Overcoming challenges, cultivating positivity, and finding fulfillment in retirement
The world is like a sprouting field for a human being, much like it is for a healthy seed. Sown into a completely strange ambience with built-in hope and passion to conquer the world, it is planted and given full care, and every down call in new challenges to test endurance and strength. A seed sprouts and bears the fruits of life only after it has successfully passed through four important challenges. This seed is sown optimistically, given all the ambient conditions, ensuring rejuvenation, which is the first phase. If it is not watered properly, it will not sprout, no matter how better the lineage the seed is from, which is the second phase. The process is unflinchingly carried on for an indefinite time to ensure nourishment so that it attains full glory, which is the third phase. Even after the buds are formed, ambient environmental conditions are a must to bear healthy fruits. If not harvested at the right time, winds, rain, or over-ripening will make it fall down on the ground, where it rots. This is the final but most important phase.
I felt like I was a tree given all the right conditions to shape me well. As a child, I was a cute little champ with a world-conquering smile and hope reflecting my future, said my mom. I never knew what challenges I was to face nor did I bother about. It was when the books never fascinated me and pressures never succumbed to me. With every new dawn, I was faced with newer challenges. I was shaped into a better human being for which I fought my whole life. I held a better office and enjoyed a better life. Earlier I wept on seeing my parents fighting. I would not leave my house except when I held my father’s middle finger, and I never slept without my mom telling me the bedtime story. Now that I am a learned man having my own kids, and that’s how the priorities started shifting. I became a boss in the family, so I am in the office. I started living my life through my kids just like my father, and I made a lot of decisions. I was a better administrator, was full of energy, and had collected a lot of capital. I was so involved that I could never prioritise myself.
After forty years of my service in the job, I am a retired man now. Do you know what retirement means? “It is the end of living, that’s how people define it. You are no longer valued because no one has to deal and people no longer cling in for help and favour, not even consulted for important household issues. Even those who remained your dearest are looking for their safe ends. Every click of the clock seems to delay and it is as if the vindictive time is turning back on you, the time you recklessly wasted ignoring yourself. You start losing your energy every passing day, and your taste buds shrink as if your diet is filled with the dirtiest stuff”. Every clinical report leaves my eyes full of tears for I was ignoring my health. They say, “I am getting old, and it is an accomplice and has come out of the body pressure I bore for those busy years”. This worsens my thinking capacity, and I am losing my faith, my fame, my everything, and it seems as if the whole world has gone against me. My kids advise me to do things which please their fancy. I have nothing to think about, and I have lost my sleep. It is when I feel like the world has shrunk, the air I breathe is waiting to be paid, and I am taking an undue part of nature. I am like a shipwreck in troubled water.
Once I was walking through the backyard when I saw a shabby and weary-looking old man who appeared to be in his seventies, carrying a huge weight on his trembling shoulders grinning from ear to ear. Suddenly, a thought came into my mind about the old man, and I said to myself, “A miser fellow crushed under the burden of life”. The scene passed, and I entered my house with grief in mind. What made me utter these words, caught off guard in ghastly silence, I questioned myself. My conscience reflected and responded with alacrity that it was him who reminded me of some other fellow who remained an unsatisfied creature under the firmament. I had understood the whole game by now, “the only thing which can make a person happy is a better score in the satisfaction level”. How was it relevant to my problem, I wondered and offered a long pause to my cognitive capabilities. Out of jolt, I sensed that when something, maybe some captivating aroma or alluring music gets you the ambience of some earlier event, you start changing your mood depending on how the earlier event influenced you. This is how we perceive things explained as “Conditioned Emotional Response (CER)” by Psychologists. Therefore, I started believing that the choice lies with me. I need to cut ascender from all those ideas and thoughts which drag me towards negativities which call for frustration. This is how the “Negative Cognitive Bias” influences people, especially the most susceptible group. There are only two ways through which people start liking you, one is your physical beauty and the other one is any kind of favor you offer them. The earlier one of course is enchanting but most often has a huge burden of pride with it and has a serious drawback of being mortal. It changes with time and so does the attitude of others. It dies with age and one is left at the bottom of the ladder of confidence and satisfaction. The latter one is more permanent and is the best accomplice. It does not grow at the mercy of time and has no burden of pride with it.
Better Management Is Better Control
The most drastic attitudinal difference with the emergence of any difficult situation is that you lose the ability to face the future optimistically. Do you know what management is? “It is the control of resources to minimise waste and maximise development”. In our case, it is to minimize negativities and maximize positivity. We need to believe that the game is not over yet. The stage we are in is the stage of harvesting the fruit (Harvesting Phase) discussed in the beginning para. We have struggled our whole life for this harvesting phase and now we cannot afford to let it go to waste. I decided to take every new challenge with a stiff upper lip and leave out everything which makes me feel, I have bitten off more than I can chew. The first and foremost thing that I need to believe in is, “I am a retired person”. Retirement does not come alone, it brings in a dip in confidence and that of course is the most threatening accomplice. We need to be better managers, in the sense, we have to accept that living is a dynamic process. It has neither remained quiescent in the past nor shall it be in the future.
