This one is a piece of my heart. It comes from the depth of my soul, from the core of my being.
Traditionally in India, seeds of wisdom are implanted into the student's mind by the Guru. Today I wish to share something very fundamental that one of my favorite teachers seeded in me. We call this funda - "DTW".
As the young child grows up, the relationship between parents and the child matures into something deep and wonderful. Both the parties have a common goal - "A good life for the young one". As time swiftly passed by and I turned 22, it was my 4th year at IIT Madras. And I was now under the tender care of my Professors who were not just kind and gentle, but some of the finest of the human beings I ever encountered in my life.
Apart from all the drama we do, the respect, the admiration, obedience and everything alike, there is a fundamental tone of love between the guru and the sishya (as sanaathana dharma puts it). The guru reads his sishya's mind and everything that is going in it, in the very first look.
I had the fortune of meeting one such a fine gentleman @ IIT Madras. Eventually as I grew up, I would take all the questions in my inquisitive mind to him. Being the young and energetic person he is (an absolute cool guy), he'd always spend time with me (despite knowing the fact that - if I came, it would take a few hours :D)
This funda of DTW comes from the long fundae session I had with him that evening. What he spoke that evening with me shaped me as a person and gave me the eternal peace that I enjoy even today.
It goes as follows:
In his words : "The second thing I want to tell you is - 'Don't compare !', Sneha I would not like you to compare yourself with anybody in the world.
If I compare myself with millions of people who cannot even count, I will only let pride take over and if I compare myself with the Nobel Prize winners, I will only feel small and bitter about life. What's the point of comparing myself to my equals ?"
Somewhere he liberated my mind from the action of comparison that it has been engaged in for 22 years. Somewhere, his logic had so much strength that I couldn't deny it. After having an involved discussion that evening, I came back and sat in the Sharav balcony contemplating on what we had discussed and trying to summarize in my diary all that we've discussed.
As the evening came to a close, the clock showed a 6:45 P.M. and it was time for "mess". Anusha came to the balcony with the 'mess call' and we sat down discussing how inherently we are programmed to compare. When I say 5 and 3, the mind compares and has a result 5>3, even without being asked to think. It did the same thing between our CGs ( can you believe it ! people from different branches of engineering also compared their CGs against each other ) our finances and everything on the earth without a question of why ? It seemed like comparison became as natural as breathing.
This led to what is called the "Rat Race" phenomenon. Its about running blindly like the 2 mice in the alley (as described in "Who moved my cheese?". Running running with out even thinking where are we going, running even faster because everybody else is running.
It was then we realized "How easily our minds would do the calculations without even checking if that's necessary !" The deal in front of us now was to see if we could cut down this unnecessary spending of mental energy. It called for a shift from "I think. Therefore I am!" to "I am. I can think if I want"
At a very young age he cut our strings off. By not comparing ourselves with anybody, we were forced to think, to look within and find out who we were and what we liked, irrespective of what others thought. Because, it matters not. This in our young voice we lovingly called "DTW: Ditch the world!".
We had it written all over - our books, our body, our computers etc.,. but most importantly it was etched in our hearts and with practice it seeped into our soul. What a boon it became, we were not only held off from getting into the rat race, but by choosing our own path, we became responsible for our lives. Our minds stopped comparing the apples and the oranges anymore.
Often we compare apples to oranges, and demand the apples to be like oranges and oranges to be like the apples. But if they had to be like each other, we needn't have two varieties of fruits. They would have been the same. Likewise there is a reason for things to be the way they are. The beauty of the universe lies in its diversity and every thing has to be appreciated for what it is.
People have to be looked upon holistically. We can never even understand the circumstances a person faced or the situation they are in. There is no point of comparison because each of us are unique in a thousand different ways, each of us have a duty to perform, a gap to fill, on this wonderful planet.
The moment mind gives up comparison, it also loses what comes as a result - judgement. By internalizing DTW, we not only found our peace withing but also became less judgmental human beings. This made us see people as full beings in the light of the new torch that we now found. And now, everybody seems beautiful, as beautiful as we are !.
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