The wrapper is intact, inanimate stuff that it is …. It’s 29 years old. One of the first dairy milk chocolate bars that I ate and given to me by someone I think of as my brother. I call his mom as Amma and he knows me since I was 11 years old – almost my entire life. I met him yesterday after 15 years…. And like the chocolate that went out of the wrapper 29 years back, this was the shell – the chocolatey man inside was gone.
I knew he was in trouble, but didn’t know the extent of it and till yesterday he never shared it …. I cried and I will cry many days. The title of a business book “Control your destiny or someone else will” is a good lesson for everyone’s life not just for professionals. Listening to my brother speak it was painfully obvious that he listened to everyone, took wrong advise and never stopped to examine where he has reached and where he wants to go. But I can remove him from the picture and put anyone there…. Very few of us do self study, Osho says we are asleep and he is so right – we are walking around in our sleep, we marry, have children, work, have a career and try to live upto someone’s idea of success !!! Not for a minute do we ask what we really want, where are we headed and the consequences of our actions.
We really do injustice to the gift of life – by not living it fully.
I wish I can wave a magic wand and take away the pain that has changed my brother to a shell of his former self, but all I can do is to reach out and be available – which I will do more, now that I know the depth of the problem :(:(
The image that kept coming back was his waving out to us at the airport 30 years back … And then suddenly I see him as he is now….. Just the wrapper – the chocolate has to be filled back in.