FAILURE AND SEASON

Author Anu Lal in Wayanad

Dear friends, today, on this year’s May Day, I would like to announce that my 3rd book, which is the result of long nine years of meditation and journeys undertaken into the unexplored realms of human consciousness, is about to be published. The book contains 20 important stories of wit and wisdom. I thank the Cosmos for blessing me with this treasury of wisdom and helping me share it with my fellow beings.

This book has been conceived even before the ideas for Wall of Colours, (my first book) developed. However, I could finish it only now, after many, many years of waiting and suffering. There were times when I had thought I would never be able to finish this book. This was the one I wished I could call my first book, my first-born. Of course, for every writer, his or her books are babies that they bring out to this world. 

In this process, however, I have learnt one more important concept. What we (as a writer) share with the world does not come from inside of us. We become a channel to some higher dimension or consciousness to act through.

¹ For everything there is a season,
    a time for every activity under heaven.
² A time to be born and a time to die.
    A time to plant and a time to harvest.
³ A time to kill and a time to heal.
    A time to tear down and a time to build up.
⁴ A time to cry and a time to laugh.
    A time to grieve and a time to dance.
⁵ A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones.
    A time to embrace and a time to turn away.
⁶ A time to search and a time to quit searching.
    A time to keep and a time to throw away.
⁷ A time to tear and a time to mend.
    A time to be quiet and a time to speak.
⁸ A time to love and a time to hate.
    A time for war and a time for peace.

__ Ecclesiastes 3, New Living Translation (NLT)

This passage underscores the concept I am mentioning here. A timely intervention either blocks our way or at times opens new ways to our quest. It can happen either way, and in both ways, we are the direct beneficiaries of this Intervention. Often, we could not recognize in what form we benefit from a particular block in our path. This was what happened with me when I encountered many a hindrances to complete my third book, 20 important stories of wit and wisdom. 

It wasn’t a book that was driven by its plot or story line. On the other hand, the book was solely driven by an idea—clear-sightedness. Therefore, as an author, I myself should keep my spirit clear and my vision sharp, accordingly. Whatever wisdom each story shared had to come through me. I had to live it first. Only then, I could write about it. In other words, I should acquire the clear-sightedness to share it with the world, while continuing the process of writing.  

Due to this reason, I had to undergo severe self-checking and meditation. I had to see through things and events that others might call pitfalls, stupidities, or disasters. I focused my attention on events that to the normal eyes seem tragedies or failures because I have led to believe through my experiences that great wisdom lies close to our grasp in a low life-situation. “When we think we are at the bottom of failure, we are the closest to great truths regarding this life and the other, great wisdom that could otherwise only learnt from the Heavens,” as you would read in my 3^rd book. Failure is a gateway to the Highest Wisdom. If you can accept a person when he or she is a failure, you will never forget how to get back home under the dark skies of failure. 

When we fail, we tend to look at others with empathy, tend to be more humane to other’s problems and sorrows, at least in the hope that you will get the empathy back as you are suffering too with the same turn of fate. This is where the clear-sighted individual becomes different because he can see clearly, beyond a one-on-one confrontation. The Clear-sighted would never empathize with failure because for him or her there is no failure. There is no such thing, yes, you heard me correctly. For the Clear-sighted, for everything there is a season. And failure is only an acting out of that season, just like any instance of success is.  

I lived through this lesson during the work for this book. As I mentioned earlier, this would have been my first book. But the season was not ripe yet. Although I could resort to these ideas now, as I am Clear-sighted at present, after my period of learning spent with this book during its creation, when I went through the suffering and punishments my beloved ones imposed upon me for being so resigned to do anything else, back then when the book wasn’t in its current shape, it was hard. 

I would like to conclude by telling you the story of how I received the idea for this book, about being Clear-sighted. 

I was a student, then. Well, almost. I was doing a part-time job and my B. A. English. I had had a tough time to join English major. It was against everything my neighbours, schoolteachers, and family friends (those well-wishers, who never tire of giving you the right advice at the wrong time) considered a worthy way of spending time. “There is no scope for English main,” they often said. I had had enough with Diploma in Electronics, which I joined immediately after my Twelfth Grade. I was miserably out of place with the course. Finally, after three years of Diploma Imprisonment I recognized, it was the right season. Years of waiting had ended, and I joined B. A. English, my path had opened, the time was ripe.    

It was bedtime and I was lying down, during one of those early days of B.A. Many thoughts circled my mind like convocation of eagles circling a heap of meat. One of those eagles perched on my head. It fascinated me. It was the idea for the third book I mentioned. The idea was majestic and deep. But the task was too big for a graduate student to undertake. I didn’t know how to write a book. It was a book about clear-sightedness. I didn’t know how I would begin it and what ‘clear-sightedness’ even meant. Still, I had the faith that the barriers of dreaded failure had already been reached and there was nothing worse to happen. 

Hindrances often made me think, in the passage down the road to the Wisdom of a Lifetime, that it is better to abandon this task. At each turn on the road though, I met other eagles, which showed me that there is a time appointed by the Cosmos, for every action to fall into its rightful place. 

Standing here, now, I realize how hard it had been not to share what I learnt throughout the writing of this book, with my friends and family and well-wishers, until I could put it all together in one book form, under one title. I wanted the world to read the Clear-sighted Wisdom in a complete book-form because this would only make the complete sense and reveal the big picture about some of the Cosmic Truths. One at a time, perhaps these pearls of wisdom might have been lost. 

It’s been easier with all the social media these days, to share everything I have written, every new idea that came to me, every thought, every peal of wisdom, before it appeared in this third book of mine. But then, that would have been a futile attempt, and everyone might have taken those timeless stories as “just another Tweet.” 

I thank my own Restraint that helped me not to share any of it on the journey, so I could share it in totality at the end of it with the right person, you. 

Like the Bhagavat Gita says, “A gift is pure when it is given from the heart to the right person at the right time and at the right place, and when we expect nothing in return,” this is the right time to reveal the wisdom of Clear-sightedness. 

Watch this space for further information on my third book with 20 important stories of wit and wisdom.

 

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Happy May Day