Follow your passion

• Annalakshmi
• 19 September 2016

It is not rare today to read about the lives of women and their kinds of difficulties and depressions they face.  With the issues of women becoming more vocal, the support and guidance needed can be found with a little effort.  A woman can find the answers she is seeking and the support she needs to overcome the struggles she faces.  But there is a quiet group of people who face similar difficulties as women, but it is neither heard of nor spoken of.  Who is this group of people?  The men.

The Unknown Lives Of Men
I, like many of you reading this was shocked to hear about this a few years ago when I was watching the American talk show, “The Oprah Winfrey Show”.  The show’s topic revolved around the lives of a group of men, who were courageous enough to come forth and speak about the quiet lives of desperation they lead.  Everyone, including Oprah, was shocked and surprised to hear how these men felt.  
    It got me thinking because there is no big difference between men and women, other than the gender. We both feel deeply and are living similar lives.  Men also have to balance work and home life, they also have dreams and ambitions for their life, have unrealized dreams which cause them sorrow and have difficulties living their pre-conditioned roles.  The main difference, recently, between the problems women and men face is that women have found the courage to voice their feelings and thoughts.  Moreover, it is something easily accepted when women talk about their feelings and emotions, whereas men are taught from their boyhood days to be quiet and reserved about their feelings.  An easy example of this is the latest TV commercial, featuring Madhuri Dixit that portrays the message that boys don’t cry.  Why are we as human beings falling into these pre-conditioned ancient roles?  If men were not meant to feel, then they would not have been born with them. But we are all born with feelings and emotions and they get easily hurt regardless of gender.  
   
So, take a good look at the men in your life and ask yourself, if they are feeling the same sadness and depression you feel as a woman?  Do they also have dreams that were not realized?  Have they lost who they were along the way when life’s mundane activities seemed to take over?  In addition, men are the breadwinners in every society.  The kinds of pressures that it must put upon them are probably something they don’t speak of.  They just play the roles they were born to play, the same as women.  So, instead of seeing the man in your life, as a husband, the father of your children, the breadwinner, see him as the person he is and ask yourself if he is happy?  

The Solution For The Man In Your Life
At the end of the day, material gifts mean nothing and are only a temporary fix to a problem; the problem of a deep sadness that resides in us all, as we age.  A sadness that dwells inside us because of unrealized dreams and the feeling that we simply are no longer living the life we wanted nor recognize who we have become. So just as your husband can do something to alleviate your burdens and help in re-discovering who you are, do the same for him. See where his interests lie and point him towards that direction.  We all have desires that were unrealized, so if he has always held a desire to learn the guitar or join in on adventure sports, such as rock climbing, sign him up for some lessons.  Give him the opportunity to spend time doing things he loves so that he also feels like he is living once again.  And when both partners feel complete and whole, your life together will be that much more colorful and beautiful.  A life complete with happiness and love because the people in the relationship are complete and whole themselves as individuals first.    

• Geeta
• 19 September 2016

You’ve met the love of your life, you gush over each other and can’t imagine life without the other.  You spend hours talking and when you think about it later, you can’t really seem to recall what you spoke about, only that during the whole conversation you were floating on air and are still on cloud 9.  It feels like you’ll never come off this high; the high of being in love. You get married and life seems so beautiful filled with so much love that you feel like you might burst from all the happiness.  Soon your life is filled with even more love and happiness when your child enters your life.  
   
Life starts taking over.  You get busy raising your child and your husband’s career is taking off as he moves up the career ladder.  He works long hours to provide you and your children with a comfortable life.  And somewhere along the way all the romance fizzled out and your life became more about payments, mortgages, diapers, school, doctor’s appointments etc.  In other words, life happened and it feels like it swallowed you up in the process because you don’t recognize the person in the mirror anymore.  What happened to the woman with dreams of her future, her smile and her laughter?  It isn’t that your wife doesn’t have everything she needs and wants; she has a beautiful home, lovable children, clothes, jewellery etc, it is something else that she has missed along the way.  But what is it?  Perhaps she doesn’t even know because as women, whether they are aware of it or not, they are conditioned to feel grateful for all they have in their life.  So, when she discovers, that although from the outside her life looks perfect, she is experiencing what all women experience, which is a depression, moreover a depression she feels guilty about because anybody would call her selfish or any other word since she apparently has everything she needs and wants.  
   
But, for you as her husband, it can be difficult to see her spirits failing and feeling at a loss as to what to do.  Do not despair, because, with just a little bit of thought and effort, you can easily solve her subdued personality by getting her out of the house and getting her doing something just for herself that she loves. For example, if your wife was in the IT field before, she can easily take up a few classes and get certified in a specific area, which might spark the life to enter back into her, by embracing who she was, not a mother or wife, but the woman.  Or perhaps your wife might like to learn something new that enhances or allows her the opportunity to discover her creativity by joining a painting or drawing class or even dance classes. It really depends on how well you know the woman you love and what she would love doing or learning.  So, instead of giving her material things, gift her something that will stay with her forever, a new skill or ability.  This will bring her back to life by getting her out of the house and re-joining the world by living life again, a life she loves living because she is present once again in her life.  Once this re-discovery happens, you will find the woman you fell in love with, a woman who will be grateful to you for saving her from her depression.  

• Lakshmi
• 16 August 2016

Indian classical music is known for the silence it creates, though not all classical music players can create the spaces of silence.  The kind of music that comes out of the Indian classical instrument, the Sitar, is entirely dependent on the player. If the sitar player is playing from a place of peace, calm and from his/her heart, then the music has the power to transport you deeply into yourself where the silence exists.  Therefore, a musician’s talent lies not only in playing the instrument, but how they play it as well.  
   
Ravi Shankar was the most famous sitar player that was well known all around the world, for the beautiful music he created on his sitar.  But if you are a lover of classical music or sitar music then you are familiar with Vilayat Khan, Allauddin Khan, Ravi Shankar’s daughter, Anoushka Shankar and even George Harrison of the Beatles, though he only fiddled with it for a short time.  George Harrison was responsible for creating music history by adding the sitar to rock music creating “the sitar explosion” in the western world.  
   
Learning to play the sitar means embracing your culture and tradition because the Sitar was invented solely for the purpose of playing Indian classical music. I, often play sitar music in the mornings when I wake up.  It seems to capture the essence of the whole world waking up and the break from the silence of the night and awakening to the sounds of nature.  It complements the morning beautifully, starting your day with the melodies of the sitar, which fills you with a sense of peace and serenity.  If just listening to the music can have this effect on a person, playing the sitar is a gift you give to yourself and those around you.  A true master of the sitar has to lose him/herself to the instrument and learn to play with their heart and soul.  The feelings pouring from your heart through your fingers and finding its way into the heart again, the heart of the listener.  So, if you want to embrace your culture and bring meaning to your life by adding love and peace to it, embrace learning the sitar and discover what it has to offer.