A pizza without shame or thanks

Tonight, dinner was take-away from Pizza Hut. When we returned to our car with four pizzas and a salad, we found the wipers up. Someone had cleaned the windscreen, and was now going to ask for money for this unasked-for service.

Sure enough, as is usual, a child turned up. We got in the car, talking, and in a hurry to "deal with" the kid - i.e. to pay him with short change - left the pizza sitting on the roof of the car when the cleaner kid pointed out, "pizza!" My brother thanked him nonchalantly, put the pizzas on the back seat, and paid the kid. I had managed to find a few coins in the dark nooks and corners of my wallet too.

But. I thought the kid had asked for pizza! It was cleared a moment later that the kid had reminded us we might be driving of with pizzas on top of the car. But still my heart had said the kid had asked for pizza, and I better listen to my heart any time it speak because it doesn't sleep at night if ignored during the day. This heart!

I am slightly mean. My heart is shy to give. In my life I have been lucky to have at least seen people with an extraordinary heart - and they weren't rich or anything. In fact the most important thing those people, who in my view have a big heart, do is to simple stop and take stock of their surroundings. I see them not just walking off or away, but stopping, and asking: "Can I help?"

Tentatively, I suggested to my brother that we should offer a slice - just a slice because I am slightly mean, or rather, afraid of doing good - to the child. My brother said no, money is enough. I said well, why not pizza? So I gave the kid a slice. He got away with money and the pizza. And sure enough, within seconds popped up a second kid, this time asking for pizza.

"See, that is why," my brother said as he backed the car up. "Thankless!"

Thankless? I asked. Who is thankless? Them, or us? Who are we to make anyone thankful to us when we don't know where our next piece of bread comes from and what makes us imagine it's rightfully earned? Do we know we'd be able to reach home and have that pizza? Who brings us back home safe and puts food on our table?

Only a month ago, I had made a fervent prayer that was answered immediately. I asked shamelessly and without reserve. I can afford a few pizzas every now and then, with a Mountain Dew, and still I am not ashamed to ask and still I am not ashamed to make all sorts of tall promises that I will do this and that and change the world and open my heart and serve with my soul once my prayer is answered oh yes I will and I still forget to fulfill any promise the moment my prayers are answered and I am still asking and I am thankless and slightly mean.

Since I am afraid of doing good in a world where most of us deeply wish to extend hands and help and be good but are ashamed of everyone else - and because I am not in that very fortunate category of people who would ask, "Can I help?" without the slightest degree of self-importance or expectation of reward or showing off... we drove off.

I could not take out another slice, though I really don't eat that much and if no one were looking or asking, I'd buy a whole pizza for those kids. I don't eat that much. Pizza or salt-less daal taste the same to me because in my life, I have tasted much and nothing means anything to me anymore. No longer does a pizza make me feel like I am partying. Life is real.

The second kid was only perhaps deprived of a meager slice of pizza. But I am deprived of a feeling of wholeness and happiness. Who am I, on God's earth, to ask for thanks? When at having my prayers answered much more lavishly than I had dreamt of, I did not have the courage to return to the soul of the world the good that it has put in my lap.

Shame on me!

Choices

I once went to a person who is a personal as well as spiritual counsellor. As is usual in most first interactions between advisors and the naive seekers, I laid down a whole list of issues, concerns, wishes. At one point, he picked up one of my wishes, and asked me: what do you want to do?

"I have multiple talents," I said, "and I excel at them all. I learn new things quickly, much faster than most I know. So I never know what one thing I really want."

Then I paused, and said, "But I want to be a writer."

"Have you ever published?" He asked.

"No." I was amazed at what I saw in that little question. Am I, or am I not a writer? Who knows? My essence is only known to me, but it becomes a expression only when I undertake action. I had never published anything I wrote, though in my teenage, I often wrote brilliantly.

He did not reply directly. He told me the real story of a person who was repeatedly turned down as a potential script writer by my own organization. He did not have anything to his credit then. He went on to work for another place, became a "script writer bona fide."

"Now," my counsellor said, "your organization wants him back, but he refuses."

I listened intently.

"The point is, he is wanted now because it is now that he is a script writer. Earlier, he was just one of the many who thought or claimed that he could write. He had no proof, and there were many who turned his claim down."

Point was taken.



Months later, I decided to read Harry Potter. There is something about epic heroic tales that inspires something eternal, epical, in each of us. After all that I learnt about Harry Potter, I realized it was not a wizard and witchcraft story. So I decided to read it in December, 2005. I underlined all the words that has wisdom in them. In the first three books of the Harry Potter series, there are many.

In The Chamber of Secrets, I found a piece of wisdom. According to one, it reveals an "existential moral truth."

In The Chamber of Secrets, Dumbledore is telling something eternally humanly wise to the young wizard Harry, who has been placed in the school house of the brave, Gryffindor, instead of the house of the cunning, Slytherin, by the magical sorting hat.

"Professor, the sorting hat told me I... should be in Slytherin," Harry said, looking desperately into Dumbledore's face. "The sorting hat could see Slytherin...in me and it--"
"Put you in Gryffindor," said Dumbledore calmly.
It only put me in Gryffindor," said Harry in a defeated voice, "because I asked not to go in Slytherin."
"Exactly," said Dumbledore, beaming once more....
"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."

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How do you define power?

Speaking of power, I may have shared this here earlier too... a definition of power given by my dear friend and advisor Rosen:

Power is when you have something that someone else wants from you, but cannot take unless you give.

As someone obsessed with the subject of power and power vs. strength at one time - I feel this is the best definition I have ever experienced. Every other thing that people is usually a list of things that can come and go, and over which we often have a surprising lack of real power.

Over time, I have shared this definition with many people. I have never yet heard a better one, though many just like to refute the definition. Why? I don't know. Sometimes refuting things is the only way we can get a sense of purpose. I am glad I didn't refute Rosen's idea when he proposed it. But this evening, during walk, I was thinking of what an obstinate young persistent I myself have been at times!
 

By the river Piedra, I didn't miss a thing.

Just want to report on one thing: that whole three-day no-complaint campaign? It has made me so powerful inside! Strong. Powerful. Whatever the word.

Nothing around me had changed. Except my state of mind.

In By The River Piedra I Sat Down And Wept, Paulo Coelho warned against becoming a part of the plays that people have constructed... plays in which they cast you as their imaginary villain and force you, by their behavior, to play that role. By not complaining or getting involved with thar resigned attitude, I have taken myself out as a one-person cast in many plays of non-effectiveness.

I love real life. It is actually more aching in some ways; "poignant" as my dear friend Tani calls it. I like it. It's like tasting a lemon. It wakes you up. Tasting that tang of real life, with its zest and its bitterness... it really wakes you up. So you don't miss a thing.

It makes you powerful when you don't miss a thing. When you know that you have lived your life. You know that it makes an ordinary life extraordinary in wonder and experience - to not complain about it but own it as your own life.

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2. in 1.

With great pain comes great realization.
-The Prophecy

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