shobaharidasuniverse

[shobaharidasuniverse]

[shobaharidasuniverse]

My musings on dreams.

[shobaharidasuniverse]

[shobaharidasuniverse]

[shobaharidasuniverse]

[shobaharidasuniverse]

[shobaharidasuniverse]

[shobaharidasuniverse]

[shobaharidasuniverse]

[shobaharidasuniverse]

[shobaharidasuniverse]

[shobaharidasuniverse]

[shobaharidasuniverse]

THE ABYSS

I feel the gathering chaos threatening

the centre of my very being.

-

Don't be afraid, it whispers.

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But I am. Deathly afraid that I will be engulfed by your Great Unceasing.

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It laughs.

You were born from the Abyss.

You are formed by the Abyss.

You were birthed once. Let yourself be birthed again.

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Be open to everything.

As the Sky is open to every type of weather.

As the Sea is open to every type of wave.

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The Sky is never diminished. The Sea, never destroyed.

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Dissolve into your vastness.

Let it all pass through.

You forget.

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What? What do I forget?

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You can only seek refuge in the Abyss

[shobaharidasuniverse]

The problem with dreams

“It’s the possibility of a dream coming true that makes life interesting.” - Paolo Coelho, The Alchemist

And also insufferable.

Cos it hurts. When you pursue your dream, build something and the world looks at what you have produced, rolls its eyes, chews it up and spits it back out. An animal hurt pours out of the deepest parts of you, hollowing you out.

And once again, you find yourself in a crumpled heap at the same station of despair that you thought you had long since departed with the same pointless question playing on your lips  –

“now what???”

Every cell of your body wants to quit. To look rejection in the eye and go, I see you. I hear you. I bow to you. You want to gather your wares, tie them up in a cloth, wave goodbye to the world and set off to a quiet, forsaken place where you can be safe with your hurt and broken dreams. Except as you rummage through what you thought was the debris of your broken dreams, you realise your dreams are still intact.

Dreams never break. You might break. Your spirit might be broken but your dreams never do. Rejection never taints them. They don’t understand defeat. They dance around, confused, waiting for you to come back to them. That’s when it dawns on you like a sledgehammer breaking through the hard, icy ground …

You never pursued your dreams. It was your dreams that had always pursued you.

So what do you do? How do you co-exist with your dreams, pursue them and not go insane while on the ride?

I suspect the answer lies in the age-old story of letting go of expectations except what is a dream if not an expectation????! Detachment seems a contradictory, futile pursuit.

Unless, letting go is the completely opposite motion.  Not a moving away but a falling in.  A going deeper. Getting to know your dreams on their own terms with your plans and expectations out of the way.

Maybe that’s what being true to your dreams is actually all about. Bowing to the intense life force of your dreams. Letting them take the lead. And you?

You just follow like a happy puppy with its tongue sticking out, wildly excited that you get to be on the ride.

[shobaharidasuniverse]

[shobaharidasuniverse]

Don’t let me forget

A Line is drawn in the sand.

Then and Now, worlds apart.

Countries lie cleaved open

The peripheries have frittered away

Our false Gods, our myths, our props

In a heap on the floor

Only the faultlines show.

Suddenly, one fell swoop has meaning

Borders disappeared. Jobs were lost. Lives snuffed out.

Like a sword to the neck.

You realise you don’t need much.

Safe shelter. Bills paid. Food.

Some don’t even have this.

Shame pricks at me.

You are thankful that someone is still driving the trains, cabs, buses. Someone is growing your food. Someone is cleaning all that you touch and someone is saving lives.

They kept the world running

As we scattered to our homes - the low-skilled. The minimum-waged essential workers.

Somewhere between Then and Now

Even words have become a farce.

And cliches have become truth.

We are only as strong as our weakest, our most vulnerable.

Our lives do depend on one another.

I stand at my windows and clap for the NHS workers. I wish I could do more. That somehow I could stitch together our collective applause to clothe and protect them. How did we come to live in a world amply prepared for war but so woefully ill-equipped for saving lives?

I switch on the TV.

Boris Johnson has corona. There are visible shocks and prayers.

Bus drivers have died. So have nurses and doctors.

But we continue to dispense them out without protection.

Yes, the virus might not discriminate but we are not in this together

We were never in this together.  

That alone has become clear.

A crisis never transforms anything, does it? It just reveals.

Some get the tests. Some get the doctors. Some get the ventilators.

It’s russian roulette for the rest of us

Between paracetamol and a prayer.

The world without humans marches on.

The sun rises. The flowers bloom. The birds sing.

Apparently, we never mattered much.

And that is a relief.

We all know what’s coming next. We have been here before. Salaries will be cut, Jobs will be lost. We will be asked to understand. To sacrifice.

Just us. Not the politicians. Never the CEOs.

Their jobs will forever remain indispensable.

The salaries always sacrosanct.

They say you can’t unsee what you have seen.

I have little faith in that.

The veil of the Temple might be torn

But memory is short. Distractions, many.

When the World of Then resumes again, when the bailouts finally come, when the same song is sung about who needs to be propped up and who should be left behind, all I ask is that I don’t be allowed to forget –

That it never really trickles down.

That nothing is inevitable.

Words. Priorities - everything is choice.

And that when all was said and done

Please don’t let me forget

Who it was

That kept the world running.