(KP-8) How Even Pain Can Teach Us To Meditate
A 24-yr old girl helping homeless people rehabilitate | What is happiness | Should one generalize or specialize.
Life Lesson
This week I have concluded that too much pain in a body part makes our otherwise scattered and not-so-focussed awareness highly concentrated and fixed on that pain-part in the body. This pain leads to intense focus almost like mindfulness meditation.
I will give you an example.
Tomorrow it’s your marriage. And you are on your bed getting ready to sleep. But a thousand and one thoughts are running in your head. And you are trying your best to force the thoughts to cease and get some sleep. But that doesn’t happen because it’s counter-intuitive.
You are thinking about your future. You are thinking about the love of your life. You are thinking about your parents. You are thinking about your first love.
And all of a sudden, you feel intense pain in your kidney making your body shiver. It might be a stone. It might be something worse.
At this moment, your focus is solely concentrated on the pain. All the thoughts have disappeared.
I am guilty of liking that kind of pain for this specific purpose only. I mean, I don't voluntarily wish pain for me but if something happens that forces me to be in pain then I think I won't be depressed about it rather I will take it as something from which I can learn valuable life lesson.
Positive Feel-Good Story
This week’s story is about a 24-yr old girl named Manisha Krishnasamy from Erode, Tamil Nadu who rehabilitates poor, homeless souls living on the streets.
She wanted to join the Indian Army or become a doctor but couldn’t due to her financial conditions. One recurrent theme throughout her life was the sympathy and empathy she had for the roadside dwellers. She couldn’t help herself but spend most of her earnings to help them in any way - be it by giving food or providing clothes.
After facing gender discrimination in one of the NGOs she joined, she started her own NGO Jeevitham Foundation in 2018. In a short span, she has rehabilitated hundreds of homeless.
Manisha has a message for all those who wish to help the needy:
If people wish to help the poor on the roadside, kindly give them food, clothes, or anything. If you are unable to afford any items, offer them a smile. Never offer money, as they can become addicted to many habits like alcoholism or substance abuse.
You can read about her full story here.
Book/Podcast/Video Suggestion
This week I have a video suggestion for you on happiness, the secret to happiness.
What is happiness?
What does happiness mean to you?
What makes a country happy?
Do you know Finland ranks as the happiest country in the world?
And India ranks 139 out of 149.
Watch this video to know all about happiness.
Quote/Poem
The following quote is from a book called Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein. He compares people who specialize and people who generalize and what’s good for us in the modern world.
Like chess masters and firefighters, premodern villagers relied on things being the same tomorrow as they were yesterday. They were extremely well prepared for what they had experienced before, and extremely poorly equipped for everything else. Their very thinking was highly specialized in a manner that the modern world has been telling us is increasingly obsolete. They were perfectly capable of learning from experience, but failed at learning without experience. And that is what a rapidly changing, wicked world demands—conceptual reasoning skills that can connect new ideas and work across contexts. Faced with any problem they had not directly experienced before, the remote villagers were completely lost. That is not an option for us. The more constrained and repetitive a challenge, the more likely it will be automated, while great rewards will accrue to those who can take conceptual knowledge from one problem or domain and apply it in an entirely new one.