Category: The Resistance

Pricking The Thorn

~ Jay-Ram ~ Leave a comment
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Image by Manfred Richter from Pixabay

If you were pricked by a thorn, would you touch it again? Or would the pain the first time be enough to stop you from doing it again? Most of us would be smart enough to learn the first time. But most of us also choose to think about things repetitively that have caused us suffering. If we experience some kind of pain like the thorn, we have the nerve endings to experience it once and learn from it. But to continually do so will be extremely uncomfortable. There will eventually be blood loss, your finger will develop a gradual numbness to the anticipated pain. There will be a scar. Your body will send white blood cells, platelets and everything else required to help heal it. But if we don’t allow time for healing, we cannot expect to heal. 

Stress is a really big factor in our society today. Stress depletes the immune system so much, and takes away time from doing the things we wish we were doing. It creates resentment and absence in the lives of others we care about. It’s a lingering virus that erodes us away faster. And the cause of the virus is most often recurring painful thoughts that we have yet to lay to rest. They are the thorns you keep pricking your finger on, disallowing healing into our lives. 

 

I’m so sick of…

~ Jay-Ram ~ Leave a comment

I’m quite sure there’s something you’ve been tolerating for a while.

I want to suggest an interesting experiment: the next time you feel close to telling someone off and telling them “I’m so sick of…” instead of expressing yourself with the deep-seated need of being heard and acknowledged, just do what you would’ve done in the first place and leave. Move on from that situation immediately instead of wasting more energy on this situation.

Chances are that if a person repeats a behavior, they might sometimes be rude, unaware of it; But most of the time they continue acting selfishly with no regard for you. In these moments, it is important to stand up for ourselves and create boundaries after we get better self-awareness.

Instead of trying to break down all the reasons about why the other person isn’t considerate, or is draining, just fucking end it. Let it die. And see what happens: will the person notice that the plant is dying and come back to water the relationship? And if they do, is it out of a purely transactional relationship, or some other attachment? Within this space you’ve created, observe everything. If the relationship is solid and great, this process will only deepen the bonds and strengthen the relationship (definitely apologize if you were wrong though). If it’s garbage, you’re already that much closer to the “exit”. Then, you won’t have to worry about things like tolerating people anymore; at least people who offer you no positives.

Cheers.

Main character, supporting character

~ Jay-Ram ~ Leave a comment

Most great stories have something in common: a relatable main character. And with the main character, the more characteristics we see of ourselves in them, the more invested we become in their story. Their journey becomes our own. Throughout their story, we become inspired, depressed, trapped, liberated–everything they experience–as our own experience. In our own lives, we might gain strength to proceed forward from whatever is holding us back. This is one of the reasons why flawed protagonists tend to be more interesting: because they need to overcome obstacles like us in order to succeed. In this sense, a great protagonist becomes a supporting character in our own life that encourages us to keep going. A good protagonist becomes a great supporting character when we learn from them, because we are the main character in our own lives. Perhaps one of the goals then, is to live in such a way that we inspire others by realizing ourselves.

Empty your cup

~ Jay-Ram ~ Leave a comment
Photo by Leon

There is a saying: “How can you enjoy my tea when your cup is already full?”

It’s difficult getting to know someone if we avoid interacting with them because of an assumption or–alternatively–talk to them only to make them fit into our preconceived notions. Every once in a while, we might be absolutely right about someone. But more than often, I’ve been surprised at how wrong I’ve been about people; to the point of embarrassment. This is one of the reasons why I try to talk with as many people as possible (when appropriate). You don’t have to be as extreme as me though, it’s more important to remember that it’s easy to be wrong even about the people closest to us; imagine how often we can be wrong about people of an even greater degree of separation? Try and see how much you can prove yourself wrong, and start dialogue with others.

To taste all the teas and experience the flavors, but first we must empty our own cup of notions.

Honest Self Expression

~ Jay-Ram ~ Leave a comment

Honestly expressing yourself…it is very difficult to do. I mean it is easy for me to put on a show and be cocky and be flooded with a cocky feeling and then feel like pretty cool…or I can make all kind of phony things, you see what I mean, blinded by it or I can show you some really fancy movement. But to express oneself honestly, not lying to oneself…now that, my friend, is very hard to do. –Bruce Lee

Is it exhausting to express ourselves? It is for me when I try to censor myself.

