The hospital offers a myriad mélange where boundaries and identities whittle down to weight of suffering one carries along. Walking through the corridors of huge hospital can be an eye opener, especially if one is visiting cancer or other life threatening disease wards.
I am waiting outside a psychiatrist's clinic who is seeing my mother in law, suffering with depression and mild dementia. The doctor is suspecting advance bipolar disorder which he feels is triggered by her surgery for cancer.
My mother in law who has always been a very strong lady looks fragile and vulnerable, struggling to cope up with the physical and serious psychological issues that seem to be growing by each day. I look around and my heart breaks looking at worried, fearful, lost and tense faces evidently fighting their own conflicts. It is impossible to read my book as I can't help wondering what battles these people must be encountering in their respective life.
We all want to be happy, loved, be healthy and feel cared for. Those who are
lost want to be found; the lonely ones want to be comforted with tender care and love, those who have lost the plot again and again want to get it all right and wish for one more chance even when in their heart they know they stand none. The way each one of us copes with suffering is interestingly varied and unique. As life rushes us on with hope for best and lands us our own share of worst,
we all struggle for meaning and are afflicted with self doubt.
Sometimes, life just sneaks up on us and it does not
matter how great our social support, how big our bank balance, how insured our life might appear to be or how spiritually awake we might be – we all still fall prey to our fears, feeling naked, threadbare by the realization of ultimate truth that nothing can be taken for granted and one doesn't know what the next moment really holds for us! Within fraction of a second, all the beautiful, blessings that life bestows on us unasked, can be taken back without any prior notice!
While I am lost in typing my thoughts, a toddler from across the hall, suffering with Leukemia takes hesitant, fragile steps walks to me trying to reach my face with his tiny fingers. Scared to lift him in my embrace lest I hurt him, I look in his lovely eyes and faint smile that reflects his struggle to overcome his pain. He tries to engage me in conversation that is difficult to comprehend and yet there is something sublime going on between the two of us for few moments!
And in those profound moments of divinity in most unexpected circumstances, I realize, life has its rhythm and we have ours, both beautifully designed to
coexist in harmony so that when we do what needs to be done from our end and just let
life be, we garner acceptance and serenity. Abiding by and accepting what is beyond our control, we can transform the moment and become awakened to the beauty that surrounds us and also that lies within.
