Reflecting on Swamiji's Message

Swami Chidatmanandji visited our Balavihar this weekend and he told a story that has been nagging at me since then. I pay my respects to him for blessing us with his visit and I apologize in advance as I know I must have missed some very important meanings from his message. But in the true sense that a wise person's words become wiser the more you introspect on them, Swamiji's story is taking up more and more space in my mind and I am compelled to share my thoughts.

The story: There was once a young goatherd's son who would often miss school because his father needed him to tend to the goats. One day, his math teacher confronted him and asked, "You are rarely present in my class. How will you learn mathematics?" To this, the boy replied by explaining his family situation and then adding, "But I already know all about math -- addition, shbtraction, multiplication -- from working with the goats." Hearing this, the math teacher decided to test the student: "If you have 100 goats and 35 go in one direction, the rest will follow."

Here, the boy had greater insight than the teacher about goats and he had the "right" answer, but he because of his arrogance and lack of respect, he was still wrong. This logic amazed me.

Imagine the implications of this:
On a spiritual platform, nowadays there are so many young people that have read different books and attended various lectures. They have learned about the theory behind puja, even going so far as to back it up with Western science. Still, it is too difficult to perform puja everyday so instead, they wake up and scroll through Instagram. In comparison, there is an old woman in some tiny village in India. She has never received a formal education but every morning, she she dutifully forages for flowers and fruits to offer the Lord. Here is the difference between knowledge and understanding. The young spiritualist has all the right answers but is still wrong.

I recently completed a course for EMT certification. I was topping the class with the highest grades on every exam. One day, our teachers set-up a simulation of a mass-casualty incident (MCI). I remember walking into the room and seeing the dozens of "patients". All of the words from the textbook flew out of my head. I had the right knowledge, but without proper understanding, I was not able to correctly apply it. How fortunate I was to receive such training within my training itself...

I think for anyone that has grown up in the Internet-age (or perhaps just me, I do not want to unfairly apply this generalization), it is easy to get a head bigger than our body can support. We have all of the information right at our fingertips but it comes in so fast that we never have a chance to apply it. As I go through a critical stage of evolution in my life, I am alerted to the need for sustainable growth and development. I am fortunate to grow up in a community that nurtures my spiritual development but unless I stop to implement these practices into my own life, I will be no closer to fulfillment. I am fortunate to have received support to begin my pre-health career, but until I focus on my own health and wellness, I will never be able to succeed in my profession. I am reminded again and again to cut out hypocrisy from my life. As Swamiji told us on Saturday, in order to find satisfaction, our thoughts, words, and actions must be in harmony. I can carry out robot-like actions; I can regurgitate all of the "right" words. But until my thoughts align and become grounded in the Supreme Brahman, I will continue to be pulled away with all of life's trials and tribulations. I will continue to merely exist throughout all of my days instead of truly living. I must constantly rededicate myself to a higher purpose because although I know this is the right path, until I live it, I will still be wrong.

Imperfect

Have you ever watched someone butcher a job so badly that you would pull all your hair out to get them to stop? For example, when someone is coloring something with colored pencil but are coloring in all different directions. Or when someone is trying to squeeze a large object through a narrow hallway and they keep knocking down picture frames and vases. I hope it's a feeling that resonates; an overwhelming sense of "oh my gosh, please stop what you're doing right now; you're just making things worse!"  But I've been wondering lately if this situation might be an analogy for life. I'm pushing this "life-cart" blindly down this narrow "life-hallway" and I can't see ahead of me; I can't see where I'm going. And in my periphery, I can hear the sounds of all the things I'm breaking along the way: I'm bruising people's feelings; I'm breaking people's trusts; I'm severing relationships and destroying things I will never be able to replace. I'm walking through a neat hallway and in my wake, I am leaving behind a chaotic mess. And so the question is, how do I overcome the fear that I'm just making things worse than before, that maybe I should just stop pushing the "life-cart"? How do you live with yourself knowing that you are imperfect? How do you live with the paradox that all you want to do is to help people, but you realize in the process, you will probably hurt more people than you help? I don't know how and it drives me crazy. In the meantime, my thoughts play ping-pong with themselves: maybe sometimes the most beautiful things are also the messiest? Maybe sometimes you have to mess things up in order to fix them? Or maybe both of those are just selfish excuses for hurting other people. But maybe sometimes you have to be selfish in order to save yourself. Maybe only by saving yourself can you save someone else...

