Phoenix

Vindication..One of the elixirs of my life.

I know that we have been conditioned to shun the feeling of intense pleasure and satisfaction that courses down our souls when we feel vindicated. Yet when I look back, I feel that feeling vindicated has been the highlight of many of my truly happy moments of life.

Maybe it is because I am a Vrishchik (Scorpio) according to Vedic Astrology. I tend to over-obsess, I tend to brood, I tend to focus – and I just have to win. I just can’t take it easy. I don’t believe in ‘letting go’. I can’t let go.

How can I let go of something that haunts me day and night… Something that calls out to me in my dreams... Something that follows me like a shadow, everywhere I go. Something that challenges me even when I am sleeping….

This attitude of mine is not just limited to my professional arena – it even pervades my personal life. If I have let go of a thing, or a person then probably, somewhere I have decided with a finality that the said thing is not worth my time. Otherwise I am right there, always, no matter what. I do not go anywhere, do not do anything, do not look at anything else – except at the center of my desire, my passion. Everything else ceases to exist and the earth stops at its axis. I become numb to any other dream, any other focus.

Patience is something that gets auto-generated in such conditions. Solitude is obviously a friend, since people do not actually understand when you tell them that you are getting hopelessly and irreversibly consumed with one, and only one passion.

No wonder, then that my favourite mythological creature is the Phoenix – the beautiful, red and gold mythical bird that ignites itself and then rises from the ashes. It focuses – only on itself. It waits patiently – for the sun to ignite its nest. It does not shy away from the imminent death – because it knows that it will be back. It embraces fire, it lets the worst come true, because it knows, deep inside that one can only win, after the worst comes true. Not before that. Never before that.

And once the worst is over, it’s a new beginning. A beginning where you start as novice again, yet you have the karmic knowledge of your past victory. A beginning which is a symbol of your invincibility.