Life the biggest teacher
A tough life-lesson made Shivi Verma realise the significance of letting go and letting God.
Very few people know about my obsessive streak. I can get fixated on things I consider important. Once I put my mind to something, I become like a dog with a bone—stubborn, unyielding, and unwilling to give up.
Furthermore, I believe that I have immense resilience against difficulties and hardships, and no matter what, I will always come up trumps against them. This belief has held me in good stead and helped me forge ahead in life despite adversities.
However, I did not realise that this obstinacy was becoming a mania. My sense of doership and responsibility was reaching frenzied proportions. I would keep a hawk’s eye over even minor things, like how and where I kept my knife and glass to prevent their loss or breakage. I felt that if ever anything went wrong in my life, I would have only myself to blame. This made me strain and exercise fanatical control over my personal and professional life to ensure that everything was on track.
This propensity extended to things like personal care too. I had organised a pretty strict diet and exercise regimen, which I was following at all costs despite my hectic schedule. I wanted to reach a particular goal and did not want to leave anything to chance. I had a misplaced notion about my strength and felt that I had an infinite ability to weather life’s challenges. What I did not realise was that I was burning myself out and reaching the edge.
In April, I suddenly fell ill. The symptoms included sleeplessness, nausea, shortness of breath, body ache, incessant burning in the solar plexus, and frequent vomiting. The doctors diagnosed it as stress. I was surprised, as I never knew that stress could have such a deleterious effect on the body. I took plenty of medicines, energy healing, and prayed a lot to get better, but nothing helped. All my grandiose plans regarding my future and career went for a toss. I was forced to shelve them. On the other hand, the symptoms continued unabated for almost two months, forcing me to introspect about the cause of my condition.
As I went deeper, I realised that I was becoming a control freak and going overboard with it. Just because I had things to do didn’t mean that I had to get highly strung about them. Things were happening on their own because life was happening on its own. I simply had to do what I was meant to do without getting stressed about them. I was not the doer. Others too were performing their fair share of responsibilities, and I needed to let go and trust them.
As soon as the realisation dawned, I became relaxed. I didn’t need to get paranoid about perfection and success. I surrendered the reins of my life to the Divine and felt unprecedented peace and calmness. I touched the deep and still waters of my soul and experienced bliss.
Dropping stress is equivalent to dropping the mind or only making minimal use of it. It’s about accessing the witness within you. It’s about being okay even if things go wrong or are not as expected. Imperfection, too, is part of the overall design and teaches you humility as well as detachment.
In the meantime, one of my live shows had a major glitch, and I was defrauded of 13 thousand rupees by someone I had trusted. The best thing was that I didn’t feel perturbed or disturbed by any of these incidents. I was okay, even detached. I was not going to lose my precious peace of mind over these mishaps. These two months of sickness have changed me at a deep level. Funnily, all my tasks are still getting done and much better than before. I am still to regain my earlier robustness, but I am not in a hurry. These precious lessons have come at a cost, and till I fully fathom them, my body will not relent. I just pray that this state makes grooves deep enough to last a lifetime in my mind.