A journey from reaction to respond

A journey from reaction to respond

There was loud scream in the restaurant, when I turned around, I saw a lady was jumping and screaming because a cockroach was sitting on her T-Shirt. As she shooed away the cockroach, it went and sat on her child, and now both the mother and child started screaming and jumping, a sudden commotion started. The waiter ran towards the child and held the cockroach in his fist and walked outside the room. Then many customers jumped on the restaurant owner and questioned vociferously on cleanliness.

In this midst of loud noise suddenly mind went blank and silent, all the chaos though happening outside became mute with an inherent question seeking desperately for an answer “when it was the same cockroach why did the women and child reacted screamingly and the waiter responded so calmly?”

I saw that the women and child’s reaction to cockroach was spontaneous and instinctive. There was nothing in cockroach but the hidden fear of cockroach in them which disturbed them. They were simply not capable of handling the disturbance caused by a cockroach. Whereas the waiter was easily able to manage the disturbance caused by cockroach that is why he responded so coolly.

Many scenes flashed from the past as scenes emerged one after the other. Once I got stuck in a busy traffic, I just started playing some music but my partner became totally restless and started blaming government for the mess… 

I entered a scene where a baby was stuck in the apartment by bolting the door where mother was wailing and others were holding a ladder, unable to gain entry into the apartment. I cleared the mob for a clean access to the door, and everyone was taken back as they heard a loud noise only to find that I had kicked at the center of the door which was moving with vibration, mother rushed inside hugging the child… 

An old woman was wailing in pain as a ram was again preparing to attack. Everyone was running away from the ram but I started running towards the ram, en-route I picked up a fallen metal bucket while running, hitting ram in full force with the bucket and then saw ram collapsing… 

The journey from REACTION to RESPOND was getting unfolded. I was on the path of a great learning that why many people in their lives handle crisis so well but many cave in so quickly. The mystery unraveled for the first time that reaction is a response by a person who is not able to handle the disturbance. But when we absorb and assimilate the response from all senses and then act without getting disturbed is the real meaning of responding. 

It is this difference which threw open the Pandora box of our daily life actions. We all seek happiness but somewhere down the line guilt and fear chases us. Locations of these guilt trips are caused by our own action in the past where we mishandled the situations in our life. I realised now why anger is reaction and love is responding.

In the state of anger we are disturbed as things are happening quite contrary to our expectation. Each one of us have already built castles in air by laying a particular path. Any deviation of path vaporizes the castle in thin air which challenges the inherent wisdom of the journey. It is then we get disturbed and fail to handle the situation in its natural way. It is only later when we realise and absorb all the inputs from a situation, there is a silent laugh at our stupidity, questioning ourselves “How I could have been so foolish?”

“Why a dead body floats and live body drown” was explained so beautifully. Dead body has no resistance with water, whereas a live body resists water with fear. Once even the body gives up resistance, it becomes one with the water and start rising on top of the water. So dropping of expectation, allowing the things to happen on its own and facing the situation as they come is the first attitude of a person in the state of love.

Being in the state of love every individual is able to handle any situation without ever getting disturbed. All the senses in a person are in tune with outward environment producing natural response to any given stimuli. When there is no resistance from within for any influence outside us, there is always serenity in us. In this state when any action is taken it becomes responding.

Maturity in all of us is this journey where we move from the zone of reaction to responding. The day we start responding and drop reacting we attain eternal peace within us as we are aligned to our inner being with a peak state of love.

Hari Rao - 16.10.2013