What a title for a book! And what a fantastic answer to that excellent question: 42!
This morning I will change that answer to ’52’, because well, it is my birthday!
Birthdays have always been a mixed bag of emotions for me. The very first one I had, literally the day I was born – the zeroth birthday, as it were – was traumatic. Because I am so hell-bent on seeking meaning in everything, my birth has served as a metaphor for my life. Perhaps it is time to tell that story today.
I was born in a tiny village in Tamil Nadu, called Vanagiri, not too far from the historic port Kaveripattinam or Poompuhar. Vanagiri is essentially all of two streets long! At the intersection of those two streets, on the corner, was my grandfather’s home, adjacent to the village temple and opposite the family cowshed.
My grandfather – bless him, such a kind man, a gentle giant! – was the village school headmaster and the postmaster, and he did an extraordinary job of raising 11 children, all of whom now have grandchildren of their own who are thriving around the world! He would be a proud man today if he could see how much his hard work and gentle perseverance paid off in creating futures for generations to follow.
The corner room just to the left as you entered the house – you had to duck so you didn’t bang your head against the doorway – served as the village post office. It had a tiny window that let light into an otherwise very dark room and through which all post office-related transactions with the outside world were conducted.
That room served an even more important function – it was the labour room for my mother’s large family – she had 10 siblings! A few of my cousins were born in that room before me; I was the last one to have that privilege because things went kinda south with me.
The story, as I have been told, is that the labour ran into difficulty, and I was stuck inside while the midwife was not able to manipulate my position. So they sent for a doctor at the nearest town Tiruvengadu, about 10 km and an hour away on a bullock cart. The good doctor finally arrived and realised immediately it was an emergency and that he would have to do something then and there, instead of trying to rush us to a hospital which was even further away. So he took out his forceps and caught me around the head and pulled me out. Unfortunately, because he had no instruments to see where the forceps were going, he caught the back of my head and my upper lip. When I emerged, my upper lip was split, and a chunk of my head was lopped off from the back.
As you can imagine, there was blood and mayhem all over, but the good doctor kept his cool and stitched me up as best as he could, and saved my mom’s life, with the limited resources at his disposal. I would need two more surgeries later to straighten out the lip as much as possible, but the scar has remained and deepened over the years – I try to hide it with a silly moustache that a friend of mine has been urging me to get rid of, but the scar is too much in the face, and it is better hidden away. Growing up, my eyes would automatically go to my lip when I was in front of a mirror, and I would wonder what might have been if it weren’t for the scar. My dad helped me overcome some of the insecurity that went with it. Now the moustache forms a natural buffer; I tend to look at my eyes instead when I am in front of a mirror, and I prefer that very much more.
The doctor went about his unheralded life doing good, quiet work for many more years. I met him 25 years later at his home. I went unannounced and asked him, “Do you recognise me?” – he took one look at my upper lip and knew! We chatted for a while, I told him I was at Oxford, and he was pleased. I thanked him for saving my life and my mother’s, and I left feeling like a piece of the jigsaw had fallen into place, having finally expressed my gratitude to the good doctor who brought me into this world.
Fast forward a few years. I was at an inner child workshop during which the facilitator did a regression exercise, taking me back to the moment of my birth, reliving the trauma of it as I imagined it. Besides feeling the obvious pain that the child and his mother went through that day and in the days to follow, as he could not breastfeed (which was as much agony for his helpless mother), I realised I was just afraid to be born! I did not want to come out to face this big, scary world, and the sense of being a misfit has shadowed me all my life.
While I got in touch with my existential anxiety during the inner child workshop, and it helped me understand why I felt the way I did much of the time, it would take me another 25 years of various life experiences including much loss and grief – death of parents, suicide of brother, divorce, loss of home, loss of work that was more than just a job, bizarre estrangement with daughter and a couple of other things I can’t yet write about – before I chanced upon the Direct Path that finally quelled the anxiety. There was a time when I would be so wound up, even though I was alone in a room with no obvious trigger at hand. Now I can sit alone with myself for long stretches of time in peace, as I understand what this so-called world is and what this so-called I am.
Things came full circle when I assisted with the birth of my daughter and twin sons – easily the happiest moments of my life, and perhaps the greatest accomplishments. Just being there to witness them being born safely into this world without trauma was a precious gift I could never have imagined. For a few months after my twin boys were born, I wished I could become a midwife and assist with more childbirths, but that wish kind of faded away in a world that called for pragmatism. So I put my head down and did what was needed to provide for my family.
I have written before about my unrelenting search for meaning several times on this blog – it’s the same theme over and over again in different forms, really. Last night, my journaling re-acquainted me with my Core Gift – I will write about it separately because it is from an entirely different context – and this following quote, attributed to Pablo Picasso, suddenly made so much sense:
Finding one’s meaning is only one half of the story (peace); the giving away of it is the other (joy).
When growing up, at some point in time, we stopped celebrating birthdays at home – what had for a few years been gala occasions with cakes, presents, family and friends, became a perfunctory greeting at best. My twenty-fifth birthday was spent alone at a small school in Denmark with no one around, just taking care of the property for a week while the rest of the school had gone on a trip. I would think: what’s the fuss all about anyway?
Through my 20 years of marriage, there were some nice birthdays with family and friends again, but something started happening in my forties, where I started dreading the day – a gnawing feeling would set in a couple of days before, and I would be relieved the day after it was over. A friend stopped wishing me because she thought I did not want to be wished, but that was not it – I just did not feel happy having been born, and my birthday was a painful reminder of how much I was not enjoying life, and I did not know how to ask for and get the happiness I was seeking.
The fifties have been interesting: for three years in a row around this time of the year, I have repeatedly lost what I thought might finally be a long-term relationship. Bizarre timing! November feels almost jinxed. Three mini heartbreaks.
But each time the loss has taught me something different. The first year, I went deep into the Direct Path and established my tutoring practice – both much needed. The second year, I relaunched my blog and have written so much since! This year, I think the time has come to live the second half of that quote by Picasso: live purposefully again by giving from my Core Gift instead of endlessly searching for more meaning. Let’s see how that actually pans out!
So, circling back: “What is the meaning of life, the universe, and everything?”
’52’ feels like an awesome answer!
Featured Image: Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash