Having shifted all alone from my home few months back to ‘settle’ in another part of the globe, I am facing my deepest vulnerabilities quite intimately. Snow covered landscape, minimal human interaction, and stretches of silence paused by grooves of deeper silence make a usual day here. I work in a laboratory, and only the work keeps me connected with my past. Apart from that, a sense of groundless-ness has been my only constant companion for last four months. I rarely see sun. I don’t hear the bustles of the big city. I am apart from my family by nine and a half hours. I have no ‘next weekend’ to wait for. Sometimes this non-familiarity becomes so unsettling, I get swept away.
I tried to confront the void with several tricks. When loneliness used to creep in, I used to make call to my family and friends back home. Five minutes of phone call or skype used to keep me going for next few hours. New books, youtube, random internet surfing, trying new food were working with the efficiency and transiency of pain killers. Blending the daily practice with this changed lifestyle seemed an incoherent effort, because I was EXPECTING it to be my savior. The long known pattern was changed. The face with which I used to identify myself was no longer there in the mirror. ‘’Perspective is everything that matters. Change the perspective, and the thing is no more there.’’
The tranquilizers and pain killers cannot keep one going for long. After periods of stormy denials and head-banging, the search subsided. Before starting my day and after finishing it, there are pauses of edgy uncertainty and an unknown fear. I am learning to just be with them. They come with physical sensations. So it is easy to hold them and stick my consciousness with them. Accepting the pain and not searching for a way-out brings a radical change in the perspective. The practice has become more fluid and less certain. But more consistence. No more I want to exchange this solitary and no-comfort life with a cushioned and solid one.
Uncertainty is relaxing.
