A challenging life situation
During the recession that followed 9/11, my husband lost his job. I had been doing quite well as a freelance software developer and my work gradually dwindled to zero. It was to be almost two years before both of us would be employed again.
The hundreds of resumes that I sent out seemed to be landing in a black hole, for the phone never rang and emails went unanswered. It seemed that I lacked just the resume keywords that employers were looking for. We cut back on most discretionary expenses. It was a balancing act to practice austerity while not depriving our two children of their sense of stability and security.
The biggest challenge was emotional. I could not stop wondering what I had done to deserve this hardship. Or, what I should have done differently in the past to dodge this particular bullet in the present. There were no answers. It felt as if I was standing on the edge of a cliff looking down.
It would have been easier to weather this situation, if only I could have known that things would turn around at some point in the foreseeable future. But of course, as with anything in life, there were no such guarantees.
This was a period of intense introspection and questioning, of trying to make sense of our misfortune. I had to dig deep within my own reserves to hold on to my faith in myself. I alternated between blaming myself and feeling sorry for myself; just as much as I alternated between blaming fate and the prevalent economic system.
The irony was that just at this time, the IT industry was being flooded with visa workers, most of them from India—the very country that I was from. My US citizenship was hurting me.
Limits of positivity
There was, as always, a plethora of self-help books and television pundits dispensing advice. These invariably tended towards the “positivity” doctrine. “Keep your chin up,” they exhorted. “You can do whatever you set your mind to do,” they promised.
Although this advice is undoubtedly helpful when dealing with everyday ups and downs, I found that it did not work too well for the type of challenge that I was experiencing.
In fact, I found this approach to tackling the really difficult problems quite damaging. It put all the responsibility for success or failure solely on the individual. It made no allowance for factors that were beyond the individual’s control (like the visa workers issue).
Mired in these challenges, I desperately sought ways of looking at and living with my situation that would be positive and empowering, while also being compassionate and grounded in reality.
The Train
We think, and our culture encourages us to believe, that we have considerable control over our lives. But, in reality our lives are like a train journey.
Our autonomy is limited by the confines of a metaphorical train that we happen to be on. We are able to move to a different seat, or to a different car. We are able to sleep, eat, read, or daydream. We don’t know the final destination, but nonetheless we have a pleasant sense of anticipation about it.
Things get complicated when it comes to wanting to make choices that are not available on the train we happen to be on. We need to get on a different train, or we need to modify the train itself. But that is not easy.
We can change trains only when the one we are on comes to an interchange. The interchange may be a change in our circumstances, caused by our efforts, or by the random nature of life. It can be a job change or finding a compatible life partner—the result of our efforts combined with serendipity. It might just as easily be a car accident, job loss, or a health scare—something that upends all our prior assumptions.
The new train that we get on is likely to be different from the previous one. It might go faster or slower, and it may go in an entirely new direction. It may be more or less crowded than the one that we were previously on. But, once on the new train, the journey continues, and once again our choices are limited to those available on this new train.
Our ability to enjoy the journey depends on the seat we have or were able to find or wrestle on to. Our experience is affected by our fellow travelers—the ones we came with and the ones we happen to be seated with. A beautiful view can be marred by noisy or unkempt fellow travelers. Or it can be enhanced by ones who think and feel and share. Or we may not have a window seat at all.
Some train journeys end abruptly when the train loses steam or hits a roadblock. Some train journeys pass through tunnels, some long and some short. At such times, deprived of light and view, the travelers must hunker down and wait for the train to emerge into the light. Some trains change tracks without warning or reason and thereby change the journeys of their passengers.
The Engineer
Who pulls the train? What powers it? No one knows, for no one has seen the Engineer.
The Engineer isn’t aware of individual passengers. The Engineer’s focus is on the train and on the journey. The Engineer is mostly benign but is also quite indifferent.
Once I had this paradigm in mind, I came to see that contrary to the conventional wisdom of positivity, my options were, in fact, not infinite. Neither was it entirely within my power to bend the situation to suit my priorities/preferences. In reality, my choices were limited to those that were available on the train that I was on. My train was going through a tunnel, which took away the sun and the view.
If the Engineer was distracted or was not concerned about individual passengers, how was I to draw attention to my needs?
I realized that the only exception to the inexorable journey is when someone pulls the emergency brake to stop the train. Sometimes it takes the concerted effort of many passengers, over long periods of time, to make this happen. At such times, the Engineer may attend to the train and its passengers, and the journey may become a tad more bearable. Just as likely, the Engineer may keep the train moving and it may take several brake-pulls to get the Engineer’s attention.
