Untangling the Loops
Everyday my earphones
get tangled up.
Very mysteriously!
Our minds are also the same!
Untangle we must,
Each time!
Lest we realize,
that we can no longer
feel the music
in our hearts!
I’m one of the folks who is still using wired earphones. So many times, I’ve entered a zoom call at the last minute - only to realise how hideous my tangled earphones appear. Last night on a call, I told a friend - perhaps these tangled earphones are a reminder of my tangled consciousness.
Everyday, our minds get tangled up. A friend calls these false thoughts. Another friend, had an ambition to create a company like Disney, but after a wake up call, left it all and spent years just chopping vegetables and playing with slum children. His sole aim - to rewire his brain, without any exit strategy. “Because I see, all the problems I have, are not due to external things, but due to my own tangled wiring” (Luckily for the world, as he untangled, the music came back).
Everyday, our relationships get tangled up. We seem to be doing everything imaginable for our loved ones, yet it all somehow mysteriously all keeps coming to naught. Everything is hanging by thin threads. We become so transactional. “Compromise” becomes the new norm. We mistakenly judge ourselves by our intention, our loved ones by their action. Thich Nhat Hanh says, without learning how to love, we hurt the people we love. Henri Nouwen, offers an interesting take “We say, ‘Love me!’ and before you know it we become violent and demanding and manipulative. It’s so important that we keep forgiving one another -- not once in a while, but every moment of life. Before you have had your breakfast, you have already had at least three opportunities to forgive people.”
Everyday, our systems get tangled up. Even in our good intentions, we are tangled in mixed motivations and mixed incentives. We want to do good, but get secretly caught up in our greed or fear, in our need for fame. We take shortcuts, we compromise. We don’t solve problems, we get seduced into superficial puzzles. We become extractive, releasing unintended consequences and externalities all around us. And we burn ourselves out in this process.
We can go on and accumulate all we can, but if it all gets tangled up - it all invariably becomes a mess. There is a quote by Oliver Wendell Holmes. He says “Most of us go to our graves with our music still inside us, unplayed.”
We’re all going to the grave (sooner than we think and act like), but we can untangle ourselves bit by bit, and tune into the grand symphony of life. A symphony of wisdom and compassion. Two notes, one song.