In between worlds...

After a long silence and several queries about what happened to this blog, I've decided I kinda miss blogging, and having finally found a little time to update this, here are some things I've written in recent months but didnt get around to putting up till now...

11 Feb 2008. On the banks of the River Madovi (Goa)

I think one of the dangerous things about living in New York is that you get a bit intoxicated with The Moment, and tend to lose sight of continuity – of a sense of awareness of yourself in relation to what has gone before, what will come after, what is going on in other places….you get lost in the momen t and the momentary possibility of infinite opportunities. It’s the NOW that matters, the infinite, limitless HERE and NOW when anything could happen, the sense that any minute something extraordinary could happen – leaving you in an perpetual state of suspended animation.

One of my favourite things to do in New York was sitting on the banks of the Hudson in Riverside Park, with the blue river and sailboats and glittering sunlight and clouds…come to think of it, that was also one my favourite things to do in Kingston…and it’s reassuring now to find that I can find the same familiar elements here in Goa, on the other side of the world in the back of beyond. Ultimately it is glory and beauty and love that draw me to any place and keep me attracted to it – and I can find pockets of it regardless of where in the world I am – it doesn’t have to be in NY or any such ‘exciting’ place.

After the transient, fast-paced NY phase of my life, I rather like the change of planting myself somewhere, somewhere less glamorous and more down to earth and REAL, with people that have known me for longer than a year… It’s even nice to live with family again and actually have to work at making those deeper abrasive relationships work, the ones that actually test your patience and deepen your character rather than the fleeting acquaintances where everything is fun and happy until you both get to go home at the end of the day. In the midst of the busyness and transience of the NY life and the huge diversity of people you are constantly thrust against, it’s really difficult to actually allow those deeper abrasive but more real bonds to develop.
It is intoxicating but it really is not a very sustainable way to live.

I think we have somewhat of a love-hate relationship, NY and I. While I was there, I kept vacillating between being awestruck and giddy with excitement at times, and claustrophobic and longing to escape at others. And now that I’m gone, I can’t help feeling this intense longing to be back, this urge to romanticize it and to try and recapture the magic… especially every time I see the city portrayed in movies or on TV, I get excited to think that I was there, that was once my home. It’s almost like looking back on a first love – you know it wasn’t perfect, you know that you’re mature now and it would never really work for a real relationship, and yet…you can’t help looking back on it with longing and nostalgia and romanticizing, thinking that nothing can ever compare to that first sweet thrill of infatuation.

Am I content to file it away as a sweet memory and nothing more, to give up longing for it and move on? I don’t regret my decision to leave, I know I wouldn’t have been happy if I had stayed…but what sometimes gnaws at me is the thought that I could have stayed, the idea that I willingly walked away from the life that millions wish they had a chance at, the life of the movie screens… I can’t help giving in to momentary lapses of…What if?

But perhaps it’s only after walking away and going to a place that’s different and far away, that I can even fully appreciate the excitement of being there… so perhaps NY is a place that I’ll simply have to settle to long for from afar…that I can appreciate better from a distance, and in short spurts; a place that can best be savoured in my memory.

Ultimately, contentment is a choice. You have to choose to stop thinking about the other options and wishing you were there, and choose to focus on the here and now and be satisfied. It’s when I start comparing that I start torturing myself. In a way there’s some good to NY’s ‘in the moment’ philosophy… What’s the point of wasting your time in pining, longing, regret, wishing – all of which have no power to accomplish or change anything? And in the process you miss out on a myriad opportunities, delights, richness, offered by the Here and Now. Every place, every person, every moment, is created by God, reflects His image, and is meant to be enjoyed uniquely, for its own unique richness and opportunities. By wasting time wishing you were somewhere else, you often end up missing out on both. So for now let me bid au revoir to New York and fully embrace the newness of New Delhi.

The power of an embodied idea

I am often tempted to try and boil down the answer to large-scale problems to a set of tangible ideas that can be neatly packaged and propagated in order to bring about quick results. Here I am, my head filled with all sorts of ideas and idealism, and every time I strike at those glimpses of truth, I think, if only this can be spread and people can realize this, if only the right ideas win out, then the world can be transformed.

I am realizing more and more the limits of mere idealism. The world is already full of good ideas floating around. And it is full of people who are willing to talk at length about these great ideas. India especially if full of people who can talk about things. What it has seen very little of is people who are actually willing to do. Ideas that are actually incarnated into flesh. And until that happens, that’s all they remain – ideas floating around like dead leaves without taking root anywhere; theories that can succeed in exciting and inspiring people, that promise an ideal society, but that still fail to transform society.

