Often in life, we are lost in the loops of thinking negatively; when we have hard times in life, we dwell in such loops. During such days, a dying rat made me understand life more than anyone. Here is that exciting story..
During the hard days of my life, I am facing tough situations; thoughts of my past mistakes and choices are pulling me to the depths of depression. As usual, on a bad day :P, I was walking on the road with a feeling of heaviness of pain in the chest, that feeling of something blocking my throat, the tears blurring my eyes, and my vision was trying its way out. With my head low, there comes, as usual, the series of thoughts popping into my mind, What did I do wrong? Why is my life like this? Why me? I am a good person. Why is this happening to me? And followed by judgments that my life sucks! They are bad! What I am doing is bad! etc.,
As I walked some distance, Tears rolled down, clearing my eyes and wiping the rest. I looked a little far, embarrassed if someone saw me in the act of so-called crying. Then I happened to see a rat almost killed by someone and was thrown on the roadside. Maybe someone from the nearby store hit it and threw it out. It is on the brink of death, hardly able to breathe with it’s eyes open.
As human beings, we always try to compare ourselves to others. When two people are there, we generally compare ourselves in terms of situations in life, Happiness or sadness, wealth, and achievements. Muchmore, we try to be the best; if the two happy people meet as individuals, we like the happiest, and sadly when two depressed people meet, the person with the most pain is the winner. So as generally, I looked at the rat and started relating to it.
And my inner conversation started, I am like you, rat; I am dying like you. There is always that inner voice questioning us, and when you are low, it questions our existence in the courtroom called the mind :P. There came a thought. Are you suffering like that rat? And the inner conversation started, and my appointed lawyer in the courtroom started supporting me that I was in more pain than the rat. And the prosecutor the mind chose for the rat started saying no, my client, the rat, is feeling more pain. Hehe…though in this courtroom of mind, Judge is mostly absent; we love to be continuous procrastinators and creators of drama. We hardly realize it’s the nature of the courtroom to have such activity. Rather than playing our role as the Judge of our courtrooms (*mind*) we choose the roles of victims.
We will discuss this in another blog, coming to the rat. As the courtroom drama continues. It’s time for the submission of proof, whose situation is worse, and I happened to get deep about the situation the rat was in. That is the point where my entire perspective about my life changed forever.
“The rat on the brink of death is feeling the pain; that’s true. But it is not suffering it.”
This is the one thing that opened my eyes I realized that the rat is feeling the pain. But, it is not judgemental about it; we humans often suffer our thoughts more than the actual pain, and it is not any other external thing that hurts us more than our own thoughts; a trigger might have happened by facing a bad situation where you felt some pain but the later part of questioning, judging, and drama of thinking as I said earlier “What did I do wrong ? Why is my life like this? Why me? I am a good person, why is this happening to me?” and creating suffering or pain to others like blaming the external situations adds more anguish. For a rat, it is just another experience, for us; the drama of the courtroom is an added Hell of an experience :P.
If I could keep the mental activity aside, I would have just felt the pain that caused the trigger, and that is over. The rat wasn’t telling itself; shit, I would have gone to the other store; why this store? Or Saying why did she come out in the morning or whose face she saw first while coming out? not thinking how it was being hit so mercilessly and being dramatic about it; it is just feeling the pain and death. As humans, gifted with the activity of thinking and the freedom to choose. The same thinking has become our life. We are in control of our mind and its activity, forgetting that we are the ones who can choose what to do with it.
If we had been just like a rat or any other living being, we would have just experienced the pain as it is part of life, acceptance of life, that we are born to experience life to the fullest, both ups and downs, rather than being caught up in the brains activity of self-sabotaging, Judging every situation, looking at the past, doubting the future forgetting that, we are the controllers of our own lives and can choose how to react to every situation, losing our ability look at the positives, to self motivate, cherish, love, share it with others. But many of us are lost, not in life but lost control of the things which have to be in our control. Our brain and body are in control of our emotions, feelings and hormones, forgetting that we are generating them and we have the upper hand on them. We are playing the victim when we can be the creators.
That day I realized and said to myself that I was going to try my best to take back control and since then gathering the knowledge and practising the methods to get to the state of being where I can be what I want to be in a particular situation rather than being the victim of it. Undoing the years of evolution takes time, and it’s a continuous process of helping and loving the self and accepting the truths of our existence. And this is how a dying rat showed me that I am playing the victim, where I can be a creator, as every human being is.