On the nature of Independence

It’s been well over one and a half months and the journey has had up-hills and down-hills, stops and starts, resting places and places of indecisiveness, fluctuating emotions and places of resolution. It isn’t unlike the journey of a country now into its 56th year of independence. What does this word mean to us? When is it that we become truly independent? Is there even such a state or is it always a work in progress?

For some, independence lies in our ability to stand on our own two feet. Usually, it is associated with self-sufficiency, but it is a type of self-sufficiency that does everything on its own. No such state ever existed, yet I wonder why we persist so many times in our personal lives, to claim that it does. "I am a self-made man," a man puffs his chest and says, and so says the self-made woman too, who clawed her way through patriarchy to stand on her own two feet. But really, no self-made ever existed without the help of a support net. There is always a network. There are always people around who push the work or in some way facilitate its movement. But our stories about this purported self-making is often so convoluted that we create stories that suit the way that we want to market it.

I refer to this notion of the story because it is so present in everything that we do that it is unavoidable so please bear with me.

A month ago I attended a series of lectures on The Art of Bhakti (devotion) at the Chinmaya Mission, Couva. The visiting missionary, speaking on the practice of meditation very beautifully put it "when you sit to meditate, your mind is bombarded by thoughts. The idea is not to control them. It is to observe them and gently push them aside, (and here most importantly) you observe the thought, but do not enter into the theme of the thought."

Example: Petrotrin. Enter into the theme of the thought

"Look how they closing down Petrotrin."

TTUTA, entering the thought, decides to hold a day of rest next week in solidarity. Other people, begin to talk about how crime going to escalate now. Others begin to worry. Where all these people going now? Some people might commit suicide. (The anger builds up). And then the talk moves into how much money the politicians stealing, that they going to have to pay for this because karma is hell. (Further anger because people feel helpless). And so the thought moves from one thing to the other. Somebody becomes a rogue superhero in the whole mix and starts to think about vigilante activities. And so the rabbit hole gets deeper.

We are all familiar with these feelings. But the interesting thing about emotions as I only recently learnt from my recent profound experience, is that they are just emotions. They only attain meaning when we attach meaning to them. Someone recently asked me what that meant. Well what that means is that anger is heated only when we begin to create a story around the anger. For example, someone curses us for driving too slow, immediately the blood goes to your head.

"What the (bleep) wrong with he boy? Pigs! People real have no broughtupsy eh! These men see a woman driving and feel that they could say what they want. You could treat your wife so but doh play you treating me so."

The story about this man and his abusive tendencies suddenly becomes the story you create. We may also create a story about how people are all just for themselves and we begin to tie that in with the government and then bring that down to the race of the driver and so it goes. But should we have taken a deep breath and just carried on along without attaching all this meaning, that anger would have dissipated and the sun would have kept shining and the world would have continued to be a good place to be. But this requires constant practice and can be highly draining. Given that our brains are wired for story-telling, it is only inevitable that emotions will carry stories. But herein lies the key to our independence for, should we not attach assumptions to situations and deal with the situation in a practical manner, perhaps then, we shall begin to progress towards a proper form of independence.

As we keep looking for our centre (ideas borrowed from Brené Brown’s Rising Strong): What assumptions do we make about our leaders? What assumptions do we make about each other? Which stories are facts? Which are half-truths?

When we begin to think deeply about these, then only can we really begin to have serious conversations for change.

For some, independence lies in our ability to stand on our own two feet. Usually, it is associated with self-sufficiency, but it is a type of self-sufficiency that does everything on its own. No such state ever existed, yet I wonder why we persist so many times in our personal lives, to claim that it does. “I am a self-made man,” a man puffs his chest and says, and so says the self-made woman too, who clawed her way through patriarchy to stand on her own two feet. But really, no self-made ever existed without the help of a support net. There is always a network. There are always people around who push the work or in some way facilitate its movement. But our stories about this purported self-making is often so convoluted that we create stories that suit the way that we want to market it. I refer to this notion of the story because it is so present in everything that we do that it is unavoidable so please bear with me.

A month ago I attended a series of lectures on The Art of Bhakti (devotion) at the Chinmaya Mission, Couva.

The visiting missionary, speaking on the practice of meditation very beautifully put it “when you sit to meditate, your mind is bombarded by thoughts. The idea is not to control them. It is to observe them and gently push them aside, (and here most importantly) you observe the thought, but do not enter into the theme of the thought.”

Example: Petrotrin. Enter into the theme of the thought

“Look how they closing down Petrotrin.”

TTUTA, entering the thought, decides to hold a day of rest next week in solidarity. Other people, begin to talk about how crime going to escalate now. Others begin to worry. Where all these people going now? Some people might commit suicide. (The anger builds up). And then the talk moves into how much money the politicians stealing, that they going to have to pay for this because karma is hell. (Further anger because people feel helpless).

And so the thought moves from one thing to the other. Somebody becomes a rogue superhero in the whole mix and starts to think about vigilante activities. And so the rabbit hole gets deeper.

We are all familiar with these feelings. But the interesting thing about emotions as I only recently learnt from my recent profound experience, is that they are just emotions. They only attain meaning when we attach meaning to them. Someone recently asked me what that meant. Well what that means is that anger is heated only when we begin to create a story around the anger.

For example, someone curses us for driving too slow, immediately the blood goes to your head.

“What the (bleep) wrong with he boy? Pigs! People real have no broughtupsy eh! These men see a woman driving and feel that they could say what they want. You could treat your wife so but doh play you treating me so.”

The story about this man and his abusive tendencies suddenly becomes the story you create.

We may also create a story about how people are all just for themselves and we begin to tie that in with the Government and then bring that down to the race of the driver and so it goes. But should we have taken a deep breath and just carried on along without attaching all this meaning, that anger would have dissipated and the sun would have kept shining and the world would have continued to be a good place to be. But this requires constant practice and can be highly draining. Given that our brains are wired for story-telling, it is only inevitable that emotions will carry stories.

But herein lies the key to our independence for, should we not attach assumptions to situations and deal with the situation in a practical manner, perhaps then, we shall begin to progress towards a proper form of independence.

As we keep looking for our centre (ideas borrowed from Brené Brown’s Rising Strong): What assumptions do we make about our leaders? What assumptions do we make about each other? Which stories are facts? Which are half-truths?

When we begin to think deeply about these, then only can we really begin to have serious conversations for change.