There are many steps between feeling an emotion and how we express it.

Taking an emotion that changes so constantly and trying to snapshot it with words, colors and/or music is already difficult enough.

Further processing how we feel into a socially acceptable package, and diluting the language to avoid offending others is tiring; and a disrespect to ourselves.

Say what you want and deal with the consequences. The truth will either strengthen meaningful relationships, or weaken superficial ones.

We are not living if we are not polarizing, embarrassing, exciting–anything. Don’t be a living corpse because you stopped expressing honestly.

Be Present Or Be Prisoner

~ Jay-Ram ~ Leave a comment
Photo by Mark Neal from Pexels

Adventure is all around us, but the courage to go out on them is not.

New adventures means willing to look like a fool and having people make fun of us, because we’re doing things for the first time and voluntarily introducing stress into our lives. Who would want any of that?

Yet, adventure is the very thing we crave when we become accustomed to the monotonous repetition of our daily lives. On the other hand, those of us who live a life of frequent stimulation and movement fantasize about having a simple, predictable life that can be more easily managed and anticipated; because eventually, we become tired of searching for that next new thing, relationship or place.
The world is only as vast as our mind can envision. If we are prisoners of the past and future, we will seldom be allowed to exist in the present. We will always search to recreate nostalgia, or we will continue to move our anxieties into a future where we imagine a “better tomorrow.”

The real courage is to be here and now, to not compare ourselves to others; that way, we can achieve a level of freedom that others only dream about. To achieve that freedom, we must be willing to be misunderstood by the people we love who are prisoners to the opinions of others.

Their limitations are their own, we can only inspire others by achieving our own freedom.

The Immense Power Of Imagination

~ Jay-Ram ~ Leave a comment

analysis-blackboard-bubble-355952If there is anything faster than the speed of light, it is the speed of imagination. It can take billions of light years to travel anywhere in space, but only milliseconds to imagine being there: we can imagine travelling to the Sun, survive its immense gravity and heat, and get there much faster than on a spaceship (that has yet to be invented during our lifetime). Back on Earth, we can imagine being at the bottom of the ocean much faster than actually travelling there. Our thoughts and imagination are immensely powerful because they are not bound by physical limitations. And although thoughts may not be tangible, they do affect our lives in every way because our perspective of the world is the world we live in, and how we think about ourselves shapes our own unique experience and reality.

An increased mindfulness for the way we talk to ourselves can determine the type of energy we radiate into our personal lives. The nuclear bomb was possible once we understood the relationship between E=mc^2, in which c represents the speed of light and m represents mass. It took some imagination (which provided the framework for the scientific trials later) to understand that the larger the mass of something, the more potential energy it contains. Likewise a small object with great speed, like a bullet, could yield just as much energy. A nuclear bomb gets it energy from displacing the nucleus of a tiny atom. And yet such a small change in internal structure is enough to wreak havoc on entire civilizations. What if we began to think of our thoughts as powerful weapons?

Thoughts may not have actual weight, but they affect everything in our lives. Thoughts have an unquantifiable mass and they move at immeasurable speed. Thoughts lead to action, and action carries weight in our world. How we imagine ourselves and others shapes our own unique life experience. We can create immense positive energy by increasing the frequency of gratitude, kindness and patience in our lives. Or we can “nuke” positive thoughts about ourselves instantly with negativity, self-doubt and entitlement.

Just as the center of the stars have billions of nuclear reactions happening simultaneously, the center of our brains are constantly reacting a myriad of opposing thoughts and generating great amounts of energy. As Carl Sagan once said, “We are all made of star stuff.” It’s no coincidence that we are, in many ways, just like the stars and cosmic energies to which we feel so tiny. Our thoughts may seem like nothing, but our perspective is everything.

 

Conversation In The Checkout Aisle

~ Jay-Ram ~ Leave a comment
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Photo by mentatdgt from Pexels

The other day, I was waiting to checkout at the grocery store. Next to me, a short elderly lady wearing a golden plastic tiara (like the ones you get from party favor stores) was having trouble reading something on a movie box. She finally turned to me and asked, “Excuse me hun, but could you read this for me?”

“Yeah, no problem!” I sat my groceries down, grabbed the box and read: “Fifty Shades Of Grey.” She noticed the surprised look on my face and laughed.

