – created by us but need all other supporting systems around for support.
Why can’t we peel off all those unnecessary layers to see for ourselves clearly on how learn from each other to create life once again that can be glorious, glamorous and Godly! Is it possible for us to do? Yes, we can. It is not too late.
First thing to understand is that the Money is not made up of dollars or yens or euros or liras or rupees. These are the manifestations of an artificial life that we have created through our systems. Second thing to understand is that the real money is the air we breathe, the water we drink, the earth that sustains our existence, and, the sun that provides the heat we need. Thirdly, the real money is the knowledge that we need to possess to help us deal with these earthly (rather Godly?) elements in our lives.
I am not here to preach you to become a saint nor to become a philosopher of some kind. I want you to recognize the skills you need to master these elements in whatever form you see them existing – forms man-made or the forms naturally evolved over years with a power to reshape our life to flow like a river.
Can we de-canalize our life? If not, how to de-canalize our life should become a priority for us to create a life that can flow like a river.