The Word became flesh. What was unique about individuals like Christ or Gandhi or Mother Theresa is that they lived out their ideas. They didn’t just talk – they lived. They fully embodied the things they spoke about – it flowed from their eyes, their speech, their smallest of actions, from every pore of their being.

“We make the road by walking” (Paulo Freire). This is a radical statement. It is only by doing that change can be brought about, by truly believing and internalizing and incarnating the things I am talking about, the ideals I wish to see in society. “Be the change you want to see”…it sounds simple, yet why is it that so few individuals have actually done this, have truly lived out their beliefs and ideals?

Here I am daily talking and writing about the transformation I want to see in India’s education system, in its classrooms and its teachers – yet what have I done to really show it? Where have I labored in a village classroom to really bring these ideals to reality? I speak of things like bringing a culture of critical reflection and social transformation – yet how much do I really embody this, how much does this flow out in my daily actions and conversations with every person I come across? I am increasingly hit with the inconsistencies in my own words, the danger of my becoming just another academic, talking into a vacuum, great at theorizing but unable to demonstrate.

The world is not looking for more ideas or theories. People are looking for truth – truth which can not only be heard but also seen and touched and felt. Unless I’m willing to put my hands to the ground and do something, to live out my ideals in every minute and action, to give flesh to my words and show living proof of their truth, it will fail to cause a ripple in society.

It is not mere ideas that can change the world – it is ideas that have been embodied. The Word that has been made flesh.

“Gandhi was the meeting place of a person and a cause….the cause of India’s freedom. It came to embodiment in Mahatma Gandhi….why did the multitudes hang on every word as upon an oracle? It was because they knew that when he spoke the cause of India’s freedom spoke. That cause looked out of his eyes, stretched forth its hands as he stretched forth his hands, and suffered as he suffered…In Gandhi the word of freedom became flesh. When he spoke, freedom spoke…. Here was a man in a loincloth and with a lathee going out to do battle with the greatest empire that ever existed and promising not to return until independence has been gained. Never were two sides more unequally matched. But here was something more than a little man and a stick. Here was the embodiment of an idea: he would match his capacity to suffer against the others’ capacity to inflict the suffering, his soul force against physical force; he would not hate, but he would not obey, and he would wear down all resistance by an infinite capacity to take it. Here as a technique that had been applied here and there in history, but never applied to a problem on the scale of nothing less than the freedom of one fifth of the human race. The stakes were immense, and the cards seemed all stacked against him. How could he win? But we soon began to see the immense power of an embodied idea. The British were baffled…never in human history had a battle been fought with such weapons and with such a victory” (E. Stanley Jones, Gandhi: Portrayal of a Friend)

“The center of our faith, Jesus Christ, is the Word become flesh, not the Word become idea. Had it been the Word become idea, it would have been a philosophy, a moralism. In that case it would have taken its place among the great philosophies of the world – higher, but among. But the Christian faith is not a philosophy, but a fact – the fact of Christ. In him all the ideas have taken shoes and walked. The message is the Man, for the Man is the message – incarnate. Everything he spoke he lived, and more. This makes the Christian message not “among”, but apart from, different, sole, unique. Never man spake like this man”, for never man lived like this Man. You can’t tell where his words end and his deeds begin, or where his deeds end and his words begin, for his deeds were words and his words were deeds. They entwine like the words and music of a song” (E. Stanley Jones, A Song of Ascents)

“As he came among men he did not try to prove the existence of God -- he brought him. He lived in God and men looking upon his face could not find it within themselves to doubt God.
He did not argue, as Socrates, the immortality of the soul -- he raised the dead.
He did not discourse on the dignity of labor - he worked at a carpenter's bench and his hands were hard with the toil of making yokes and plows, and this forever makes the toil of the hands honorable.
He did not argue the worth of womanhood and the necessity for giving them equal rights -- he treated them with infinite respect, gave to them his most sublime teaching, and when he arose from the dead he appeared first to a woman.
He did not teach in the schoolroom manner the necessity of humility--he "girded himself with a towel and kneeled down and washed his disciples' feet."
He did not discourse on how the weakest human material can be transformed and made to contribute to the welfare of the world - he called to himself a set of weak men as the Galilean fishermen, transformed them and sent them out to begin the mightiest movement for uplift and redemption the world has ever seen.
He did not paint a Utopia, far off and unrealizable--he announced that the kingdom of heaven is within us.
He did not discourse on the beauty of love -- he loved.
He greatly felt the pressing necessity of the physical needs of the people around him, but he did not merely speak on their behalf--he fed five thousand people with five loaves and two fishes.
Many teachers of the world have tried to explain everything--they changed little or nothing. Jesus explained little and changed everything.” (E. Stanley Jones, Christ of the Indian Road)