She revealed that her daughter was into the Fifty Shades series, but she didn’t know much about it herself. Her eyes widened when I told her that I never watched any movies from the series myself:

“Oh gosh, there are more of these things?” Time seems to move quickly when having conversations in line because it was finally my turn to check out. I asked the cashier if she could help her find a box set for Fifty Shades. Turned out, the cashier Tina was a huge fan of the series herself. and even Googled a coupon for my new friend. It made me wonder: what causes someone to go above and beyond to help another person out? She didn’t have to “google” a coupon, nor have the conversation that followed after the initial exchange.

Perhaps it is the courage to ask, to initiate a conversation. In the simple process of asking, the little old lady created a moment for us three random strangers to connect and share a fun moment. Often times, we pass up potential moments of connection when we are hesitant to talk to someone new. But ultimately, most people welcome conversation about things that they happen to be interested in. There are plenty of reasons not talk to someone new. So that’s why I encourage you to find just one reason to talk to someone today. Talk to a few new people, and see where the conversation goes. Through conversation, we learn more about about ourselves, and connection makes the world a better place.

 

Friday.

~ Jay-Ram ~ Leave a comment
We’ve finally made it to one of the most sought-after days of the week: Friday. The majority of the week is behind us, and now we can start planning to do some actually fun stuff! Except, this is probably not true for most of us. As the week progressed, the “laundry list” of things to do (including laundry) piled up and now we have a shit-ton of things to catch up on. But still, its not so bad because for at least a couple hours this week, we will have some time for ourselves to sleep in, listen to music, see more of our family, friends, dog, and others we care about.

But, we’ll probably be exhausted and trying to recover from taking the beating of the week. Driving somewhere far might not seem so fun. Staying out late means adding to the sleep-deprivation we already experienced throughout the week. Our bodies are literally in a state of trying to re-establish an equilibrium, except we are only giving it just a few hours to undo the entire wreck of a (minimum) 40-hour work week. And that’s only if we are lucky and not working a salaried job, or coming in on the weekends to spend more time doing work. But at least we made it.

While we were growing up, a family member or some person of authority told us that “life would be hard” and that we had to, in one way or another, “suck it up.” And somewhere along the line, we equated doing things we didn’t want to do as a part of life. But often, the people who say these things live the majority of their life doing things they don’t want. We definitely need to work hard, but what if what we are working towards in not something that we even want for ourselves? What if this whole time, we’ve been subconsciously following the rules of people who, like us, don’t really have life figured out any more than we do?

Are we not as qualified to disagree with them, and make a better quality of life for ourselves? What’s the point of working hard and doing things, when we cant even fully be present with the company of others, see our family often, and go on a trip without being a stressed-out physical wreck?

I hope that as you’ve joined me on this journey this week of breaking down each day, that we had the opportunity to reflect and make sure that we spent some time each day to work towards a way out of this unpleasant cycle, and creating a new one that would at least let us enjoy our lives a little more. I hope that each day that you daydreamed this week, you did a small action that will allow you to achieve those dreams into reality, be it a hiking trip in Hawaii, delicious food-trip in Thailand, building-gawking in Europe, or a spiritual journey through India. In any of those endeavors, I wish us well in our actions, to be that much more peaceful and happier. You can do it, we can do it. Because the next thing we know, Monday will be here again. Let us meet each week as a different person each time. Happy Friday.

Thursdays

~ Jay-Ram ~ Leave a comment

One more day until the goal. But for now, we must work and make sure we get through the day. But depending on what we have planned for the weekend, the day can go by either quickly or last forever. And if the day is going by slow, there are many stimulants and pointless conversation to help kill time. During my college days, I remember many of the local bars would have weekday happy hours. When I later started working full-time jobs, I thought this was a great idea, because it would make the time go by so much faster by hanging out with equally bored friends. The more I was bored with my day, the faster I wanted it to go, so that I had time to do the fun things.

But the irony is that as we get older, we often wonder where the time flew by; we passed it by ourselves, not realizing that even though there are several ways to “kill time” there is no way to get it back. We never know when life gets unexpectedly busy until it actually happens.

The reason why it’s so important to start that thing you wanted to do today, is because only today is guaranteed. You are the youngest you’ll ever be today. As Elon Musk once said, “your responsibilites will only increase as you get older.” Instead of being bored and waiting for the next best thing to come, let’s create that best moment here and now. Otherwise, the future that we look forward to so much becomes just like that Friday: always fleeting.