Kashmir's Shak

A Patient Shrug

"He’s truly valiant that can wisely suffer   
The worst that man can breathe, and make his wrongs   
His outsides, to wear them like his raiment, carelessly,
And ne’er prefer his injuries to his heart,   
To bring it into danger.   
If wrongs be evils and enforce us kill,   
What folly ’tis to hazard life for ill!"
Timon of Athens (Act III, Scene V)

Poets, artists, parents and spiritual leaders have brought so much to my life and yet not one of them was completely fulfilled during their life time. All of them had to endure pain along the path to divine inspiration.

The worst often brings out the best in us. The greatest art and music has typically emanated from the poorest, most down trodden in our society.

Whether it is world inspiring rap music and break dancing from the inner city ghetto's or any one of the many great spiritual masters that cast their inspirational net to gather flocks of generations to come. All of these individuals endured the kind of suffering that you and I could not begin to imagine.

We have been taught to become comfort addicts. Slaves to time saving contraptions. Because we free, we have got busier than any generation before our time. The slightest agony or pain is muffled by a pill. The constant noise of the cinema, tv, radio and now the internet - crowd out the possibility of a solitary original thought.

When Hollywood and Bollywood conduct film tests, they are told the public wants a happy ending. Directors are artists are not allowed to make the film they want to make, or we, the ignorant masses will deny them their castle in the air.

When did become so shallow? Even Shak's lightest comedies are crafted in the solid oak of reality. All the classic romances of every generation, across every culture are filled with the anguish of love, separation and betrayal, often concluding at the pain of death. Is it a case of as our bellies get full, our hearts and minds grow empty?

We set the standard of our relationships with friends, lovers and children at such a safe level, there is no challenge, there is nothing to work for, if we don't need to put anything in, how can we ever be fulfilled? Why should we be surprised at the torrent of divorces, addictions, depression, violence and social decay that draw sustenance from our comfortable lies?

Suffering is not something we should create for its own sake, nor something to be avoided, it is inevitable. It is part of growing up. Is it time for us to open our eyes and accept the glory of the rough with the gory of the smooth?

"You have rated me   
About my moneys and my usances:   
Still have I borne it with a patient shrug,   
For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe"
Merchant of Venice (Act I, Scene III)

If my definition of a "good life" is one that contains no pressures, no failures or any suffering of any kind, if comfort is the badge of my tribe, I am condeming myself to a life of plain boredom, to be filled by the flickering fantasies of a life containing the drama of my dreams.

Follow the script of the laughter machine, a shadow puppet of celebrity, cower to conformity, trade courage for convenience, idolatry for identity and a full life for a flashy label.

We do not need to adorn the armour of a mythical hero or turn our lives into a second rate soap opera. We do not need to suck on the soother of sadness to feel alive. We have enough actors, singers and politicians to make this sacrifice on our behalf. We need to crack open the heart of pain, dip our hands into is earthy roots and smell what it means to be alive, whilst we are alive.

Being born was not a pleasure cruise. Dieing is no longer the flick of a switch. Why do we expect consumer packaged goods companies to ambush the glory of our lives?

Why do we set up our celebrities for the fall? Give them just enough adoration to convince them we need them to be our heroes, when all we want is to hold them hostage to voyeuristic need, draw comfort from their fall from grace. Prove to our shallow delight that they were mortals after all. We dont need their suffering as a surrogate for ours.

Anguish is the stone upon which our character is sharpened. We do not need to lick the stone to taste it's dirt. We need to reflect honestly, learn from our mistakes and the stone of our suffering to sharpen our saw. We need to define what our life means for us on our terms, no longer be a menu for marketers.

If our heroes are our heroes because they overcame the limits of their environment and refused to succumb to their natural born frailty, then maybe we should afford ourselves the same privilege?

The lives and work of the great poets and great leaders reminds us of the power of our mortality and the beauty of our imperfection. What else can we possibly want?

"When we our betters see bearing our woes,
We scarcely think our miseries our foes.   
Who alone suffers, suffers most i’ the mind,   
Leaving free things and happy shows behind;   
But then the mind much sufferance doth o’erskip,
When grief hath mates, and bearing fellowship.   
How light and portable my pain seems now,   
When that which makes me bend, makes the king bow"
King Lear (Act III, Scene VI)

Retain That Dear Perfection

"’Tis but thy name that is my enemy;   

Thou art thyself though, not a Montague.   

What’s Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,

Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part   

Belonging to a man. O! be some other name:   

What’s in a name? that which we call a rose   

By any other name would smell as sweet;

So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,   

Retain that dear perfection which he owes   

Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name;   

And for that name, which is no part of thee,

Take all myself"

Romeo and Juliet  (Act II, Scene II)

How do deal with our enemies? An enemy is not the evil cartoon portrayed in movies, it can be a worthy or unworthy adversary. An enemy is anyone who challenges our position or power.

This could be as simple as someone who wants to destroy what we have created (liar, thief, crook, swindler or saboteur.) or worse still destroy our ability to create (murderer, terrorist, ).

Whatever we do or wherever we go, they are always going to be ememies out there.

We are all fatally flawed. At some point or other we are going to upset others, we are going to be the enemies of others. The facinating thing is that just as it is obvious to think of ememies out there, it is more difficult to think of ourselves as the ememies of others. But we are.

