Identifying the real me

Which is the real me?  I have noted before that for reasons I do not understand well I tend to ask questions of this kind more often when I am holidaying in Kerala.

There is this side to me that I wrote about the day I landed, on March 31.  I was looking forward to the make-believe slow life in Kerala of temple-hopping, loading up on banana and jack fruit fries and soaking in the social life of the state.  This is the life that I might seem to enjoy, left totally to myself.

And then there is the other life in which I spend most of the year, a purpose-driven life engaging in productive exchange all the time.  That is the life that I seem to be expected to lead.  Even though it is not my preferred life I seem to be at peace with it.

This dichotomy seems to be a manifestation of my struggle between being happy and being right.  Which brings me to the question: Which is the real me? The happy me? Or the me that is at peace with myself?  I wrote about this struggle a few days back in this post at the link below.  

http://sgchalayil.blogspot.in/2015/04/end-of-summer-break-2015.html

I suspect that this might be a question that must bother many of us. 

The Baba of Puttaparthi, whom I worship, used to exhort:  It is more important that you like what you do than to do what you like.  I think that idea has been echoed by many others, in perhaps slightly different or may be in those same words.

I have found that as a useful guidance for being at ease with the life I lead.  I would have perhaps been happy just leading a life of savouring the simple pleasures that I enjoy during the summer break.  It would make me happy in the sense that I would want and look forward to more of that same every day. 

I would look forward to that make believe life voluntarily, willingly.  I would not need to think of or be reminded of the material payoffs from my getting up every morning, visiting a temple, watching my fav television programmes, reading my fav book or newspaper, walking around parts of the quaint town that Trivandrum still remains, shooting the breeze with my few friends and so on.

But then that would not be a viable life to start with.  And there are the moralistic questions to boot:  Am I leading a socially useful life deploying the talent, however limited, that I have been bestowed with, for the benefit of my family that depends on me and for the benefit of society at large?  And in an even more Victorian sense, would I not be guilty of laying waste some God given talent?

That is where Baba’s prescription comes in handy:  If you like what you do, you can be productive as well as happy at the same time.

But then a small hitch still remains.  Even if I were to assume that I have mastered the art of liking what I do, would I be truly happy if I am missing what I would love to be doing voluntarily?

It appears that many of us must be suffering from this dichotomy in our nature.  It is in some tangential sense similar to the problem of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde being part of the same person.

I started thinking more about this as I began to read up on bipolar disorders after I got to know recently that a dear friend of mine is being treated for that disease.  An extraordinarily talented student of literature and physics who chose to become a bank officer, who is perhaps more widely read and erudite than many academics I know, certainly more than me, and a man so full of mirth that you would find it hard to believe that he is a victim of severe clinical depression.  And that he would occasionally “believe” to be living in a “real” world, all of his own imagination.

The more I thought about my friend and his affliction I began to wonder would there not be a lot many others among us that do suffer from this difficulty, even if to a lesser extent?  How many of us can answer this question with integrity and without a shadow of doubt:  Which is the real me?  Not me at least!

Nanni….Namasakaaram…