The Moment of Nothingness

As I look at the cloudy red sky I feel significantly small. Suddenly, all my worries and problems start to seem smaller and smaller to me. I try to expand my vision a little more and feel even smaller, almost invisible, when I realize that I am nothing but a tiny dot on this earth. So tiny, that even if I disappear at one point maybe no one except for my family and a few friends would notice my absence.

At this moment, my ego has begun to rise. There is a thin line that is keeping it from over powering me. It is that moment when I know and can feel its existence but I also know that I can’t let it take over. I just push it away and let nature overpower me instead. It is one of the most liberating moments in my life. I see my ego trying its level best to pop its head and show me how I matter. How I am significant. How ‘I’ is all that matters.

But somehow I don’t fall for it, and let the huge expanse of the sky daunt me. The best part is that at this moment my mind is not flooded with thoughts of anything. I am completely aware of everything that is happening to me and inside of me. In fact, there is no inside and outside. It is all one! I call it the feeling of nothingness. I am one with the nature around me. The surrounding sounds have faded. I feel naked, as all the layers of negativity and ego have shed themselves off me. It is at this moment that I realize how much ego can harm us. I remember all those moments in life when I felt small, oh so small, in front of nature.

We attach so much importance to self. So much so, that we are smothered under it. It is ironical how attaching too much meaning to self takes us far away from our own being whereas; it is supposed to do just the opposite. Does that mean we should stop trying to make meaning out of every little thing? Or is it that the meaning of a few things lies in being undefined and unexplainable. This could also mean that the closer you think you are to knowing yourself the farther you will be. Sometimes I feel I over think to an extent that I completely miss the whole point.

I stress so much on being myself that I forget altogether as to who I really am. At this moment I remember a quote by Paulo Coelho, “When I had nothing to lose I had everything. When I stopped being who I am, I found myself.”  Somehow it reminds me of myself. About how I always think I am being myself. There is so much pressure internally on being myself that the real me is completely lost. There is a huge difference between the idea of me and myself. ‘Myself’ will only start to show when I stop trying to be something else.

We all have set standards about almost everything in life. We all expect things to be a certain way. Similarly we all have pictured ourselves in a certain way. The moment we drift a little bit away from that perfectly painted picture, we lose our mind. Some of us set these expectations about self so high, that we end up disappointing ourselves regularly, so much so that we begin to hate ourselves. We obsess, over think and ultimately fail in front of those extremely high, unnecessary and totally illogical expectations from self. This only leads us to dissatisfaction and ultimately unhappiness.

Slowly we begin to feel unworthy of everything in life, and our self confidence stoops lower and lower. I find myself in this situation almost every day. One mistake or error and I begin to doubt my whole existence. Sometimes I wonder whether I have left no place for mistakes in my life. Why am I so afraid to make them? Why do I have such unbelievable expectations from myself? Am I ever going to get over the fact that I am just a human who will make several mistakes? Right at this moment the thought itself has begun to bother me. I am already feeling my heart beating fast and my anxiety level shooting up.

We all have heard the saying, “To err is human, and to forgive is divine.” Well I have a feeling I am definitely human who doesn’t want to accept that fact; who wants to be divine always but is far away from it. I find it really difficult to forgive myself after I make an error. I won’t focus on making things right until I am done making myself feel miserable for making that mistake. It is weird but so true!

The height is when I don’t try to stop controlling things even in my dreams. There are times when I am asleep and dreaming about something, and I try to dream about it in a certain way. I lucid dream! It is like thoughts rule my mind. Sometimes all I want to do is stop controlling things and just be for awhile; take life and things as they come, and just accept myself with the mistakes and blunders that I make. But alas! It is easier said than done.

At this moment I find myself staring into the red sky as I come back to the present moment. I laugh to myself thinking, even something as big as the sky couldn’t stop me from obsessing about myself. Clearly my ego won in the end. I sigh and stare deep into the sky again letting it over power me. Just then I see a lightning strike followed by thunder. It feels almost like the sky laughed loudly at my stupidity. And to my surprise, I join in and laugh too.