With every change in the temporal phase, the priorities will also change and how we perceive situations, will also change. It is not possible that a better husband will always be a better father or for that matter a better son. But a better manager will always have all his relations intact. Therefore, choose your thoughts and choose your acts and be a better manager. Cultivate habits which fascinate your valued ones and shun off all the stuff which is dislikened. Even if you have lost your physical beauty, your habit of doing favours, a moral beauty, will push people to be in love with you and that indeed is the best way of being satisfied. You are the right person in the queue who can do much for society, and do the right things at the right time as unbridled mannerism is not a virtue at all. Do not waste your precious time in blame games, don’t fix the blame, fix the problem. People who never change their minds are either perfect or stubborn. You are probably the best one to judge your priorities. Don’t think you are no longer needed by your family or society. Of course, you are, but your role is different. If you are able to know your role, you are a better manager. Never let yourself get bored because your boredom will rub off on to your family. Do not waste your time watching unproductive TV shows as they will not get you any better. Never rely on unproductive ways to get you out of difficulties. Smoking a cigarette has never proved to be a potent method. It may be for those who fear their future and want to kill themselves rather than facing the challenges. The choice is yours, you can turn your pain into profanity or into poetry. Remember those who try are the only people who make it through. You can do away with all your bad habits if you are committed and have the courage to stick your neck out. The person you are today is the result of what you have been for the last decade. Most people miss out on their whole life for want of mercy from the divine. They wait for some magic stick to work for them overnight and they confuse it with faith. Remember faith is the most instrumental tool you have with you. It can help you turn your scars into stars. You need to believe in the power of prayer so play it down and pray it up. You have the power to turn a mountain into a gold mine. Therefore, a strong faith and an unflinching determination and commitment can lead you unto the top of the ladder. Remember great ideas are always intuitional but your perception makes them recognizable and we all know that nature is not discriminative. Turn your ideas into realities because your beliefs do not define what you are but your actions do. The me I see is the me I will be. Remember not many people are different in their mental capacities, the difference is due to the attitude you have towards your ideas.
I Am Retired, Not Tired
None of the pressures can ever succumb to you unless you are ready to step down. A good manager is sure to succeed even during the most difficult situations. Our response to any environmental stimulus encompasses three important stages Viz. Perception of signal, Interpretation of the perceived signal (stimulus), and Response. We respond to a signal in a particular sequence of events and this is the central dogma of any signal-response. All three stages are well-established having a regulatory system within. Signal perception by the sensory system is dependent on the recipients – learning, memory, expectation, and attention. Remember all these are variables and we all know that a variable can be changed. Nonetheless, we must believe that our response to any situation depends on how good managers we are. We have the power of changing any bad situation into a good one provided we have the power of being upright.
Do not stop travelling. Due to a lack of resources and energy, both can be managed. One who stops travelling stops living. Invoke good habits from a variety and abandon bad ones as the swan does. Knowledge is one such, though intangible, invincible way of attaining satisfaction. Develop the habit of reading whatever pleases your fancy and challenge your conscience if it does not. Motivate yourself for better and more productive ideas and stick to them unflinchingly. Remember one success motivates you for the next task and one failure inculcates better standards to be up to the next challenge. Bring discipline into your life and do not leave things around you in an unorganized way. If you want to assess how well organized you are inside, see your surroundings you will get to know. Develop the habit of doing your household work because this will lead you towards independence and independence is a key to satisfaction. Develop the habit of a smile because your physical acts are unequivocally going to rub off on to your mental and spiritual life. Set goals and categorize them through your sense of judgment and try to follow those who have proved themselves. Keep distance from all sorts of negative forces and their storekeepers as they are the most powerful forces in the universe and are undoubtedly going to let you down.
I will conclude by quoting a story of an old man. A learned spiritual master used to teach his disciples in a lonely place. A student of his, after having completed the course, decided to leave the institution to divulge the divine message. Before leaving, he fell into prostration before his master. He asked his master for some message which he could take along. Their eyes unflinchingly met each other, and caught off guard, the master said, “Yes I have something to tell you. If during the journey of your life, you are stuck by some strong negative force, all set to take you along and shatter all your dreams, what would you do?” asked the master. The student replied, “I shall pay no heed to it and move on.” The master asked him again and the student stunned, replied “Yes master, I shall avoid and move on”. The master repeated his question but got the same answer. “Don’t try to make a mountain out of a molehill, the master replied in a different way.” “Ok, tell me if you are to drop into your friend’s house and you are stuck at the entrance by one of his pets, what will you do?” “I will corner him and try to move on,” replied the student with alacrity. The master looked more inquisitive, “What if it attacks you again?” Looking more confident, he replied, “I shall avoid him again and try to move on.” “What if it attacks you the third time,” asked the master with increasing interest. After a brief pause, the student replied, “Oh my master, I shall have no other option than to call my friend who could come and tame his pet so that I get a safe passage.” “Yes,” replied the master with a smile on his face. “Do the same thing in the earlier case. Remember God is your friend, ask Him for help if you are surrounded by negative forces because unflinching determination and complete faith in the divine alone can help you out.”
The writer is In-charge DNA division, Forensic Science Laboratory J&K. He can be reached at mu************@***il.com