NEW INSIGHTS – WISDOM FROM THE EAST
TIME / LIFE MANAGEMENT
POST 1
PAST, PRESENT & FUTURE
INTRODUCTION
From times immemorial, successful people always considered TIME as the most invaluable asset.
All facets and types of Management are, in the ultimate analysis, Time Management only. The person who manages his time most effectively and productively emerges as winner in his life.
Time is one asset which cannot be stored, retrieved or re-used. You can’t buy a little more of it by any ORDINARY MEANS known to us.
You can’t beg, borrow or steal time from any one nor can you transfer it to any one. A finite amount of time is given to you as your LIFE. It is the most finite asset of all – for any Individual. Either you use it, or, you lose it. There is not a third way.
It is therefore the most intangible and the most finite asset of all. Look around and search for time, your most invaluable asset! You won’t see it or experience it in any way with your five senses or your mind.
Yet, you measure time by the life you have spent. You measure time by the changes occurring all over the universe; by the change in the position of Sun, Moon and the stars vis-a-vis the earth; or the earth’s position vis–a-vis the Sun, Moon and the stars. Measured in any manner, you find that your life, and my life, are strictly finite ASSETS! You will find that, Life, and not time, is the Asset for us. Life is everywhere. Time is nowhere. It is Life Management and not Time Management that we are talking of, all the time.
We don’t even really know for certain – whether any thing called TIME exists and whether it is static or dynamic! But, Our Life is dynamic, ever changing, ever available to us for what we want to do with it – and therefore, our greatest asset. Yet, for the sake of convenience, for the sake of all the science and art that we have built up in the name of Time Management, we will continue to use the term, TIME, in this blog post. I have no quarrel with the science and art of time management. My intention is just to draw the readers’ attention to the fact that TIME, really means the TIME available to YOU, which, in other words, means YOUR LIFE.
Remember the times you were a child. If you were happy, you were. If you were not, you were not. You can’t get back that child-like happiness, whatever you may do now. But, then, use of your time – when you were a child, depended a lot on your parents and others around you. Likewise, the use of time, of the children around you now, depends a lot on you. It’s not merely your Children. I would say, you have a responsibility for all children around you. I am drawing your attention to another fact of life; the best use of your time depends not only on you but on all those around you. The best use of others’ time depends similarly on you too.
Remember the youth. If you had used it well or ill, it stands in your memory as such and you cannot retrieve it any way and repair it. This is another fact about time (or life). You always have a past; it is growing bigger every moment; and it is a static frame. Nothing can be done to change it. In contrast, your life being finite, your future is becoming smaller and smaller every moment. The present, well, the present is always with you; every moment it is with you. Your future invariably comes nearer and nearer ,becomes your present and then, recedes into your past.
If you had used your Childhood and your youth and your entire past well, you are successful as an adult. Else, you are unsuccessful. Your present happiness, security and capabilities depend a lot on your past and how you managed it – when it was with you.
If you use your present life well, you can come out reasonably successful in some facets of life, from now onwards – though not in some others, which the childhood and youth have taken away with them. You can’t get back a single moment from your past, or a single particle of dust from that moment and change it in any way. This is important to remember.
You can’t grow one inch taller – once you are past your teens. You can’t change your colour; you can’t change many things associated with your physical and mental capabilities.
You can’t change your absolute capabilities in intelligence etc after the age of five or so – though you can continue to add static informations to your stored memory, your brain, and use its synaptic connections to interpret them and manipulate them in many ways. Here again, we are drawing our attention to another fact of life. You can’t change many facets of life. They are given; they are the data; they are your assets or your liabilities, whichever way you look at them, the ones given to you to work your life with.
Your parents, the time and place of your birth, your brothers and sisters, the planetary positions at the time of your birth and many, many other things in your life, including a lot of your genetic make-up are all fixed forever and remain unchangeable.
