2016: More Reflections…Being Who We Are Not

That surely must be a confusing title.  But I guess it must be in the spirit of saying all those contradictory things in the hope of sounding profound. After all, isn’t that how all these philosopher and spiritual types appear to be – superficially at least? 

It is a bit like the verses of RD Laing that I read as I was about to graduate from business school thirty three years ago.  Here is a sample from the book Knots:  (No, I did not write that from memory.)

They are playing a game. They are playing at not

playing a game. If I show them I see they are, I

shall break the rules and they will punish me.

I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game.

And isn’t that what they say about the Bhagavad Gita too?

So here is what I wanted to say in sum:  Often who we are or who we wish to be seems to be defined by who we could not become or what we could not acquire or achieve.

I was first prompted to think of this construct as I reflected on a line in this Malayalam movie Om Shanti Oshana where the heroine notes that men never really get over their first love, especially if it fails. 

That struck me as being so true.  I know of so many friends of mine who would speak wistfully about the women that they did not succeed in marrying, in spite of having a fabulously happy married life, post failing in their one or more attempts at falling in love.

 

While I have not had any serious affairs of the heart myself, I cannot help occasionally fantasizing how my life would have been if I had married the many women that I have been fascinated by.  Unlike in the case of my career choices, the outcomes of these fantasies are always liberating.  I thank God that not only did I not manage to win the hearts of any of those women, but I am glad I married Lakshmi by God’s Grace, a woman I have described elsewhere as a modern day Patient Griselda.

But that is more than offset by the many other things that I crave for such as my nearly self-destructive desire for a life in letters or the way my heart pines for this young woman whom I would I love to be my own child even though I know she never will be one because she simply does not see me in the same way.

All of that led me to think of how my Dad brought me up.  And looking back at it I would say that he wanted me to be everything that he could not be but he aspired to be.  Now that is not a lone mental disease that afflicted just my father.  Child psychologists routinely admonish parents not to commit that mistake and advise them that children should be allowed to lead their own lives.

Similarly, we hear of people carrying an emotional baggage in the form of antipathy towards people who succeeded in studying or working in an institution that they could not get entry into. The antipathy of the police officer in the novel Jaws towards the marine biologist, Isabel in Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge placing a bottle of alcohol strategically to lure Sophie back into alcoholism just so the latter would not get Larry even if Isabel could no longer be his, are all instances of people’s actions, preferences and choices being influenced by what they could not achieve or acquire.

And then there are these even more extreme instances of bachelors and spinsters detesting members of the opposite sex because somewhere in their life they got stood up by someone of the opposite sex.  Or think of the case of maladjusted individuals stalking people that they could not get into a relationship for whatever reason.

Interestingly, the Hindu approach to answering many basic questions in life are based on the process of eliminating what something (Na – eti, often written as neti) is not rather than saying what it actually is.

In short, who we are seems to be more a result of who we could not be. 

Thus on the eve of this New Year, as I thought of the many hits and misses (more of the latter than the former) in my life I realized how much of who I am was so much a result of all that I wanted during this and the many years of the past but simply could not get.

Nanni…Namaskaaram