FOLLOW THE STAR

A high school teacher told one of his students, 30 years later, when life had shown both of them myriad colours, “When in doubt, trust your instincts. If you feel a subtle note of lightness in doing something, follow that course; if you feel a sense of heaviness, wait, think again…let it go.”

One is bound to make mistakes. Just before starting out on any action or in any relationship, can one not say, “I reserve the right to be wrong”? If a mistake does occur, would it not be more easily acceptable or excusable if one were thus prepared for it? How much were we tormented or held responsible when we took our first tottering steps, fell off our first bicycle or horse, or slipped out of our first tree, or got stung by our first wasp? Wasn't that how one learnt to eat, walk, ride, write, jump, fall, live and love? So what has changed now? Have we outgrown being human, subject to Nature, prone to err? Does making mistakes have no place in the natural order of things? If somebody is out of step, couldn't he be marching to a different drum? Were those who embraced our infirmities superhuman? Or was it love?

Love makes us blind to ‘faults’ and ‘wrongs’ and absence of love highlights them. So what is the deciding factor - right and wrong, or love?

The answer was provided by one of the greatest mystics the world as seen. I will not put the name down for fear that my words will be inadequate to convey the full import of that holy one’s thoughts. Suffice it to say that this exalted one from Basra rejected the idea of love for God and hatred for Satan, because if one is infused by Love, there remains no scope for the existence of Hate. The holy one rejected prayer in the hope of Heaven on the same grounds that if there was Love, then there could be no heaven and hell; just Love.

Mothers nurse, nourish and protect. Blessed are the mothers who can spread their motherly embrace far and wide to encompass in their love a much larger brood, and not be obsessively inhibited by the instinct of protection for their ‘own’.

Fathers provide and teach. Our children’s fathers need to be remembered as ones who spread benevolence and love, or we are doing our children a disservice. Every father owes that to his children.

Who are the people we remember kindly, the ones who were aggressive or the ones who showed us how to be gentle? Those who demonstrated breaking away from all loved ones and the companions of eager youth or innocent childhood (be they friends or pets or flowers or dust), or those who encouraged us to reach out and touch others?

In each family or neighbourhood, let us pick out the ancestor or predecessor who spread the most Love, and then, FOLLOW THE STAR!