What do people do with this unchangeable past? It is interesting to see and understand this. It is also very important to see and understand this, if you want to make your remaining life successful.
i. Some one says - my grand father’s grand father was Alexander the great, or Napoleon the great, or belonged to an illustrious noble family, or belonged to a family of poets, or to a family of the richest persons of his time and so on – but, here I am, I am not any of these things, and not allowed to be any of these things. Some of us put on such colourful masks, try to look upwards at the sky as if we belonged up there and look down on others ; put on all sorts of absolutely foolish, meaningless, purposeless, personality masks; boost our ego and evoke equally foolish and purposeless envy, anger and hatred of all those around us; This goes by names such as ego, superiority complex, personality mask and so on. The reality today, of you – is far, far different from this great lineage. The surreal scenario you build around yourself this way – builds a huge insecurity in and around you.
ii. There are yet others – who say – my grand father’s grand father was persecuted by your grand father’s grand father; and so, here I am, to avenge all those wrongs of your ancestors. I am stronger than you and I will take on you. I am a lion; I am a tiger; I am a cheetah; I am the bravest of the brave; Cruelest of the cruelest; I am going to avenge all the wrongs of all the past – forever; This is another script, fed into some people, to waste their life. A life of negative ego, of inferiority complex; of a darker personality mask. This is also an extraordinarily foolish, meaningless, purposeless surreal scenario people build around themselves – and build a huge insecurity in and around them.
iii. Past, however unchangeable it is – has tremendous influence on our present and future life. This influence can be distinctly divided into two types. (1) The influence of past which has given us our present capabilities, skills, relationships and assets, which can enable us to enjoy our present and build our future; and (2) the influence of past which has given us either sweet or ugly memories, which we can either enjoy or suffer.
iv. In other words – our past has given us two different things: (1) Useful and Usable capabilities, skills, relationships and assets; and (2) Sufferable and enjoyable memories; we must be able to clearly distinguish between these two. The former One creates our armour, our security and our tools, eminently beneficial for building our present and our future. The latter one, except where the past memories are really enjoyable, creates our mask, which is RISKY and DANGEROUS for us, and for others around.
v. It is ironic that most of the History that we read in our schools and colleges – is, designed to create this dangerous mask and not the useful armour and tools. There is need to mould the history to make it truly beneficial for us.
vi. So, how are we going to use our individual past.
(a) Foremost is the need to ensure that you do not lose Your capabilities, skills, relationships and assets that you inherited from the past. You must hold on to them and enhance them, so that they act as the spring board for your present and future successes. Many people tend to lose excellent skills that they had possessed or acquired in their childhood, just by long disuse. It may be fine arts like singing, painting etc. It may be extraordinary math, memory, or such other capabilities. It may be capabilities in yoga, martial arts or any other special capabilities. Once you acquired them, you must keep them for life and use them to reach your future life goals. They are great skills worth having and worth improving.
(b) This need also includes your relationships, your friends, your associations etc. Childhood friendships are very sweet and pleasant and mostly unselfish. Friendships acquired in your youth also tend to stay with you – unless, you fail to renew them periodically.
(c) Let me give one example of how to preserve and cement your relationships in the present, with the help of the past. One example will do. And, you can draw inspiration from it and mould your other relationships, suitably modifying the example.
(d) The most intimate and important relationship is that of wife and husband. How do you keep this relationship FOREVER PLEASANT and cement it and strengthen it from time to time? Human mind acts in peculiar ways in such relationships. Love in the first fervor tends to wane very quickly later, when you pile up a few unsavoury incidents in your marital life. The smallest unsavoury incidents become phantoms leading even to the breakage of marriages.
(e) Your past, anybody’s past, in such a marital relationship is both sweet and sour. There are bound to be many incidents which both wife and husband liked and enjoyed; and there are also bound to be incidents which are sour, in which the two quarreled, argued, which created gaps between them, created suspicions between them or are unpalatable in many ways. What do we do with all of them?
