Random Scribbles: Acceptance
Last evening, I walked up to the sprawling park in my apartment after a long time. It was brightly lit, except that the trees stood as dark soldiers, silent and erect as if they had figured out their lives. Rain, shine, breeze, noise, silence — they stood there, weathering the elements and letting go of their withering parts. The gold and amber foliage beneath their feet, ready to be blown away at a strong whiff, indicated that as seasons change they let go.
Sitting on the swing, I saw the living and dead together, I wondered how to live a life like that, letting go of parts that were so integrated with oneself. Is this the difference between love and life? Love is a streak that comes and then goes away in a journey called life. The relationship between the leaf and a tree, beyond its physical connection, is that of a parent and child.
The life of a leaf is significantly shorter than a tree and nobody ever remembers a leaf — they do their little things, turn brown from little green, and all the glorious colors in between and wither in the autumn breeze. New leaves are born, and the cycle of myriad births continues. But there is one tree.
If the tree were a person and it had so many little relationships in its long life — the lifetime of a leaf is a blip considering its longevity — I would consider that its life is complicated and almost philosophical. The art of having short-term love — whether you consider the leaf as an offspring or a lover, and then letting go and moving on, and doing it all over again is as complex as it gets.
The leaf has only one to love — the tree. The tree has many leaves and its love is divided (or so it seems.) This seems imbalanced at first thought, but it is a perfect symbiosis of a lifetime full of love by the leaf and a short stinted love by the tree. A tree needs the leaf to grow and keep its life on, and a leaf needs the tree to support its life’s journey.
I reflected on my life and the happenings over the past decades. Some people have come and gone, filling my life with joy and sorrow, love and hate. The stinted relationships have come and gone, but if there was lasting damage, my mind blocks them out. There is a conscious effort in me to forget the hurt, the stint, or even the person — as if I am blessed with selective memory. Call it dissociative amnesia, but it has served me well. So, I am the tree in such a relationship.
But it is not universal. I remember and love people who are special, beyond the family, and I have loved them for a lifetime. In such a relationship, I am a leaf, for I have poured all my life into it –most of it was just waiting.
“I’ve learned that waiting is the most difficult bit, and I want to get used to the feeling, of knowing that you’re with me, even when you’re not by my side.”
― Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes
The waiting part was almost constant — for it was almost sure that things wouldn’t happen. The satisfaction lay in the fact that the person was somewhere else, not by my side, but the wait — the only act of love I perform. Such were the many years that went past — I got married, had a kid, and the family grew, and I grew older. Yet the waiting remained the same. Somewhere, in the corner of my heart, the love remained — like a little lamp glowing in the dark. Little, almost microscopic, but it was undeniably lit all the time. I ventured into that corner once in a while, just to check in — and like the leaf, I thought that the waiting could outlast my lifetime.
But unlike the leaf, my waiting wasn’t silent. It was demonstratively loud. I rained verses and published books. If love was ever stoic, it was here, but not silent. Why would I ever be silent? I am not the quiet type.
“I have never found anybody who could stand to accept the daily demonstrative love I feel in me, and give back as good as I give.”
― Sylvia Plath, Journals of Sylvia Plath
So when my waiting ended, the only question was that of what remained. That was the hard part. There was something to live for, like how Nandi, the bull, waits eternally for Lord Shiva. But what if the Lord, the beloved appears in front of Nandi? I don’t know, to be honest.
I could guess that when the waiting ended I would be in the gates of heaven. But what would the heaven be made of? It took some time to determine that the person’s reappearance in my life was the fruit of waiting. Right there, just in front of me. But as it turned out, it was like an afterlife.
For the leaf, the physical separation ended its love for the tree. For me, when the wait ended, we were together, but a new state arose — the satisfaction of just being together, yet being distant and stoic. This was the state of acceptance, the state of Nirvana.
Like how the leaves lay at the foot of the tree — nearby, visible, yet separated. I walked closer to the pile of leaves — they were wet and glistening from the warm drizzle of the evening. The final connection between them and me was the acceptance that the aftermath of waiting is stoic, silent love.
~Ashok Subramanian © 2024
