Vivre au jour le jour. That has always been my motto. I do not have a plan as I never had one, and most things happen by default. I must have taken the word ‘existentialism’ too literally. Once upon a time I used to aspire to be individualistic but what does that even mean? We are told that everyone of us is unique. Over time you know that your identity is very much dependent on how people in general perceive you. If you look at a baby photo of yours, can you tell what kind of individual he or she will become? So you are defined by your name, date and time of birth, your ethnic group, your job, your likes and dislikes, your behaviour etcetera et cetera. If you think about it we are not that different from each other. We are all made of flesh and blood, we have our fears.hopes, ambitions, preferences and ultimately we are only interested in ourselves. We think that we are being charitable when in fact there is pleasure in giving and we feel better when we do the right thing according to our beliefs and culture. There is nothing wrong to be only concerned with self-interest as we should be concerned with what makes us happy for our physical and mental wellbeing. Perhaps some of our encounters and experiences have shaped us to become the persons we are today but I tend to think that we have those experiences and encounters because we are who we are whether we like it or not. It is said that people change but then we already know that nothing stays permanent. Things happen whether you are in the middle of it. Quite often, we are so engrossed with our thoughts that we are no longer present and then our mind is all cluttered. Thoughts are necessary for us to get on with our work and daily life but we must give full attention to them without fears and see them for what they are.
What I find most challenging is to get out of what I have been accustomed to doing and performing most of my life even though I no longer enjoy the work that I have been doing and feel weighed down by some of the tasks at work . It is time to make changes, so I tell myself. I am aware that I have been conditioned to think in one way or another. Thoughts happen 24/7, perhaps change is possible if I begin to pay attention to every thought I have. I will not see things clearly if I am avoiding unpleasant and irksome feelings in my guts.
My mind is often fragmented. Whenever I feel conflicts rising , reading Jiddhu Krishnamurti helps me to re-centre.
‘If one wants to see a thing very clearly, one’s mind must be very quiet, without all the prejudices, the chattering , the dialogue, the images, the pictures — all that must be put aside to look. And it is only in silence that you can observe the beginning of thought — not when you are searching, asking questions, waiting for a reply. So it is only when you are completely quiet, right through your being , having put that question, ‘What is the beginning of thought?’, that you will begin to see, out of that silence, how thought takes shape.
If there is an awareness of how thought begins then there is no need to control thought.We spend a great deal of time and waste a great deal of energy all through our lives, not only at school, trying to control our thoughts — ‘This is a good thought. I must think about it a lot. This is an ugly thought, I must suppress it.’ There is a battle going on all the time between one thought and another, one desire and another, one pleasure dominating all other pleasures. But if there is an awareness of the beginning of thought, then there is no contradiction in thought.’
— — Freedom from the Known, Jiddhu Krishnamurti @ page 107
