Since some time now I have been asking myself as to why feel upset at all? Why have miserable moments even when you don’t have a say? And again and again I come face to face with one rooted gospel, ‘I only highlight the undesirable things at those moments’.

In my span of life I learn how to ignore and stack in the box all the things that make me feel good, give me pleasure, my most wonderful moments, and one fine day as I am growing up, that box gets shipped and dropped off at Krakozhia. I might have time to hunt for the box on a vacation but what about the moments of crisis in life, small and big, when I need to access the box the most? It is very similar to driving on a busy Monday and blindly throwing the keys to your car off beyond the perimeter. You could go look for the keys on a holiday, but on a Monday with ten deadlines on the hilt and boss’/client’s face shimmering on your shades?

I had a participant in my workshop who is brilliant with his career and has been a star in academics, but has nightmares whenever he is left with himself. He can’t not have something to keep his mind busy, lest the nightmare come back as a day-mare. Over the years the horror has flourished and consummated around all his nerves like the vines slowly spreading around a fences. A few years back an oil tanker in his neighborhood caught fire with a fire cracker rocket (on a Diwali night) and he thinks that it was his rocket that did it. The driver was heroic in pulling the death ball out of the neighborhood in full speed and eventually he was charred to death. This young man who can’t stop feeling guilty, hears the driver shrieking even during his waking hours. One can only imagine what his nights must be like. He has had hoards of ‘pandits’ counseling him to make offerings, wear stones, visit more temples, and he has done all that, and he still is where he started, with the death cries. His big box shipped to Krakozhia as well? Leaving him cringing and wriggling?

Not only is his box at Krakozhia, his immediate casket of poison doesn’t let him breathe. What is aberrant at this point of time is the possibility of building a box even out of this casket. Great personalities get shaped during moments of crisis, the crucible. A common man can have spurts of inspiration from fleeting incidences around him, this man has the potential of being inspired for a lifetime. The only difference is what he sleeps in, the casket or the box…

There is no human who doesn’t have beautiful moments in his life. There is no human whose life is not poetry in the midst of carbon (ink) which otherwise has the potential of wiping the planet out with an overdose.

Now, let me stop and ask myself again when I am upset, am I building a box or a casket? And please for life’s sake let me get my box back from Krakozhia. It’s too painful to waste my life not celebrating.