“I want to hug you 2000 times” : Mindfully Childlike

Said my 7-year old to me this morning!

We've had this pristine ritual. A ritual we more or less formalized—of a big crush hug from him to me and me to him, right after shower, him cuddled in his bath towel, dewy and warm, smelling like the little baby that I cuddled first time 7-years back. This ritual, right before I help him into his school uniform, has been a mainstay of the short 30 minutes before he hops on to the school bus, off for 8 hours in the day.

The last couple of months we'd kind of detracted from this unsaid contract. 

And today, in a moment of the old, in a moment devoid of any imagined mishaps and misses, in a moment of just being with him, it all came back. He hugged me, the boy-child, allowing the child in him to say as he felt.

A more recent understanding of the ‘thousand with the three zeroes’ versus ‘the hundred with the two’. It was a visible split-second choice he made of the number highest in his understanding, of saying how he acutely felt (and perhaps has been missing) in that moment.

He made a conscious choice this morning. He was an inspiration. An inspiration that makes me want to shake off the hurry, the unconscious roughness of the morning routine, of my voice in a higher decibel, of the imagined ‘hurry-burry’ of a morning to catch the bus.

How surreal—the anxiety of missing the bus leads to Missing The Bus of Life—of spontaneous hugs, of heart-warming smiles and sloppy, gooey spontaneity.

I love sloppy, and I am going to be so as a Mom, henceforth.

That brings me to how conveniently I can pin-me-down to this newfound desire to commit, being the time of the year it is!

My Top 16 Sloppy-Mommy resolutions for 2015:

1.    Hug him, crush him, give him the best hug memories of his life.

2.    Don’t watch the clock, watch his abandon!

3.    Go on a giggle-chase, be silly.

4.    Play with him in the rain (and in the Sun, with sunscreen on!)

5.    Break the rules together, once in awhile and often.

6.    Join him to color outside the lines.

7.    Create surprises, unplanned wonders, curious encounters.

8.    Follow His heart.

9.    Lose control willingly.

10.Search together for better questions (quell the impulse to answer)

11.Teach him feelings.

12.Go where his mind takes me and become lazy to come back.

13.Teach him ‘the random’.

14.Make the bed together, or better just let the bed be, for a day!

15.Remember how really unique he is!

16.Really be there, with him! (being there 'for' him is passé)

J

'Having it All' should not feel like that.

A gentle share with you my friends, some of you who have been fairly impression-ed by Ms. Nooyi's now hugely debated, shared and tweeted interview.

I wrote this more than ten days back  (covered in the thick of Parisian indulgences) and delayed posting it lest it be deemed expressed under heavy influences, not to forget the reactionary expression-urge felt almost immediately after reading the interview and (soon after) this blogpost (http://yummyami.blogspot.sg/2014/07/this-isnt-usual-post.html) that inspired me to agree and shake me out of my laziness.

Since then many more discordant voices have appeared that tend to question, even de-pedestalise Ms. Nooyi's self indulgent version of the 'can't have it all' syndrome.

And today when I post this, this perspective is perhaps the only one that takes into account the 'Man's' position (if he had any) in this conundrum of chest-beating and back-thumping to burp up and spread the slogan of  'can't have it all-  thee woman' !

Of course this is a perspective, another viewpoint. I, however, am confident to bet that this one would potentially resonate more, of course after some internal dialoguing:).

Consider this, if you as a thinking woman want to be considered as leading a life of 'choice' versus a life that screams of 'sacrifice and victimhood', what is it that Nooyi is suggesting to us?! 

She chose to be a CEO,  right?! (I mean even I would if it's on offer). But then why is the life thereafter a projection of victimhood at the home front? Can a male CEO embark on a similar freeway to express how wronged he is because he's had to give up on his role as a family man or a doting father? Can he even choose to express this on his blog leave aside in a much touted interview ?!

What about a man's role as a son, that many men do abdicate under duress to maintain conjugal felicity? Does he or can he interview, write or even blog about it?! Equally in this scenario he is without this option of expression and feeling just because these inhabiters of family life are expected to suck it up because that is their inheritance! Imagine the sacrilege it will generate for him to be seen victimised in any such reality!

(And these are the men we are thinking of trumping in our journey up the ladder of corporate well being?!)  In a single breath we are staking a claim to the highest / worthy throne as also screaming that we are wronged by our biological clock ?! Isn't the highest throne a choice? Isn't listening to our biological clock and fulfilling our desire (yes including my partner's) for a child, then a second one, our choice too?! At no point thereafter can I or my partner pretend we are shortchanging our lives - work wise or other wise. 

Here, do consider who the victim is when these two worlds clash as suggested by Ms Nooyi - the answer is 'No One' or at a stretch the child perhaps - simply since she didn't have a say in the decision. 

What is also a choice is to be a double income family to reap the goodness of additional cash-flow for branded education for our kids, frequent holidays and splurges that might often be indulgent. These are choices.

I would like to confirm - and reaffirm - that I have had the privilege of Choice!

If we can, let us look back on our lives and own up that everything we have (well almost ;)) has been a choice! You would agree most of us have been fairly free to choose. Should it then not rile us that a celebrated, iconic CEO whines and tells the story around it as if life happened to her! I know it can still happen to us in small measures... but to her? Not fair Ms Nooyi to get carried away in the drama of sacrificial victimhood!  Aren't we the same sisterhood who claim to be and have been in control of our lives?

