Retreat

I have dreams I want to share,
Not with all, for they don’t care;
But with one, I fear whose stare,
It’s my God, who’s always there.

I wish to share with Him, who believes in me,
He does I know, which is why I am here;
He loves me endlessly despite all my wrongs,
He accepts as I am, without a frown.
With Him alone I wish to stay,
Laugh, talk, share and play;
Just two of us, in a world of our own,
I have decided to be a recluse, to stay with Him alone;
This world, this life, gets on me at times,
I am not made for this world and no one here’s mine.
Deluge of sensitivity and emotions engulf my mind,
There’s no one who understands me, no one of my kind.
I am in this world of constant commotion and imbalance,
I don’t feel like talking to this world, but remain in silence;
They mock, they jibe, they gloat and criticize,
For they’ve nothing more to offer, as they’ve a vacuum inside.
I too participated in this world incomplete,
Fought, lied, smacked, criticized,
Cursed, swore, groused and abhorred.
But now I wish to abandon this world, yes I wish to retreat.

Forgive and Forget

We have heard this phrase ‘n’ number of times in our lives. But what exactly is meant by this? Let's take a simple example; A insults B for a minor fault in front of 10 people, this hurts B and they stop interacting. B is extremely hurt and gets frustrated with time, as he is unable to forget the incident and it is spoiling his mental and physical state. B desires to come out of it, but is unable to do so.

People say forgive and forget. True! Sounds simple, but isn’t easy. It takes efforts to calm the mind and explain that whatever happened, although was unpleasant, is past and dead. In fact, even a minute passed by is gone and dead, then how could something that is dead and non-existing hurt us? We don’t want to be hurt or rake over those unpleasant memories and spoil our mood. We wish to stay happy all the time but there’s something that keeps disturbing us. The incident is DONE, GONE and DEAD! We know this, then why is it still disturbing us? Well, it is our mind that dwells over the incident which drives us crazy.

Forgive and forget means a “state of mind” when the incident that has happened doesn’t hurt us anymore, even if we happen to remember it sometime. We may say that we have forgiven a person but sometimes we find it difficult to forget the incident. We don’t forget the incident as such, as the mind has the ability of storing it and it merely adds up to our memory. The true meaning of forgiving and forgetting is to get detached with the incident and not get hurt by remembering it.

This state of mind may be achieved only by explaining to ourselves that we don’t have control over certain things in life, for example, acts of God, other’s opinion, other’s actions, and the like. But, we do have control over certain other things in life, our opinion, our state of mind, our actions etc. Therefore, even when someone shouts at us for something not done, improperly done or for whatever reason, shouting and screaming is his action based on his/her own perception, we don’t have control over his temper, but by choosing to stay calm at that moment we choose to stay calm in future too. You may be assertive when you talk but need not be aggressive, is the Mantra!