Over the last few days, air and internet waves were filled with two tragic news.
One related to an untimely death of a young professional at a very well-known consulting firm and another a suicide at the premier Management school of India. Regarding the death of the young management professional, the reports said, “stress from a toxic workplace”, while the suicide was attributed to “Stress from organizing The Red Brick Summit is suspected as a contributing factor”.!
The first one drew a lot of comments and opinion in social media, many of them (even from successful business leaders and public figures) reactionary (imv), while the second news did not elicit that kind of traction. The world in general, and people (we) in particular, does not have that kind of appetite for tragedy per se. As quite addicted Netflix and Hot stars, we want everything in episodes. One at a time.
As a primetime member of the social media mob, after scapegoating and fixing the responsibility right there, for those tragedies in a hurry, I too was moving on. Till I observed two different ways of living and looking at the word from my teenaged sons.
Before narrating those incidents, it will be pertinent for me introduce them to you. Both, Manu and Rishi are quite smart, intelligent quite well read and worldly wise beyond their ages. And most importantly they are their own masters. Me and Thara, my better half, had made it a point, to let them choose what they want or need in their life. Whether it is in the matter of career, education, food or even God. They also had the good fortune to be educated in one of most stress free, supporting, empowering and nontoxic schooling environments the current world can offer.
Manu is a second-year graduate student of Economics in a premier university. And he had represented his Uty team in an intercollegiate Taekwondo tournament. He was/is very passionate about marital arts. I was attending a sesshin at Zendo, while he was at the tournament. When I did not see any message from him for 2- 3 days, I was a bit worried. And was quite relieved, when he called me one evening. He narrated quite happily, how he cleared 4 tough rounds and lost in the quarter final. To quote his own words, “Papa, he was too fast and good for me, and I got pummeled a bit and I will take a day or two to recover. But my Coach told me, I did well, and I got to be ready for the tournament at IIT Kanpur and i got to practice. Am going there. “
As a parent, I was quite happy and proud to hear that. Not many things can be as stressful for a youth as an intercollegiate martial tournament. What more a parent, a life coach and Zen teacher can aspire from his son than the way young Manu took a physically hurting (and possibly mentally too) defeat on his stride, and was looking forward to his next stint at the arena !
But that pride did not last that long. Just two days later, Thara called me to say, Rishi, our second son, who is in 12th standard, seems to be bit stressed and it is reported he did have some challenges wrt sleep. And that was a total surprise for me. I had considered myself as one of the coolest cucumbers in the world as a student. I had shared quite a few times with my children, how as a final year Mech Engineering student in 1994, I chose to watch all the world cup soccer matches held in USA and chose to skip quite a few exams. Due to time difference often, the matches started early morning and myself and my roomie and good friend. “Goofy” Sudhakar used to be only two idiots in the hostel TV room. Sudhakar, stopped being a partner in that, once his favorite team Germany lost. And I continued that very valiantly till Brazil won the final against Italy.
Rishi is one up on me on the coolness quotient, so that he will wait even if someone raises an alarm that sky is going to fall down his head. As the news about him being stressed was a bit amusing to me. I was suspecting some romance in the air, when I spoke to him after I came back home. After doing his two-week internships at Rahul Dravid Academy, he does talk a bit of about joining a sport management course and his dream job is to work for ManUnited his favorite team. But he had not applied his mind on how to reach his goal. And that would have hit on the head, when he happened to hear all those clear-cut plans of his hostel mates about what they are doing next year + when he had realized that he did not have any such plans. May be, for the very first time in his life, my son was worried and stressed. He did manage to hide that within himself, till it started affecting his life and behavior. Fortunately for him and us, we noticed in time and could help him out. All it took was just a 5- 10 minute “Reframing the perspective” exercise Thara and me had learnt from venerable NLP Guru Dr. Richard McHugh some 20 years back. That did the trick and sooner he was back to his normal self. The very next day, Tuesday, I had to wake him up so that he won’t miss his bus to school and his term examination.
It is not my case that the world in which we live and environmental factors don’t play a role in making our life miserable and stressful. It does. But the real villain is the 3 pound of human cells behind our eyes and between our ears. Nature/God/Natural Selection/Evolution have ended up in designing we human beings for survival than for our wellbeing. They don’t give a damn, if we are left scared, fearful and miserable, as long as we last one more day more in our account of life and manages to pass on our genes to the next gene. That is their common minimum program and nothing more. We are all wired and programmed for it.
To quote from one of the foremost modern texts on the matter : “The individual's perception of environmental demands and personal coping resources is the critical variable in determining the nature of the stress response. The objective conditions of the environment are important only to the extent that they influence these processes of primary and secondary appraisal. (Evans and Cohen on Environmental Stress) .” That is written in academic English for psychology professionals.
But from my Epistemology classes of Prof. Indrani Bhattacharjee at Azim Premji Uty, I know that is no different from rajju-sarpa-nyaya of Indian philosophy. As per that when there is less light, a curled up rope is mistaken for a snake. And that happens due to the inbuilt programming Nature had written inside our skulls which results in fright and fear and anxiety. But when the Light returns, calm and peace comes back due to the accurate perception of it being a mere rope. And the gap between destress and distress is approximately 23.7 mm. That is the sagittal vertical (height) of a human adult eye.
No wonder, Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, the noble one, chose Samma Dhitti,( Right view ) as his first core teaching in his eight fold path to wisdom. And we will be able to perceive this reality as it is only when we are aware of the programmed filters Nature had put in us, with which we look, hear and feel this world.
Even if the “Rope” is a real poisonous snake, remember that Stephen Covey’s quote,
“it isn't the snake bite that does the serious damage; it's chasing the snake that drives the poison to the heart".
