There’s a beautiful video by Wayne
Dyer doing the rounds on Whatsapp
these days, in gist it says “what’s inside, comes out”. He uses this simple
analogy of an orange to illustrate his point, no matter how much or how little,
when or where you squeeze an orange, the only thing coming out of it is orange
juice. The orange gives out only what it has inside, can’t give any other.
Pretty straightforward.
By the same logic, we give out
what we have inside. So when I give out anger, greed, jealousy or hatred, that’s
probably what’s inside me. Similarly, I can also give out love if I harbour
love inside me. In essence and by common sense you can only give what you have.
You can only give oranges or apples to someone if you first have them. Fair
enough.
I quite loved this video and its
message and did share it with some friends. However, as I was lying down,
retired for the day, there was another thought running through me. The orange
gives out orange juice because that’s what’s inside an orange and that’s the
only thing inside it. But what about us, yes we do give out anger, hatred, or
greed but we also give out love, kindness and joy. So what do we have inside us
in our locked cupboards? We have it all, we have oranges, mangoes, apples and
we also have ridge gourds and bitter gourds. Complex humans that we are, we
have a massive cocktail of emotions inside us. We simply give different things
to different people.
Capable of showering kindness and warmth upon
one but showing the same to another might be strenuous. And this is exactly the
paradox of our daily lives, dealing constantly with varied souls. You love your sibling dearly, but you might not love your spouse’s brother or
sister quite the same way. And it is not just about the filial bond at play,
you find justified reasons to dislike them a bit. But those same issues or
reasons don’t quite obstruct the flow of affection for your own sibling. You
can go out of your way to reach out to a friend A but you cannot quite bring
yourself to do it for friend B or B’s condition doesn’t evoke the same concern
and care within you. But there might be a friend C who would do his best for B.
In this entire sequence, who’s got what inside? You certainly have kindness
because you helped A yet couldn’t do so for B. So does that make you
compassionate or contemptuous? But C felt tenderness for B, so B is surely not
a universally bad person too. There are no clear answers to these.
It’s rather easy for the orange,
it only has a single component within it, so keeps gushing that out. However,
even with the harmless orange, the juice is sometimes sweeter, sometimes a tad
sour or slightly bitter. The externalities of temperature, soil, water,
location etc certainly affect it and its inside. So what fate do we hold living
in a world of constant reactions leading to multiple flavours brewing inside
us? It would be grossly unjust to say that we only have negativity around or inside
us. But yes, we are definitely incapable of maintaining altruism within us at
all times and with all beings. We are both slaves of situations and slaves of
individuals.
Coming to think, an ordinary
human like me gives out what it receives. And it piles on its insides with
these accumulated tokens instead of filling the same with its self generating
benevolence. It’s as simple as this, someone gives me a birthday present worth
five hundred, I make a mental note and at the time of reciprocation give him
similar present of five hundred. Someone gives me a gift worth five thousand; I
reciprocate with the same value. And the unwanted gifts just end up being
circulated from one to another. Sadly, we have adopted the same referral in our
emotional reciprocation, slowly becoming oblivious that emotional gifts are
cost free and self generating. So might as well give everyone a richer gift. Not
easy I know, because these richer gifts don’t pinch the pocket, but worse they pinch
the ego.
I read a very honest quote by
Ferenc Santa almost two decades back and it has stayed with me ever since. “Every
man has his faults. It all depends on whether he has enough good qualities to
counter balance them.” I don’t quote his words as a defence for my human frailties;
I just think it’s true for and of us humans who haven’t quite reached the
sublime state of constant love and giving it out. We have a lot inside us
including love and naturally one or more of it comes out depending on how, when
and who squeezes us. But we could
surely attempt to enhance the ratio of love juice in the cocktail, so that a
bit of anger, greed or jealousy doesn’t really interfere with the flavour of
life.
