The Turnaround

When you look down the deepest abyss in your life, what is that you see? Is it a deafening blackness or a resplendent glow? In the most painful moment of your life, what do you experience? Is it disarming weakness or an enabling strength? In the middle of nowhere, what do you discover? Is it a lost self, or the knowledge of the soul?

Remember the part in the Pirates of the Carribean, where Jack Sparrow and his friends were aboard a ship sailing towards a destination. They were stranded in the vast blue sea with no shore in sight. They had to figure a way out to reach their destination. So Jack Sparrow hit upon the idea of turning the ship upside down, and the moment they managed to do it, lo and behold, they were right at the spot which they had wanted to hit.

The answer is always blowing in the wind. But it requires one to be lost and stranded like that ship on a vastness of nothingness for one to catch the answer. The sea of nothingness makes one realize the insignificance of the self and its petty hopes and desires. The self becomes disillusioned and broken down in front of the nothingness around it. The self loses all meaning in an abyss of blankness because it is not surrounded with anything to give definition and meaning to the self. There itself the self achieves a true understanding of its own, when it has nothing around to compare itself with in a sea of emptiness.

In the Simpsons Movie, Homer Simpson had left his family to doom as he circled around for a way to seek meaning in his life. Homer then landed up in an American Indian’s hut where he had spiritual hallucinations by way of psychotropic inducements. In one of the induced dreams that he had during that time, his body was taken apart into individual pieces to the point where he realised that his self had lost all identity because he was taken apart completely, piece by piece. It was at that point that he had uttered, “it doesn’t matter”.

It is when one faces a situation where a complete destruction of the self occurs, does one truly find oneself. It might seem as an irony, that a person discovers self only after the self is destroyed in a vacuum of nothingness. But what is destroyed is merely an illusory perception built on the grand misconceptions floating around in society and not the true self within. What is peeled off is only the dusty layers of what society has covered you with. When that goes away, the shiny piece of jewel emerges, that is you.

The famed Alchemists of early years in the development of science strived greatly to hit upon gold after science had newly discovered that it is the arrangement of molecules and atoms which gives anything its properties. The alchemists sought to alter these arrangements to achieve desired products. They endeavoured miserably to obtain gold through a chemical process of converting lead into the shining metal. But how much ever they tried, they could never find a way to turn lead into gold. They were also faced with a futile exercise that yielded no result, but were merely egged on by an illusory perception of reward to the self.

But did they not discover gold?

The gold that gets discovered is within one’s soul. Not in the lead that one works with. The Alchemists could not convert lead into gold, but they converted their hearts into gold by learning human endeavour and persistence of the soul. Similarly, when one seems to have lost it all, or when feels as if he has been stranded in an ocean of vast emptiness after being in pursuit of that elusive meaning, the spiritual gold, that one truly has struck upon gold albeit not in the place where one seeks, but somewhere else. It never is there in the destination you seek, but is laid out in the path that you travelled.

A few months ago, I was having a humble sandwich on a street corner. I was thinking of my life and how my meekness and humility was letting everyone get the better of me. I was feeling stupid at letting people walk over me due to my “supposed” humility. Humility in human interactions is considered to be a good value, but nonetheless I was feeling miserable at that moment. But then I realized, that if I may have lost in that respect, I surely did gain in a different sphere. I had become accommodating of other people’s natures due to my humility. I had come to accept and understand other’s viewpoints and perspective. It had enhanced my maturity and expanded my perspective of the human lives and the world that we lived in. I must have felt miserable at not being strong enough, but I surely did feel great in having the strength to accommodate other’s views too. While I lost in one sphere, I surely gained in another.

That was the turnaround.

It was the moment when I had turned my ship upside down and landed at the discovery of my answers and a breathtaking journey of myself.

Too long we keep staring at what we have lost, that we completely forget to look elsewhere, where we might have gained.

It takes one to turnaround.

It takes an alchemist’s heart to do that, to discover the gold.

Image from here.