17 Bucket List Items for Summer '17

-- Go to Disney World (done)
-- Watch more Marvel & DC movies (watched Wonderwoman and Spiderman: Homecoming so far. Dr. Strange is next on the list.)
-- Go to the drive-in movie theater
-- Go stargazing/camping
-- Have a bonfire!
-- Have a pool party
-- Read more
-- Go on a road trip
-- Have a slumber party
-- Have a barbecue (vegetarian, of course)
-- Learn to code
-- Go on lots of hikes
-- Bike downtown and spend the day at the cafe
-- Go on a French brunch date with friends from French class and our French teacher
-- Go to the zoo
-- Visit colleges
-- Go to a concert

Learning to Occupy Space

When I was in 9th grade, I learned about diffusion for the first time in chemistry. I learned about how you could spray perfume in one corner of a room and the gas molecules would spread out, filling the whole room. We've all met people like that -- people who walk into a room and fill the space with their personalities. Partially, I think, this is a talent. Some people are born with an extra sense that causes heads to turn. For the rest of us, learning to quietly demand our space in the world is a skill that we must develop. Sometimes I feel like my brain is hardwired like some caged wind spirit. With unnerving frequency, my brain tells me "Run. Get out of here. Start over. Go somewhere where no one knows you. Try again." And surprisingly, this has been fairly easy to execute. By chance and circumstance, I've found myself going to a new school every couple years, a school where no one knows me. As I start thinking about colleges this summer, a new fantasy grips me. Just get through this year, I tell myself, and then you'll go to college and everything will be perfect. On a rational level, I realize this is silly. I am grateful for my friends and family and friends, of course. Overall, I am happy with my place in life. But the next instant, I find myself in another awkward situation and all my subconscious wants to do is grow wings and fly away. I think maybe this is the plague of youth. Sitting in a room where everyone has more experience than you and everyone seems to be doing more meaningful things than you, the first instinct is to try and not bother anyone. There is a strong reflex to fold into yourself and make yourself invisible. All the alarm bells are going off in your brain telling you, "I don't belong here!". As young adults finding our way into the world, we are pioneers. We don't know where we belong and neither does anyone else. Anytime we venture into the unknown -- whether it's applying for a new job or exploring Mars -- it's our job to stake our claim in the ground. Fighting for a seat at the table is one task but being able to say, "yes, I'm new here but I deserve this seat and I'm here to learn"  is a new task on it's own. Slowly, I'm learning the only space you can occupy in the world is the spot you carve out for yourself. What is the beauty in living your life scrunched up in a corner, just squeezing through the crack of the door? Naivete is a blessing -- it is simply the opportunity to learn in disguise. Awkwardness is most often an illusion, a trick your mind plays on you. This summer, I will learn to wear my self-confidence like armor and I will distribute my thirst for knowledge like a business card at a career fair. I will learn to be more present, to show up to every opportunity with three tools in my tool-belt: an open-mind, an eagerness to work, and the determination to stay put, to claim my own space.   

Etched Through Time

For the past week, I traveled with my family through the Southwestern U.S. There, blessed by the incomprehensible beauty of the American National Parks -- the Grand Canyon, Bryce, Zion, and the Valley of Fire -- inspiration comes searching for you, as it has for millions of others through history. Surrounded by towering cliffs the size of skyscrapers and brilliant blood-red rocks, it is difficult to avoid contemplating time. All around you is a lesson in both patience and perseverance -- the rocks form intricate carvings and statues that could only be conjured by the human mind. And yet, they remain more beautiful, more enduring than anything the human mind could ever fathom. Whole temples of rock stand on the foundations of older, stronger rock; each layer represents the work of a few billion years. Vast expanses of this barren landscape remain relatively undisturbed by human presence, and, as a result, an overwhelming calm subdues the atmosphere. Far from the blaring lights and stench of Vegas, these places are havens for introspection and thought. Despite this, life oozes through the very pores of the canyon walls. Lush green vegetation thrives off the water dripping through the rock, forming the famous Hanging Gardens. Down below, lightning fast geckos and fiery red ants make their homes among the sand and gravel. The cliches of my descriptions do not escape me. I am hardly the first person to be left awestruck by these locations -- nor will I be the last. Millions of people with words and talents far better than mine have tried to capture this grandeur. But for the past few months, I have been gripped by a shocking realization. Our mind is never truly our own. It is simply a composite of all the minds that have ever existed or will exist. There is no such thing as pure originality. So what then is the point? Why do we try with our finite tools to explain the inner workings of the infinite? I read a story somewhere about an anthropology professor who told his students, "you all have a little bit of 'I want to save the world' in you. That's why you're here, in college. I want you to know that it's okay if you only save one person and it's okay if that person is you." For a while, this story disturbed me. What a defeatist argument, I thought. But I am starting to think that maybe I was wrong. High up on the sheer rock cliffs, with more courage in their little pinkies than I have in my whole body, rock climbers make their move. Virtually invisible from both the sky and the ground, these individuals have the faith that they will be able to save themselves. There is a strange simplicity in giving yourself up to the same forces of nature that carved the canyons, letting them save you. And like the rocks, finding the patience and perseverance to believe that someday, when the time is right, you will change if not the whole world, then at least someone's world.