(f) Every time, a new problem arises between them, many of the earlier sour incidents come back between them with full force, with even greater force than the original. The two start with a small argument over the present, probably minor, incident, but then both go back into the past, bring the past sour incidents back to the present and start arguing over them again. After all, each needs supporting arguments for their view points. Ego takes over and neither will have control on the way the argument progresses and ends. The bad past has a strong tendency to haunt people in a relationship all through their lives. Do we need to allow this tendency in us? Not necessary at all. There is a good remedy.
(g) You can do this experiment your self. It is similar to the technique suggested by Patanjali in his Yoga sutras. He calls it “Pratipakhsa bhavana”. To erase a bad feeling, bring in its opposite forcefully into life. This is the principle. To erase the bad past from cropping up again and again between you two, you must take the initiative of recalling at least a few (say, ten) incidents from your past, which are agreeable, memorable and sweet and both of you like them when they happened. All marriages do start with such incidents. Take a Note Book, write down these incidents in vivid detail. Make it graphical, with picture-clarity, in your mind. Keep it secret from your spouse while this process is on. Go over them in your mind several times. Feel them. Think them. Live them in your mind a few times. It is not at all difficult for you. Try, one at a time. Try today. Once you are sure of what you have in your mind and heart, you can go to the next step below:
(h) Choose a good, reasonably pleasant occasion when both of you are together. This is the occasion for you. With spontaneity, very innocently, with reasonable casualness and naturalness, with reasonable emotional back up in your mind and tone, just remind your partner of one (just one) of the pleasant occasions, which both of you enjoyed and liked. Describe all the pleasant feeling that you felt on the original occasion. Describe it from your heart. Involve your partner as much as possible through occasional prompting to recall the occasion.
(i) If your partner supplies a few details, with some differences from the ones you recalled; no matter; it is good; if you recall your partner’s dress colour as yellow; but your partner remembers it as sky blue, it doesn’t matter; go ahead to recall the occasion with gusto; with all the pleasant feeling you can; You enjoy it fully; With utmost certainty, you can say, your partner too will enjoy the same. Bring back the occasion with full force into your lives. Bring back the emotion. Bring back the love. Bring back the pleasantness, the happiness, the joy and every thing that you both felt. Make it natural. Feel it in your self. Can you do it? Yes. You can. Each of us can. If you don’t feel you can – it is small timidity; small shyness; These have been robbing both of you of a world of happiness for quite some time. These are your worst enemies. Come out of them; come out of your shell and make a start. You don’t have to be an expert orator or anything like that. Just make a start!
(j) If these emotions had died down in you, years ago; and life is going on, in a dry and dreary fashion; it is all the more reason, that you must shake off from them and do this experiment, with all seriousness. With all sincerity. You must re-start enjoying your life. You owe it to your partner too, that your partner starts enjoying his/her life. So, please do it. Celebrate the occasion again. Go out and enjoy.
(k) Choose at least 10 occasions like this to recall, remember and enjoy once again – with reasonable spacing, of say a week (or even a fortnight or a month!!) in between, and try your best to recreate the past pleasant scenarios. Just try. Somewhere down the line, you will find, you don’t need those past occasions any more. You are enjoying your lives a lot more now. You are finding new occasions of joy. And, most important of all, as you recreate the pleasant past, the unsavoury past is dying out, lock stock and barrel, in both of your minds. The unsavoury past has a tendency to get back to life again and again, unless you bury them all deep under the forceful, effective recall of your pleasant experiences.
(l) Human mind is a peculiar invention. It is capable of filling itself with one emotion and not with two opposite emotions. Fill it with love. Your mind itself kills and buries the hate in it automatically. You don’t have to do anything at all to kill the Hate. Just fill your mind with love. That will do. Where love rules the heart, a pimple looks like a dimple. You won’t see any thing negative, anything ugly, anything unsavoury. Its gone!!
(m) Let me tell you, if there is one good use of the past – it is this. Bury the Bad Past. Bring back to life the Good Past. More important however, are how we can deal with the present. We will deal with the PRESENT, in the next post.
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