I was wondering for many days, about a particular topic called “being bored”. Strangely enough, so many persons of both my age and elders have faced this common problem, or still face it daily. One of my relatives, (who is almost of my age) complains of it daily. Retired adults are no exceptions either. They get bored watching television, gossips, reading newspapers, reading books, journals, walking, exercising, sleeping, eating, dozing….the list goes on endless. So much as this, if you keep them engrossed in some healthy discussions, they will get bored of that as well. If anybody comes up with any solutions to this I’ll be glad.
Some days back I was wondering as to what exactly is wrong with them? Maybe they are frustrated, maybe they had deserved better things in life, but only yesterday did I come up with a nice solution to this. Lose yourself in the Serene – that’s it! Just sit down, idle. Don’t keep a thing in mind – no worries, no curiosities, no anxieties, no tensions, no wishes, no desires, no luring – nothing; and then as I said – Lose yourself!
Venture out into the wilderness of imagination! Feel the pulse and its power flow through your veins!! The World rests in front of you, the abyss laid down, you are there all by yourself. Break all bounds, and free your mind, let it walk amid the beauties of its own world, where only holiness and purity may thrive! There is no suffering, no pains, no jealousy, no hatred, no sadness, no poverty, no racism, no differences, no corruptions, no vulgarities, no darkness – but only heavenly bliss. You are sited in a beautiful garden, with flowers all around you, their aroma bringing in the sweetest part within yourself – your inner mind!
There is no work over here, you’ve all the time in the holy world to explore, you don’t have to buckle up every-now-and-then for school, studies, office, meetings, college, projects, traffic jams etc etc…If you want you can sit along all day long and watch the beautiful gardens, the hills, the ponds and the streams, enjoy the Nature, enjoy the aroma, enjoy the holiness and purity – enjoy yourself! You’re free from all mortal bondage you ever had, there will be no one to stop you over here, you are the master – you are God, you are the King of yourself!
Butterflies of all kinds and colors fly around in the garden – the garden has flowers never seen before, you know them not, you stare at them as if you are experiencing flowers and their sweet scents for the first time in your life. The breeze becomes mild at times, resonate in your ears and then go past you, the flowers blooming in sweet sunlight, which has never been too strong. You gaze at the flowers, they gaze at you back. The marigolds, the hibiscuses, the roses – and ah, there is a small pool in the midst of this garden. There are Lotuses over there as well. HAVE A LOOK AT THEM – THE Marigold Flowers! They sway in the gentle breeze, humming past the only God of the world – you.
There are hills all around and you are in a beautiful valley. The hills have trees on them, they are not barren at all. There is a cottage in the garden where you live. You have unlimited supply of food, money – money??? ‘I don’t need money’ – you say to yourself. To explore the garden a bit more, you go near the pond, and – beautiful! The pond is actually not a pond, it’s a gentle stream flowing through your garden, and yo, it’s not deep at all, you can very well relax in the gentle waters of the same. They are flowing past you and going away forever – there, over there, that leaf is flowing away with the water, it is going……….going……….going away…………forever, never – never – never to come back again!
The sound of this water flowing is so cute, it is so beautiful in the sweetest place on earth, silence thriving and in that-already-set background, the water streaming through the underlying rocks, the sunshine forming the most beautiful rippling designs ever, you are tempted to give it a try, sit down with your legs immersed in the cool stream. Water was never cleaner before, never more bluish than that either. Soothed are you, all alone, with the flowers, the birds, the river, the cottage, the garden and of course, the beautiful World of yours! You sit down on a rock, look above to see the sky, and lo…so many beautiful birds forming a V up there! Jesus Christ – look at their colors, ah – their chirping, I can hear them too…so sweet and melodious. The Birds come down, perch themselves on the nearby branches of trees situated on a mount just beside the river.
You are currently seated on a stone with your feet below water. The birds are quietly chirping and talking among themselves in the trees. What are they talking about? Suddenly you spot a bird – over there, there. Small in size, the tail has a tinge of saffron and lemon yellow, the body has a mixture of light green with shades of mango-orange near the stomach. The wing is greener, and the neck has two shades of greenery along with reddish tinge. The stomach is filly yellowish, while the head (oh my god, how very small and cute) is a bit deeper in color with greenish shades all around. You earn for this bird, if only it came up to you and speak with you…. Yippee, the bird gave a small tweet and flew upto you, sat down on a similar stone as you are seated on, and looked at you.
No wonder, this is Nature at its imperial best! Look at the eyes of the bird, black gems sparkling out from the green little top-like round head. While the cool water washes your feet, you and the bird stare on at each other fanatically. You are as if dumb-struck, you cannot speak – or let’s put it this way, you do not want to speak lest it scares the bird and it flies way!!! You want to keep it, you want it to be with you always, the bird also keeps looking at you, at times shaking its tiny little head back-and-forth as if it also wants to speak, only waiting to be spoken.
“Hi” – you start, “I really like you, will you stay with me?” The bird stare back at you obnoxiously, and in the strangest of all tunes, gives you a reply you least expected – “Stay with humans? Are you crazy? I prefer to die than stay with such selfish beings.”
Thunderbolt jolts through your body within a second of that! The body buckles up vigorously and you tend to fall down from the stone! You are shocked with that reply, as the bird flies way from you; you stand up lifting your feet from the water, and suddenly, a chilly coldness descends upon you. Surprised and amazed, you look all around yourself to find the weather changed miraculously! The sunshine is gone, the breeze has turned stronger, the sky darker, the flowers have bent down, the sweet chirping of birds have stopped, the hills look ominous, the cottage far and distant! Butterflies which adorned this beautiful garden minutes back have also disappeared away.
You wonder what went wrong suddenly… the darkness of night has come – evening is about to prevail, you long for the sweet afternoon again.Everything seems so distressed, so melancholic, so tragic, you feel your heavy heart, you can’t help feeling sad and sorry for something, as you dip your feet one final time in the water and leap up with another jolt seeing how bloody cold the water is! You look down at the river water – and lo! You receive the third shock – THE SHOCK OF YOUR LIFE! Who are those?? You see images of other persons instead of your own in the water – and yes, they are Reflections, but not of you, your mind!
Terrible snapshots float up in the water showing the enormous sadness and pain that is existent today in our modern world. Pictures of the homeless, the orphans, the small children who cry all day out of hunger, the mother who lost her son in war, the daughter who lost her father in an accident, the new couple detached from each other forever by the laws of God, the neglected old living in old-age homes wanting to see their sons one more time before they finally take off from this mortal world and depart with the mundane finality that we all know, we all dread, but can’t help feeling that every ounce of a second brings us closer and closer to that day. You feel for them, you yearn for helping them – the poor people, the small children, the beggars, the handicapped! You grow ferociously tired of seeing these heavy pictures, you want to run away from this world forever, you want to go back – HOME! For the first time, you feel for your parents, your mother and father, your relatives, your family!
Then it is – RUN….RUN….RUN All the way…as you find yourself descending from that world to the even more harsh world of reality. You are now seated in front of a mirror, no rivers, no gardens, no cottages, no valleys, no hills – only figments of imaginative electrons!