Live Positive Way!
I guess, one word, which is repeatedly being heard throughout this pandemic is this word, ‘Mindfulness’. Many have written, shared and even conducted webinars on this topic ‘mindfulness’. Most of them connected the ‘Mindfulness’ with ‘Zen’ and kept insisting to stay in the ‘present’ and not to think about the ‘past’ and the ‘future’. Basically staying aware of oneself and the surroundings is actually mindfulness--as I understood the term. However, whatever I heard from many speakers, or articles that I read written by many writers, it is interpreted as staying 'only' in the present and direct us to forget the past and leave the future in the hands of god.
Yes... future being a hypothetical thing we may not worry much about it and keep doing our work, but, I somehow feel unconvinced when anyone say that we must forget the 'past'. They may say so referring 'only' to the sufferings or the challenges of the past, but past consists of 'both' positive and negative traces. Today’s present is going to be tomorrow’s past, so whatever we do and learn today is going to certainly benefit us in the time to come in the form of good 'lessons'. Life is a 'mixed bag'. We do have wonderful memories associated with our childhood days. Some great learnings that we have gained through our associations, the immense support and encouragement that we received from others, which continues to drive us even today. Hence it sounds unethical and illogical to forget those things. Am I right in thinking so?
Some may have a recent loss of a loved one in the family, like me, or even passing away of some legendary person whom we liked very much, who mattered a lot (there will be so many fond incidences and memories associated with them) but that too had become a past now. But deep in our mind we constantly keep thinking and recollecting what all happened in the past. Revisiting some lovely memories of our past will motivate us to stay positive and alive. There are hence many things which keep on rekindling our enchanting past positive memories. I personally feel that we all have super brains which can adjust and tune as per our instructions. We can monitor it by giving suggestions like, ‘keep all old memories in ‘Fond memories’ folder and bind all negative or troubled memories in a folder called ‘learnings’. We can indeed add a 'command/suggestion', “hey brain, whenever you think back about a past bad experience, do put a tag saying --- it is gone, the pain is not there now but I have learned something. It is really tough to ignore our past experiences. I guess, the extraordinary people or saints can do it, not a normal human being like us.
Can we ever forget the ‘Malgudi days’, our ‘grandma stories’? Or the way we tapped our legs for our favorite beats with our friends? Or the lovely moon time food with our cousins? Or the way we fell down a hundred times while we started riding our bicycle? Or the first day and the first time love blossomed? Or the first hand made gift we gave to our parents on their anniversary or birthdays? This list will go on and on and the life goes on adding a new experience and a new chapter and all these will get stored as ‘memories’ and ‘learnings’ as per the nature of the individual. That’s called life cycle, which you and I cannot change or forget even if we try or wish to do.
To add to this, I wish to include my husband’s advice here. He keeps saying, ‘never judge a person with just a few incidents or behavior, since people may change and such (bad) behavior of the person may just be for that particular event (moment)’. Hence holding grudges about past incidents or people will only strain our mind and getting hold of negative past as a learning can help us to even enjoy past fond memories even deeply. People who can follow this can get liberated from the past bad experience and will be able to grow even better and become successful individuals. I feel it is not even necessary to forget anything. It just happened and we moved on. On the other hand, we can reap the benefits of remembering fond memories again and again. Remembering good things and good people is always a pleasure and why not enjoy that? If I sound like a Charuvakka, let it be.
Life is not an exhibition to just display the present situation, but it is a balanced package of all that occurred in the past which created this pleasant present life! At present my ‘mind’ is ‘full’ of ‘fond memories’ and hence, to me, I am ‘mindful’ now. I have penned down my views here, you may agree or may not agree with me. You can post your views in my comment box! Let’s do it today and make this blog a past fond memory. I will revisit and enjoy reading your comments again and again. Keep blogging and stay happy…. Sorry.. Stay Mindful!
- Suganthi Sankaran
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