Gratitude, Make someone Happy and Elixir of
Love
The forecast for this morning was Rain,
dreary skies and the pertinent cold of oncoming northern winter. But that was
not to dampen my enthusiasm for the chain of events that led to my enjoying
this exquisite tea, Elixir of Love
Gratitude to make others happy and make
oneself happy was an idea planted in my head by the American Indians,
especially by my Hocank Sister, GG.
As we were preparing to go into an Inipi
ceremony, at dusk many winter moons ago, she said, Doctor, when did you see
your mother last? I guiltily admitted that travels in that hemisphere had
prevented me traveling to the East to see her.
Be grateful that you have a mother to go
and see, my mother is no longer alive, GG lamented, for me to avail of her
wisdom.
Within two weeks I had located my “birth”
mother in a city in Asia and was knocking at the door.
Who couldn't be impressed with the happy
smiling face of His Holiness Dalai Lama?
How good it was to hear him talk about
Compassion and Gratitude?
Right around that time, a Chinese
accountant entered my life, of all places in Cambodia, not to help me with my
erratic finances but to tell me about Gratitude List!
Each morning when you wake up, you must
greet the Sun with thanks, said Ohiyesa, the Indian who became the first ever
of his race to become a Medical Doctor graduating from Dartmouth.
Gratitude for each moment that is a gift to
you, and in that moment try to make someone else happy and that in a nutshell
is the essence of our own happiness. Paradoxically enough Happiness does not
derive from having Desires but it arises from the lack of Desires and
especially the lack of cravings for those desires.
I woke up this morning feeling content;
despite yesterday being a day involved in mundane paperwork that government
bureaucrats revel in.
My Gratitude List, I prayed?
An innocent smile of a young girl embarking
on a career that she hopes would lead to embrace more knowledge about this world.
Her Kind mother
My good friend, the Chinese Accountant of
Malaysia, who was the first one to introduce me to Shanameh
And a good friend from Meshed, who is now
in KL, having just been granted a PhD in English
A family member who deserves more attention
hovered, completing the list.
If I were allowed to borrow a line from Pablo
Neruda, who said
Love is so short, and the forgetting so
long.
I would say,
Encounters are so short, and their
fragrances persist for so long!
Four brief encounters within a matter of
weeks, two in KL, both over dinners at a Malaysian Resto and another at an
Iranian Resto.
Two breezy encounters in the shadow of the
bare mountains of Salalah in Oman, like the Khareef and monsoon to come in May.
Bringing us the promise of good tidings.
All had one thing in common, there was innocence,
conversations without agenda, unselfishness fired by the desire for the other
to be happy.
I said thank you to the five people who
arrived on the canvas of my mind.
Be careful what you pray for, my UmonHon
teacher Pierre had warned, it will come true. So make your prayers meaningful.
I felt grateful for being present in the
smiles of an innocent girl in Salalah and her mother, in the heart of a Bakhtin
scholar, in the thoughts of a genuine altruist from Seri Kembangan.
The Bakhtin scholar wrote to wish me a
Happy Hanukkah. She is from Meshed in Iran
The schoolgirl innocence wrote to say that
the first step on the ladder of her career seemed firmer this morning!
I thought to myself, imagine her little
heart and the heart of her mother, how happy they would be this morning,
dancing with joy. It is that pleasure they transmitted me across the Rub’ Al
Khali, the empty quarter of Arabia, beginning just a few kilometres away from their residence.
The Bakhtin scholar send messages in which
she tried to cool some flames of aversion I had in my head. It is only in the
head, I told her. I thought of my other friend in KL, who had said: aversion is
the other side of the coin of attachment. Both are structural defects of your
mind.
It is time to get rid of any aversion, real
or perceived towards any one in the circle of friends, which is growing each
day.
I wanted to celebrate this morning, so full
of joys of quotidian life of an International Traveller.
What else is better than to read a few
pages of my companion, the history of my alter ego, Maqroll El Gaviero by my
favourite Latin American prose writer, Alvaro Mutis and prepare a nice cup of
delicious tea from?
The French company, Mariage Freres, Maison
fondee en 1854
I chose, Elixir D’Amour, to reflect my
mood.
It did not disappoint me!
It may be more than just a coincidence that I wrote this on the morning of THANKSGIVING DAY being celebrated in the USA !
My Thanksgiving breakfast was at my favourite Cafe at Rue Archimede, where the genial spanish/italian hosts greet me with latin familiarity of long term friends!
