Life Chooses Us
Trusting others simplifies matters in life. Can we at least begin with, trusting first time others. There is no other way to be.
Elon Musk asks us to move away from meetings, presentations. To be useful.
Most of us, it seems, inflate our standing on positive attributes (intelligence, ability, morality et al), and we ignore the negative information. Let us be watchful.
Sunil Khairnar has set me think alternatively. Living more simple. Living with less. Being more silent. Living more truthful. Living with less text. Less exaggerations, both ways. Living in search of knowledge and its deployment usefully.
Supreme Court comments that the value of homemaker’s work is equal to the work of the husband in office. Let us be clear now.
There is a reversal – from tangible investments and products-services earlier to investments in intangibles for less tangible products and services. ‘Free’ knowledge is now being sold. Most of the richest are the sellers of data, information, knowledge, tools, skills and related. Can we go back? In time, where we have these things almost free again.
Ramarao, my genius friend, took me to self-employed communities, without monthly pay cheques. Money comes in its own rhythm. Seasonally. Mostly in kind, cash. The village community centred around farming, weaving, craft etc., as other service communities servicing the central community and paid annually in kind. Like barbers, washers, potters, carpenters/smiths, teachers, guards, couriers, history keepers, magicians, nomadic artists, funeral service providers, entertainers et al. All this linked to the rhythm of life. Most of the products for local consumption and small percentage to the world outside. This equation has got disturbed and we are in deep trouble. We need to get back. May be in a modified manner. We need to be with nature, celebrating its rhythms, in coexistence with it. We need to be together interdependent. With more crops. Layered crops. With more crop intensity. Without losing productivity, meeting nutrition diversity.
Can we think of budgets without deficits? Can we think of no debt financing the expenditure? Can we live within our modest means? Can we not limit our borrowings to a threshold level? Can there be controls not allowing us to borrow?
More in the line of many central services, is not it time to have a development service? Or more specialized services? As we have services for raising funds, we need services for meaningful spending. For livelihoods, poverty reduction, social development. For social impact. For collectives and enterprises. For education and health. For employment, self-employment and entrepreneurship. We also need to decentralize and transfer ‘development and welfare’ into the hands of local governments and people’s self-help collectives. Is not it time we introduce a system where maximum to minimum is not more than 100? If minimum wage is Rs.250 per day, or Rs.5000 per month of 20-days, can the maximum pay be limited to Rs.500,000 a month, all inclusive, including all perks. In public and in private sectors. Can we not ensure that everyone in the country gets at least Rs.2500 per month as a universal basic grant for survival? With free 1000-day nutrition, education up to 18, health for all, care above 60?
Can we have a service or two committed to these?
Can we truly have minimal government and maximum governance? Can we minimize government? Can we minimize secretariats? Can we decentralize workforce across? Can we go hybrid work patterns?
Can we consider reforms in farming sector with due diligence based on the true nature of socio-economic cultural fabric, human-life-spoil-planet health, and enhancing the consumer rupee significantly in the hands of the producer? Can we shorten the value chains? Localize? Collectivize? Communitize? Can we offer ‘survival’ stipend? Can we keep the soil covered, 365-days, with multiple layered crops? Can we ensure doubling, tripling incomes to farmers? Can we offer decent life to them? Governance, Government is required for all this. Collectivized Communities in the fore-front, with Civil Society helping.
Gita, my sister, shares her birthday with Narendra Nath (Vivekaananda). 111 years apart. Vivekaananda is an example of doing so much in such a short 39 years of ‘life’. Ramakrishna Order began with 16 young men. Later, Ramakrishna Mission, a machinery to spread education and uplift the poor-vulnerable-marginalized. Without any resources in hand. Deep mediation on ‘Vivekaananda’ rock island at Kanyakumari gave the inner strength and the call. No-condition funds from friends started helping the ‘call’. Series of stir-creating lectures set the order (and the Ramakrishna Math at Belur, 1898) going forward and the mission (founded on 1 May 1897) growing up. Celebrated devoted friends joined hands.
Vivekaannda argued that the religion and science are not contradictory to each other but are complementary. Religion seeks pursuit if supreme freedom, knowledge and happiness. He articulated ‘spiritual humanism’ taking all souls as part of divinity. He recommended intrinsic purity and oneness within, and without. He could combine Indian spirituality with Western humanism that includes freedom, equity and respect. He instilled the need for us to serve and take the poor out of poverty. In some sense, he is an integrator of ideologies of various ‘groups’ in India, Bharat. He discussed the sameness and omnipresence of the soul of the universe, a sum total of all souls and loving the soul within and without.
Vivekaannada discussed and taught yoga, that included action (karma), devotion-purification (bhakti), knowledge (jnaana) and concentrated meditation, reflection for antaraatma (raja).
Meditation, reflection takes us forward. Keeping us at ease, and on course, steadfast. With stronger willpower. Daily practice, habit helps. No day without it. The questions to meditate and reflect, part from who am I, and why am I here, include – one key thing I need to focus, for significant impact; why our ‘friends, believers’ are not taking us/coming along; where do we increase our intensity; why are we not starting off, despite a firm decision; what can go wrong with what we are pursuing; why are we not getting results, strategies or methods; what do we change, if we have to start again.
Add giving to it. Giving may slow us down. Slowing down helps us to see clearly. To feel the beauty in everything around us. Making us to live more usefully and meaningfully in coexistence. Living pace higher than our natural rhythm is not OK and may not help us in leading, learning, loving and in our intense relationships.
It occurs many a time – the life we lived and are living, is not chosen by us. The life has chosen us. And we keep living it, thinking that we are choosing it in some sense. We drift into survival. Existence. Can we regain and retain this freedom, choice? Can we smile more? Can we appreciate lives around us more? Can we join the symphony of the universe with our instruments, in sync?
Let us sync in harmony. Let us join up. Let us be in symphony. Let us be in brindagaanam, flowing. Let us keep flowing. Local useful coexistence, in N, with N. For 7L.
Join us in the world of yoga of local useful coexistence – viswajaneenageetayoga for 7L.
G Muralidhar