My Journey to Peace- Part II

Dear lovers,

Thank you for giving me so much love since my first post.

I call you all lovers because of the love you have showered upon me through your likes and comments, which gives me the confidence to write again. Some of you also said that I should write and share about my ongoing journey. So, I feel responsible since I shared about my life before, I must also share what is happening in the present — and also because I am equally happy to share.

Until August, I was staying with my parents, and that's when I wrote my first post on World Pulse. As I mentioned in that post, I have been on a career break since January, and I was still going through a difficult time. I had stopped feeling. I had stopped feeling passion and love. This break has given me so much, but most importantly, it has offered me the opportunity to try different things to understand myself better. I took a few courses, met new people, reconnected with old friends, made new friends, and travelled to a few places. All of this made me question and reflect. I wrote about my experiences. I read. I read a few memoirs by women and learned about their lives as they vulnerably penned them down.

What was I trying to do? I was trying to find myself. I was trying to find life.

I started writing, and as I wrote more, it made me feel something. At least, I felt I was doing something. I wrote about my experiences, my teaching experiences, my experiences as a woman, and topics like cooking vs. gender. I thought about politics, religion, caste, and gender. I read and tried to understand justice and equity, as that is the kind of society I want to be a part of. I had studied science until then, but suddenly, science stopped making sense to me, and art and life began to make me feel something. So I tried my hand at painting and a little bit of knitting. I would think about justice and equity, having faced certain challenges myself. And then I would read about what was happening in the world. People of certain castes, classes, races, and genders are living lives they don't deserve. Some people don't have food. Some people sleep on road dividers. People commit suicide. And while one might assume money brings happiness, rich people are not necessarily happier. Sometimes I feel that poor people are more in touch with life and with each other than the rich.

During this time, I started birdwatching, and the experience of watching birds did something to me. It made me calmer. The internal juggling, the worries I had, would disappear while I watched them. I started doing it religiously. I would visit different parks and lakes, sometimes twice a day, traveling to distant places with my mom. After coming back, I would journal about my experiences. I would research the birds. I even took a bird course because I became so interested. I learned about their beautiful world and how ignorant humans are. We live in such delusion, considering ourselves the geniuses of the world. Later, someone I shared my experiences with liked them, and they published my story raw as an article. I have attached the link below.

While doing all of this, I developed a flair for writing and wrote down everything that came to my mind. I found that writing not only helped but also made me more sincere, focused, and, most importantly, aware of life and myself. I began to question things like relationships and education and wondered what kind of education we are providing to children. Is there even a need to give them education?

The kind of community I envision is one where compassion and collaboration are central. Along the way, I learned about such living communities. I wonder if we really need to teach children compassion when we, as adults, have lost it. Children already have compassion and kindness, and perhaps we can learn from them.

I am still questioning many things about society and education.

As a child, I always loved flowers. This was something my aunt recently reminded me of. She said that as a little girl, I would collect flowers and keep them in a bucket. But as an adult, I didn’t take it seriously. I took it for granted and thought everyone liked flowers, so what’s the big deal? But once I embraced this, I started taking flower pictures more seriously. My skill in flower photography has improved. I don’t have a camera, so I take pictures with my phone. I’ve attached a link for you to see the pictures of flowers and birds I’ve taken.

I realized something over the past few days since I’ve been volunteering at a community center in Hyderabad. Someone told me that children are happy because they live in the moment, without worrying about the past or future. That hit me. Most of the time, we don’t live in the moment. While talking to someone, our minds are elsewhere. We don’t give 100 percent to each moment.

At present, I want to find myself through art and give 100 percent to each moment I live. I want to work toward creating a just and equitable society where no one is judged and all are included. It may sound idealistic, but we can at least try.

I feel so happy sharing all of this with you. Thank you for reading patiently. I am so grateful for this love.

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2. I am happy to share the following article about birds. Please find the link here: https://birdcount.in/my-healing-journey-with-birds/
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4. Pictures of birds and Flowers I took: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XSQT77BicWbgkpVsLF7ht1GQbp3PqMeJ/view?usp=sharing 
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6. Books I read: I read memoirs of Kamala Das, Deviki Jain, Gayathri Prabhu, and some other books by Arundhati Roy and Brinda Karat.
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If you see anything worth commenting on, please do share your thoughts. I would love to connect with you all. I would also like to freelance. I have changed my field and hence have no idea how to start. I am not skilled in any art form, but I am willing to learn. So if you have any suggestions, I would happily welcome them.

I send you my love. 

Shukriya (Thanks),

Gratitude,

Nidhi