Unless I Take Care Of 'Me', I Can't Help Anyone

Life will continue to throw curve balls at me and I will have to keep evolving my strategy to deal with each situation.
But I sure do feel hopeful and grateful for each day of life.
And that surely helps to keep me going, notes Aarti David.

A solo journey of life can be very tough.

Navigating through all the peaks and troughs is not easy, no matter how strong a personality you might consider yourself to be.

It's not even a question of your resilience at one point. But about adaptability and acceptance, I guess.

Sometimes we choose to live alone and sometimes situations are such that you are pushed to be on your own.

And whether by choice or circumstance, the bottom line is that it's never easy.

There may be days when you feel fine being left to your own devices.

But then there are the days where the emptiness caves in on you and you feel like you might lose your mind.

What makes it worse is that you are unable to articulate it to anyone on the outside.

Hoping that someone would reach out and simply understand without the need for any explanations.

I read a book by Kristen Hannah recently titled The Great Alone.

It's about a family that decided to move from mainstream America in the 1970s to Alaska.

Little did they realise that this move wouldn't just be a lifestyle shift.

It would be a battle for survival -- not just with the external situation but also having to deal with one's inner demons.

It talks about how the extreme cold weather and the darkness, or the lack of sunlight, make everything gloomy and filled with despair.

Their daily struggle for food and basic necessities, coupled with little or no human interaction, pushed the family of three, over the edge.

For the father, his time as a PoW during the Vietnam War likely contributed to his fragile mental state and the trauma resurfaced as uncontrollable aggression.

As the book says 'Alaska didn't create character; it revealed it.'

The extreme circumstances acted as a trigger and pushed him to such an extent that he seemed consumed by the darkness within and without.

It made me realise that if it remains unchecked, we all can become prisoners of our minds.

Our thoughts can take us down the path which is best left untraversed. And yet, we all go down that spiral at some point or the other.

Especially those who like me are learning to manoeuvre through life on their own and tend to become hopeless on occasion.

It's not a pathetic situation, so I'm not looking for any pity.

It's just a peek into the everyday reality of my existence, which isn't always smiles injected with doses of positivity.

It is sombre and dark too.

It doesn't take much to get submerged in the sea of self-doubt and self-pity when you're on your own all the time.

Sure, there are friends and family. But they all have their commitments and responsibilities and no one can be with you 24/7.

There have been good times and I have no complaints, a few regrets maybe.

But it's also true that life has not been kind to me in the recent past and not having a regular job has only compounded the problems.

I do realise though, that it is incumbent upon each person to take care of themselves, not just physically but emotionally and spiritually too.

A very dear and close friend of mine who saw me struggling and despondent, introduced me to Buddhism.

It wasn't easy to connect with in the beginning, the sceptic that I am and continue to be.

But practicing this philosophy has helped me to overcome the darkness inside me in more ways than one.

Chanting helped me calm my unsettled mind and meeting people through this faith helped me believe in the power of good and humanism.

Not to say that I don't have dark days since I started this practice, but I don't always feel alone.

I know that there is a whole community of people to support me in my journey. And who I can support too.

And there is always hope.

I'm not propagating anything here, just that when I felt rudderless and out at sea.

This grounding helped me immensely. I have begun to look at each day with renewed hope and some amount of positivity.

The glass that I always saw to be half empty, now seems half full.

I feel gratitude for all that I have rather than dwelling on what I don't.

Sure, I feel dejected and miserable at times, I have many bad days and sometimes I even end up crying.

But I find myself being able to snap out of these situations a lot faster than I did before.

I understand that to be happy, I have to be my own friend.

Unless I take care of 'me', I can't help or support anybody.

In the end it's our decisions that drive our destiny. We create the causes and have to live with the effects or the consequences of those.

Each of us has their own journey and the path that we choose eventually helps us cope.

What is essential I guess is the human spirit.

The desire to continue to go on. To not give up despite all the challenges and hardships.

Appreciating each new day as a gift and cherishing each person for their presence.

Another thing I realised is that begrudging other only makes things worse.

One has to eventually learn to adapt and change one's own perspective to stay calm.

There is a great Snoopy poster that I saw and keep as a reminder to myself which says, 'When you can't control what's happening, challenge yourself to control the way you respond. That's where your power lies'.

It's true that life will continue to throw curve balls at me and I will have to keep evolving my strategy to deal with each situation.

But I sure do feel anchored and hopeful and grateful for each day of life. And that surely helps to keep me going.

What about you?

Feature Presentation: Ashish Narsale/Rediff.com