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/
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