Guess Where I Found Zen?



"Everyone needs to find their Zen. What do I mean by that? Zen means peace, meditation, calmness. We are conditioned to stressing and forboding and worrying, it's human nature. It's difficult for us as humans, to focus on the moment and find peace or even want it, but we do however, need peace in our lives."

Everyone has their own ways to zen.

Ross to Phoebe :

No, no don't!
 Stop cleansing my aura!
No, just leave my aura alone, okay

Of cleansing their auras. I love how Phoebe from F*R*I*E*N*D*S does it by.. well.. literally plucking out the yuckies from your aura. But for the saner lot, it's mostly yoga or music or a walk or whatever. I’ve always wondered what my aura-cleansing technique is. Well not just an aura cleanser.. but also a stress-busting, depression-dissolving, life-mending technique.

I used to sing to ease my worries. No, not just randomly sing.. I would take the pains to listen to a song and write down the lyrics.. even though I could just get it off the Internet. I like to write it down myself cos a) this usually happens in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep and I’m too lazy to turn on the computer again and b) when you write down the lyrics, you can write them down exactly how you hear it if you don’t understand what the actual words are. I don't know how thats better. But it is.

Like the song Survivor by Destiny’s Child. I swear, it goes “I’m a survivor, I’m not go-giver, I’m a bus driver, Imma work harder!”, which sounds all wrong and probably is wrong but it cracks me up so I never really tried to find out the real lyrics.

Anyway, singing usually used to work for me until my nose kept getting blocked all the time and I literally lose my breath after half the song and also its no fun when you have to sing it like “Ibha surbhiber, Ibha bhus drivher”.. It doesn’t really make you feel like a survivor.. or a bus driver for that matter.

So after that, I couldn’t figure out what to do to get rid of all those bad/sad feelings.Until I tried gardening.

It was awesome. Everytime you bring that shovel down on the hard ground, you feel like your cracking through the brains of all your murky problems in life. And when I come across a worm- forgive me all animal right-ist and worm lovers – but I squish it. And I feel better. So there I was, digging and squishing, digging and digging more than I needed to dig. With more aggression that I’ve ever felt in my life. Once I was done, I was proud of myself and resolved that this was going to be my solution to dark days forever. I'd found my zen in the mud and dirt. Everything was great until the next morning when I woke up and found that my arms had temporarily stopped function. Well okay, that’s an over-exaggeration. They did function. Except every time they tried to function, it felt like everyone of those tiny worms I squished the day before had cloned themselves to infinity and had magically made their way inside my body to bite into each inch of the little muscle that I had somewhere between all those bones. Apparently worms have got someone looking out for them too.

I had to figure out another way to unwind before I drove myself insane. I thought of yoga which seemed like the obvious way to go. But I didn’t wanna cause further damage than I had already caused. Everytime I tried yoga in the past, I’d require atleast two days of bed rest atleast until I figure out that I’m bending or twisting in the wrong direction.

That is when I came across this awesome cooking blog. I’m not gonna give you the link b'cos I found it and its mine. And you can’t have it...... It’s mine.

I’m very possessive about my blog finds. I “found” the 1000awesomethings blog and a month later, there was an article about it in the Reader’s Digest. Sure, the blog had atleast a bazillion visitors already… but I found it. :-/

So anyway, the cooking blog.. the secret cooking blog was amazing. I started to make something everyday. And wonder of wonders, everything was.. well.. sorta edible. Well ok, it wasn’t repulsive either! I mean, I was actually good at it and got better everyday. Every afternoon, I’d browse the blog and figure out what I want to make, jot down the recipe and get crackin’. It was awesome, apart from an occasional hard-as-coconut-shells biscuits, everything else was scrummilicious. I was in bliss. It went on great until one day I had my heart set on making Banana bread. I don’t even like bananas, but it just seemed like a cool thing to make! And it was simple as hell too! I went to the store and got extra butter and eggs and everything and was all excited to make it. So in the afternoon, I go to the kitchen to make my much-awaited Banana bread. I lay out all my ingredients until I notice one tiny little thing was missing. We were out of bananas.

I swear, it was like my world was falling apart! I just had to had to make it that day itself! I mean, how can we not have bananas!? We always have bananas! My house literally grew on banana trees! I have never been that terribly upset. I was literally in tears. It was like I just missed out on winning the Nobel Prize. After spending hours, mourning on my bed, I considered trying to make something else. But figured, what’s the point? When you’re looking for lemonade, life just hands you one rotten lemon after another(we were out of lemons too :-( )

I listened to sad songs, sat around in the dark and cried my eyes out. After a while, I wasn’t sure if it was about the bananas (or the lemon) anymore. With the little light coming in through the window and tears flowing down my cheeks, somehow it crossed my mind that this would make a great photograph. All artsy and stuff. Still sniffing and sobbing, but without hesitation, I picked up my phone and clicked a picture of myself... only to find that I looked positively ghastly. It made me cry even more and curse stupid actors in movies who look positively angelic while they cry. Bloody nonsense. Oh, why.. why is everything in my life going so wrong! Where the hell is my goddamn zen! Self pity, self pity and more self-pity. Ugh.

Anyhow, crying always makes me want to pee. I don’t know what the connection is. You’re losing liquid…and somehow that makes you want to lose more liquid. Anyway, I stepped into the bathroom. The bathroom was really dirty from all the mud from the garden and just murk in general. I gestured to the empty room and said to myself “This…this is my life….A big disgusting mess...” Silence.

Without a moment’s thought, I grabbed a sponge and some floor cleaner. Down on all fours, I started scrubbing. After I was done, I looked down and still wasn’t satisfied. So I grabbed hold of every single bathroom-cleaning equipment lying around including an old toothbrush of mine and did it again. This time I gave it my all, which means between the tiles and near the clogged drain. By the time I was on the last tile, I was surprised when I realised that I was actually grinning. I’ve cleaned up the “big disgusting mess”. Ok fine so maybe my life hadn't magically cleaned itself up too. But I realized that if I could clean up this great big mess, well, then no mess is too big for me!

No mess is too big for me.  That's my current aura-cleaning methodology now. I'm on my way to Zen. And to think.. of all the places, I looked.. I found mine in the bathroom. :-)