REFLECT

Parents teach us to love our siblings and friends. Religion teaches us to love fellow humans, as we love ourselves. But no one teaches us how to love ourselves. In fact, from childhood, we are presented with goals to aspire to, that we believe will make us more lovable. And when we fail, we are left feeling inadequate and unlovable. As we grow, we face conditions and checklists drawn up by teachers, employers, partners, children and society at large, and off we go, eager to meet the expectations of everyone around us. We struggle to tick all these boxes, often succeeding but feeling joyless, hollow and still unloved. We have not been given a moment to explore who we are, what we want for ourselves, what nourishes our souls. And therefore, in being true to someone else’s checklist, we end up being untrue to ourselves. We lose ourselves.

If your life has been a mindless drift on the lazy river of autopilot, chances are that you are not a subscriber to conscious living.

The body, they say, heals with play. The mind with laughter and the spirit with joy. We have known all three with abandon, as children. In moments of play, we were giants and superheroes, space travellers and dragon slayers, presidents and celebrities. We had no reason to think that we couldn’t be whoever we chose to be, so pure was our conviction and so strong our imagination. Somewhere along the road, the critic in all of us awakens and banishes that happy little child. The critic is
cynical and discouraging. And as we grow, the cynic becomes our constant companion, reminding us just how small we are and telling us that dreams are nothing but  a whimsical waste of time. We start planning how we spend our time, packing every moment with agendas and to-do lists, leaving no room for daydreaming or impulsive spontaneity. We forget the magic of wishing things till they come true. We let go of wonder and awe, two things that our soul needs to stay well. We turn into shells of