Competing Against Time

"In the short time I have remaining, I offer you a draw."
              "In the short time I have remaining, I decline."

It's an exchange I would often hear tossed around at chess tournaments as a child. One player, usually in a clearly inferior but not immediately losing position would offer the olive branch, almost always to be turned down by the opponent who insisted on finding the win. Following this exchange, a peal of hushed laughter would ripple through the crowd of on-lookers as the players continued their anxious scramble against the clock. It's an interesting consideration: what do we choose to do with the limited time we are offered? As humans, our whole lives seem to be a race against the clock. While other species have learned to find peace with their biological timing mechanisms, humans are continually striving to fit more into 24 hours. To make matters even more complicated, while we are all assigned some definitive expiration date, there's no good way to determine when that expiration date will come -- like the carton of milk stuck at the back of the refrigerator, no one really knows their "best by" date. And in between the then and the now is an endless litany of daily deadlines and due dates, the end of one chapter of life and the start of the next. A common side-effect of this never-ending race is a constant sickly sweet feeling of nostalgia and a grinding fear that you should be making better use of your time. So, is there really any way to know for sure how well you are utilizing your time? It's a question that is always on my mind, more so lately. Anyone that knows me knows of my ironic penchant for tardiness in combination with a hyper-sensitivity to the concept of time. I obsess over last days -- the last performance of the school musical, the last day for seniors before graduation, and the last day of school. I'm the person that writes the page-long notes in the yearbook every year, the friend that spontaneously texts sentimental messages in the group chat... and, I'm getting better at changing my perspective, trying to focus on the firsts instead of the lasts. But it's difficult to not swing in the opposite direction, to stop my expectations from ruining my new experiences.


In chess, the players that are able to cinch the wins out of time pressure situations are the ones that are aware of the time left on their clock but are not intimidated by it -- the players that manage to focus on the position rather than fearing time. It's a lesson that I am still learning both in chess and in real life.

Using "Woke-ness" to Hide Weakness: How We Might be Exploiting Social Awareness to Get Attention

In the world of high school, rumors fly fast and texts fly faster. Social media posts circulate like birds searching for prey. When you're seeing the same people for 7 hours, 5 days a week, for 4 years, trust me, everyone knows everything. Which makes it even more critical to craft a seamless persona for yourself -- an identity guaranteed to carry you to the top of the social ladder. High school has it's own economic system, and while you are busy engineering this personal identity, everything is fair game for currency: from the number of compliments you get on your outfit, to the number of likes on your latest Facebook post, to the number of people on the guest list for your party. And, when you live in a privileged upper-class American suburb, you can add one more item to that list: your perceived "woke-ness".

According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, the term "woke" refers to a person's social awareness. A little more research shows me that the term has roots in African American Vernacular English (AAVE). Since it's emergence into popular culture, the word has taken on a specific significance to the BLM movement.* (Just this small bit of information alerts me to the fact that many people, myself included, are guilty of appropriating the word as well as the culture surrounding it).

As with most teenagers my age, my first introduction to the idea of social awareness came from Twitter. Increasingly, teenagers are turning to social media and their peers to gain information about social issues and current affairs. My high school experience, including the time I spend on social media, has opened me up to a new level of acceptance and tolerance for my fellow human beings. My interactions with other teenagers, both from my school and around the world, have forced me to reconsider and begin the journey of educating myself about themes as wide reaching as feminism, gender fluidity and norms, racism, and mental health, just to name a few. I have no doubt that my introduction to these topics has made me a better person, a person more willing to consider the world from someone else's perspective. Yet, lately, I have been thinking a lot about the uglier side of "social awareness", the side that causes us to brandish our "intellectual superiority" and put down people who we feel are not as "woke" as ourselves.

When you live in a safe, wealthy community that emphasizes hard work and higher education, it is not difficult to maintain a level of social sensitivity. But what happens when we come face to face with the very issues we preach about on social media? How often could you walk through the halls of my high school, hearing the same girls who retweeted a feminist tweet ten minutes ago, now slut-shaming another classmate? I will be the first to admit that teenagers have done, and are currently doing, amazing work for social causes. But when social awareness becomes the new "cool", hypocrisy is bound to exist.

I believe in the power of my generation. I believe that we are a generation of do-ers and risk-takers. I believe that we truly can change the world . But I also know that for us to be successful, we must continue to listen to each others stories. We must be willing to invite others to the conversation. We must make the effort to continually learn, continually evolve. Above all, we must not fall into the trap of letting our progressive values serve simply as medals to advance our status.

*https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/woke-meaning-origin