The Life Remote

              

After a hard days work you come home. You look for the favorite piece of furniture, your couch. You then become the perfect "couch potato". Then what do you do. You grab the potato chips packet and rip it open and put a few mouthful. Then you look for the most important thing. "The Television Remote".

The television remote gives us a feeling of achievement, power. We can change channels

at will , make actors appear and disappear at will. 

If you don't agree with me think of the times, when you did not have the remote in hand and you wanted to watch the all important football match. A family member had the remote. The anguish, helplessness you felt at that time. If only you had the remote in hand.

Now you may agree and say, yes a television remote is important but not so important an object to talk about at length. To allay your fears, i am talking of another remote. Your Life Remote, the 

remote with which you control your emotions/ state of affairs, your inner well being.

Just as a television remote is important, so also your life remote is equally important. 

Consider a situation. You get up in the morning. Lovely morning, great sunshine , birds chirping, cool breeze wafting across your room. Suddenly, your eyes rest on the wall clock . It shows 8:30 am in the morning. 

Your heart skips a beat. You realize you are late for the all important office meeting.

You immediately get up,   brush your teeth, skip the shower, wear your formal clothes and rush down the stairs. You get into your car, turn on the ignition and hit the road. Today your driving skills would be put to test.

You have barely gone a hundred meters you come across a cyclist coolly cycling in the middle of the road, humming some tune.You apply the brakes. You are totally out of tune. You shout at him and ask him to take the cycle lane and not block you.

You again step on the gas and you have barely driven 500 meters that you come across an old lady who at that moment decides to cross the road. Auspicious time for her, perhaps. You again apply the brakes thanking your stars for not having hit her. She gives you her blessings but you are in no mood of any blessings. You want to curse her  but etiquette prevents that. You have to check your anger and rising frustration at all these events.

You accelerate , this time there is no room for any further interruptions. But as you approach your office you realize that the whole world has descended upon . Every one wants to reach office in time.

You finally get through the traffic and reach your office. You are anxious , fearful for being late to the meeting.

You open the meeting room door only to find looming figure of your boss. He yells at you and tells you, Govinda, the only thing you  are consistent in life is, coming late. You feel a sense of shame and hurt being ridiculed in front of your colleagues. You quietly make your way to the cubicle with drooping shoulders. You want to just vanish from the scene.

As you sit in your chair soaking in the whole situation , out of nowhere few of your colleagues appear. Each wants some task or the other to be done. You dismiss them curtly and they quickly retreat hurt.

You now sit there blaming the world, situation. Everyone is to blame but yourself for your state of affairs, your emotions.

If you dig deeply then the cyclist , the lady who crossed the road, your boss, traffic etc all were just excuses to trigger a reaction within you. You decided to part with your life remote. You gave privilege to them to  change your emotions. 

You may argue that you could have avoided all these situations by getting up early. Perhaps. But these situations can pan out, in different ways during the day. 

Just as you guard your life remote so preciously so also you should guard your life remote and not part with it.

The privilege of how you feel should rest only and only with you.

So an exercise which may help. Every evening /night before you hit the bed. Go over the daily event without judgement. Relive those events where you gave away your life remote to a person or situation and the other person  or situation was able to change channels within you. Once you are aware of those situations you can take charge and remedial  steps. 

So be protective about your life remote and be in charge.