The idea of the distracted and imperfect Engineer who needs to be directed, taught me to temper the expectation with prayer, patience, and serenity.
The Emergency Brake
I began to pray as a way to pull the emergency brake and draw the Engineer’s attention.
What happens to the Engineer each time the power of prayer causes the train’s journey to be altered? The Engineer undergoes a kind of evolution.
For example, the utter immorality of the institution of slavery seems like a no-brainer today. But it took centuries-long suffering, pleading and yes, prayer, by the enslaved people before the Engineer deigned to heed and attend to their prayers. In a sense, the Engineer improved—evolved—as a result of the prayers (emergency-brake pulls) of millions of desperate people trapped on the slavery train.
The Engineer underwent the same type of quantum evolution when it came to the emancipation of women, discoveries that alleviate disease and pain, and other inventions that make life better.
Of course, things don’t always turn out for the better. Examples are myriad calamities that litter history, ranging from war and pandemics to earthquakes to plane crashes, all of which cause death and devastation on a massive scale. Other examples are tragedies that cause havoc of the same magnitude, but in individual lives.
Also, there are improvements that are yet to come to pass. One example is the way we humans treat animals. Like the changes that came before, the Engineer will respond to the prayers of the animals and of the humans who care about them. That’s when more humane forms of food production, diets, and tastes will gain momentum and eventually become the norm.
I came to see that lack of success in achieving the desired result within a given time frame is not proof of the futility of prayer. Rather, it is proof of the Engineer’s fallibility and lack of attention. And each instance of a turn for the better is proof of the Engineer’s response to sustained prayer.
I realized that it was up to me to direct the Engineer’s attention to me and to my troubles. The Engineer is all-powerful in the context of the train, but I had to attempt to deploy that power to fix my affairs. Mindful prayer was a way of gaining that agency.
Engineer as God-Parent
Many religions teach that God is like a mother or a father. God is not just the creator, but also the one who loves and cares for the created beings. The god-as-parent is seen as rewarding “good” behavior and punishing “bad” behavior. And, just like human parents, even though the god-parent desires the well-being of the created beings, the entity can sometimes be neglectful, distracted, too-certain, or judgmental.
As a mother, I have personally experienced how trying to be the “best” parent that I can be is a process of evolution. Many factors come into play—the temperament of the child, the situations in which the family finds itself, and the continuing maturation of the parent as an individual.
This continuing maturation—evolution—is shaped by the children’s needs and their pleas, as much as it is shaped by parent’s intense love for the children. The parent becomes kinder, more patient, and more understanding in the process of taking care of the children.
I think the same is true of the Engineer.
On Children
As Kahlil Gibran wrote in his poem, “On Children”,
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
…
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
…
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
Just like the children in this poem, our very nature compels us to seek to fulfill Life’s longing for itself. It is up to us to seek the Engineer’s help in leading us to that “house of tomorrow.” The Engineer may have a role in creating us, but we too are continually seeking to create ourselves through creating the Engineer.
With this new perspective, which became fine-tuned over months of reflection, I gained the sense of agency that I had so desperately sought.
The idea that I was fully in charge of what happened to me, and was therefore fully responsible for my misfortune, no longer tormented me.
The concept of the distracted Engineer removed the expectation of a “just reward” for “good” behavior. This made me less cynical and more patient. I learned that being “good” is not a means to an end but is its own reward.
Prayer as Agency
I learned too, that prayer is an exercise, not of helpless hope or blind faith, but of our own intention. And, it is not a pleading or supplication, but a reasoned claim on the Engineer’s attention and power.
My life-train emerged out of the tunnel after a long two years. I don’t believe that there is a direct correlation between my prayers and the improvement in my situation. Neither do I believe that there is no correlation between the two. The specifics don’t matter, and, in any case, they are unknowable.
It is sufficient to recognize that life is a train journey, with all that that entails—limitations and imperfections, tunnels and interchanges, and the power of the prayer emergency brake to change course every so often.
Photo by Braden Barwich on Unsplash
Next week: Sacred Circles
Nandini, Thank you for a very thought-provoking metaphor. It was gratifying to see how it helped you through a difficult time. I'll be turning it over in my mind this week. I am looking forward to these Sunday morning respites. Thank you..