We become an enemy when we challenge or contradict another persons view of themselves, we become an enemy when we obstruct anothers path to their chosen goals. We can do it simply by voting for a government and stand by (and therefore sanction) them to bomb and kill innocent children in our defence.

Sometimes that the harder we try to befriend everyone around us the more suspicion we attract. Work too hard to befriend others and they may project their fear onto our actions and raise their demons out of our sincerity.

The harder we work at building a relationship, the deeper the distrust spreads. Tongues wag. Opinions harden into self evident facts. We cannot afford to ignore their existence, equally we cannot afford to become a victim of thier violence.

Every day, ordinary people are shaped into incurable beasts. It does not take much to tilt the lens and see the monster underneath. Monsters emerge from timid souls, they suckle on fear and self fulfilling lies. It begins with fear of self destruction and eventually we reduce our lives to the dimensiosn of the ememies we fear. Then we have arrived, we are the enemy that creates enemies.

The answer is not to take out a flower and wave a bright flag, pay for peace and smile at everyone we meet. The answer is to wake up to the fact that we ourselves are someone's enemy. T

Burying our frailty only makes us more fragile.  Once we have humbled ourselves, forgiven ourselves for being flawed, we are free to move to a higher ground.

This is no easy task, because it is easier to define ourselves in relation to our enemies and b held hostage by our own fears.

Just as a vaccine contains the very germs it is building an imunity to, our fear of terrorists or even the enemies who live next door, the way to deal with an enemies 'out there' is to extract the one that lives in here.

This is not an easy journey. Being silent. Being aware. Rising above our own ignorance to the point that the mirror of our sacred identity cracks and a new person emerges, is a painful act of self less ness.

"Love all, trust a few,   

Do wrong to none:

be able for thine enemy

Rather in power than use,

and keep thy friend   

Under thy own life’s key:

be check’d for silence,   

But never tax’d for speech"

All’s Well that Ends Well (Act I, Scene I)

Reign In Our Badness

We do not possess weaknesses.

Our flaws, fears and frailties possess us.

Facing these inner fears and letting our flaws go is not as easy as it is sounds. The first and toughest step is to confront the fact that these demons actually reside inside us and have control over our lives. This requires us to alter our thinking, our reactions to everyday events around us, as society teaches us the habit of covering up. The humour in this situation is that everyone around us can see the very flaws that we conceal from ourselves.

Life events such as death, accidents, betrayal and failure come along one after another to wake us up, but in the majority of cases they have no effect, this is because the path to least resistance is to cover our own frailty by pointing out the monsters that prey on the people around us, as if for some unexplainable reason, we believe that their flaws are going to set us free?

Blame is the fastest escape from the truth and we take it without hesitation to protect our flaws. 

There is only one person on this earth and in this life who can set me free from the illusion that keeps me where I am and that is – me. My demons (my flaws and fears) are not “out there” they are “in here” in a place that only I can know. I know my demons, when my flaws are my friends, they possess me.

To be free, I need to tap the truthful force inside me and have the courage to face my flaws so I can let them go, so that I can be free to be me. 

’TIS better to be vile than vile esteem’d   
When not to be receives reproach of being;   
And the just pleasure lost, which is so deem’d   
Not by our feeling, but by others’ seeing:   
For why should others’ false adulterate eyes
Give salutation to my sportive blood?   
Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,   
Which in their wills count bad what I think good?   
No, I am that I am, and they that level   
At my abuses reckon up their own:
I may be straight though they themselves be bevel;   
By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown;
Unless this general evil they maintain,
All men are bad and in their badness reign.

Sonnet CXXI (121)

We Defy Augury

World War Two drew to a close on this day in 1945. The leaders of Japan laid down their arms and signed a piece of paper on the US battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay. Thsu the celebrations began across the globe, as people spilled out into the streets and hope throbbed in the quiet heart of mothers waiting for their offspring to return to their arms.

Sixty years later we are in awe of the heroics and selfless sacrifices made by 'so few for so many'. The war was not about economics we are told in our history books, it was in the cause of freedom and it does not take too many documentaries about the chilling vision of Hitler and his followers to doubt the cause.

Yet, what is this freedom that was sought so desperately, for which so much young hot blood has been spilt, if it is reduced to child like hoarding of possession, consumption, social approval and instant gratification?

What is free will if our habits, clothes, diets, morality, reason and opinion are shaped by the fashion of the hour? What is free will in a life where leisure, happiness and conversation are  shaped out of the noisy lights that reflect off the pallid white sheet of the theater wall?

We catch a glimpse of moments of truth but not for long. The minute we dare to step out of our tedious consistency, we shun its consequence, as it is cloaked in confusion and it terrorizes the ‘I” out the dungeon of consolation, our personality.

The manifestation of the ruler has altered but not the means or conclusion. Our frail distraction is it’s effortless means and communal etiquette it' sleepy and seemingly inevitable culmination.

What is this peace and liberty that has been purchased so dearly?

Not a whit, we defy augury;
there’s a special providence
in the fall of a sparrow.
If it be now, ’tis not to come;
if it be not to come, it will be now;
if it be not now, yet it will come:
the readiness is all.
Since no man has aught of what he leaves,
what is ’t to leave betimes?
Let be.

Hamlet
(Act V, Scene ii)