And as Moms - is this the kind of 'coping mechanism ' that we need to learn from and emulate? I am sorry Ms Nooyi - as a mother I am horrified at your suggestions of what you resorted to... Is there a merit perhaps in trying to bring up reasonable kids, may be kids whose sense of entitlement do not extend beyond decent proportions?! Dear God, may the inability to attend coffee meetings never make another mother feel so guilty - in my mind, only fierce guilt (an extremely disempowering (weak?)position) can make one resort to means for such diabolical empowerment. Please girls, let's not get carried away by Ms. Nooyi's sample of smart motherhood - we all have immense wisdom within to sustain a rational and reasonable upbringing of our children.

Let us pause, ask ourselves why ever so often, ever so obsessively, often conveniently we  label ourselves or identify with a type - broadly, either as an overachiever or as a victim. A successful career woman is the Alpha woman, an overachiever or at least worthy of a raised eyebrow! A woman who dialled out of a career to stay at home and bring up kids is a victim and /or a hugely selfless Devi. 

Why does it have to be either this or that? Is it likely because we are in contradiction with our own idea of selves, clashing with our own definition of what : how : where we should be? Are these frequent FB forwards in admiration of views & counter views the justification we are looking for? Did we expect our lot to be unsuccessful in what we set out to do and now we need someone else to stamp success to rest our internal dissonance?!

Aren't we at peace with Where we are?

If the answer is a Yes to any of the above - let's attempt a Pause, and let it all well-up to an understanding of this dependence, confront it, (and then) let's as well laugh at it. And as we begin to shrug it off let us know one thing for sure - that we are all beings (being female is incidental at least in this debate), and as optimized beings we are all harnessing the best that is inside each one of us - just like that guy, incidentally - and this, my friends, needs no label, no commentary, no justification, no feminism, no explaining to - even in an interview:).

In this debate, I can see no one more Buddha-like than the Man, calm, unquestioning, not looking at justifying a drama around years of status-quo in his status within the family  - in Nooyi's words 'last on the list' ! 

Salute to you, mah' Man!

A chance to recalibrate a new living

Oh, so I was a phone-widow for a week! Why, is that melodrama? Really?! Drama all right and there's nothing mellow in not having recourse to messaging (WhatsApp, Viber included) anyone  and no access to mail and FB on the move! Needless to say, I also did not have access to my entire contact list on my phone including Narayan's! (Although he is denying he had a terrific week free of a snoop-gating wife's numerous quests & queries all aimed towards 'What Time' does he get home?) And you know what that means, right?! it means being practically cut off, marooned, life hijacked, feeling prehistoric & retired to the desktop or the landline for the most important talking needs of the day!

There's something else it meant - It meant no mindless, all day long, anytime, anywhere surfing, sniping, spying, parking, poking, emoting, checking and all that suff that can be categorically bracketed under JLT. Yes, and that is what I realised as the week progressed. I checked myself for all the signs : crestfallen, angry, depressed - None! C'mon,was not even the toxic-me with my patient punching bag (yes Narayan) - No luck! Was I crazy for not going crazy about all this?

The week went seamlessly, mostly to my own surprise - no one missed me and whoever did connected up on other medium. I did not go batty with the week's progress rather a sense of calm spread in me; I felt more mindful about the house & its inanimate habitants, now manifest in many new ideas  & pretty corners; I progressed rapidly in my reading; most of all replete spending a lot of time with myself.

So today when the iPhone came back to life and I had a simple choice to make on the prompt - 'Access old iCloud data' versus 'Start aNew which will erase all old data' & I chose Start New. Only a moment's hitch and I felt liberated (almost physically)! It was a feeling of a moment or a choice of a life ahead that I can now see, very simply. It encapsulates everything, many things : all those emotions that we frequently find inverted within commas "fear of the what if's" "we all resist change" "shed your baggage" " live mindfully" " quality not quantity" " keep what gives you joy, shed the rest...".

It somehow augurs a shift, and hopefully an evolution to the kind of living that I wish ahead of me - a life full of moments - meaningful, mindful and joyful from the core of my being. A life which I owe to myself, not owed to me by someone else, a life that I have to earn, learn from and cherish.

Like I told a friend on re-connecting 'It's like a chance for a new life in an old body' and frankly, i sensed the real meaning only on expressing it. As we go along in life we collect more & more, accumulate without noticing, stock up without needing, and many of these acquisitions just lie there, not needed, not nurtured, unused, collecting dust (in many ways), not getting any care nor imparting any joy. These make their own kind of baggage in us.

Let me explain in a related context - I can remember a time when the number of friends on one's FB list would impress me no end, and deluded myself with 400+ friends on mine. The last one year has been more about the need for some quietude on that channel and so I started shedding off some, or many by the same logic, to some 200+ in the current count. Mind you, I don't chat, message or Like most of their life happenings, but I do feel connected with them at some level, call it in the Unity of spirit, or in recognising the Oneness in our being, or simple like-mindedness. I feel good about each one on my feed without being judgemental about the ones I shed off ( or at least that's the effort).

And so it all reaches a point when only the chip, chip, chip; & the shed, shed, shed - gives us any kind of liberation from all that we think we need (or know); that's perhaps the beginning of the progress towards my True self, to that dear universe that relates to me and that I relate to, the world of people that I draw from and hopefully who draw from me! Simply, the oneness of resonance.

So, going ahead and as I re-input my friends' details one by one, I am reconnecting (in a sense) with what really matters to me, what is meaningful in life, adding some that I did not value much before; following my heart and instincts about some, just everything far more mindfully, spontaneously, somehow more quietly.

{Disclaimer: this state of bliss does not take into account any future crisis arising out of missing phone numbers of oft frequented shops, restaurants, grocers, delivery men, maids, doctors, drivers - either Indian or otherwise, living or dead.}

Do give this a watch, friends.
http://blog.petflow.com/this-is-a-video-everyone-needs-to-see-for-the-first-time-in-my-life-im-speechless/