Quit Running Away From Your Own Shadow and Stop Chasing That Elusive Rainbow!

I felt very exhausted after more than a week or so of reading my students’ projects, take-home exams, critique papers, and essays. I was able to finish computing my students’ grades only yesterday morning. I felt nauseated (involuntarily) just seeing those Blue Books on my study table this morning. Checking papers for more than a week was my “Calvary”. Yesterday at dawn time, after all the grades had been submitted online, I felt so drained-up; I felt all spent-up… I longed to just go somewhere—in perfect solitude—just to regain my used-up energies and to reinvigorate my parched spirit. That night, I mean last night; it was all too wonderful! My perennial insomnia left me, and off I went dreaming of that cool place of solitude. I dreamt of Mongolia—idyllic land of immaculate steppes, long stretch of green grasslands, and crystal-clear rivers where snow flurries float on their water surface… I must have been very tired for the past weeks of checking papers and sleepless nights; for last night was the night when I had my soundest sleep ever since I had this cursed onset of insomnia three months ago or so. And then last night, I had slept for more than twelve hours that my head ached when I woke up this afternoon…

Work robs us of solitude only if we allow it to steal from us this very precious gift of existence. Sometimes, I just sense that I obsessively immersed myself with constant frenzied activities because I want to escape from a far greater inner work, which is reflecting on where I am right now in my midlife and where am I going next. There is a tendency in me to escape from an honest reflection of what I have become in my 40+ years of earthly existence—that’s why I burrowed myself in frenetic work and frenzied activities. But now I realize that reflection or solitude is the only way to undertake a proper reality-check of my life.

The great Sufi Muslim saint of Turkey, Hazreti Mevlana Rumi once said that there is a tendency among us human existents to belittle solitude or contemplation as something impractical or simply as wastage of time. But, according to Hazreti Rumi, it is in our solitude where we are compelled to reflect on who we are and where we are ultimately going (See Hazreti Mevlana Rumi’s book Fihi Ma Fihi [“It Is what It Is”]; p.59). We hate solitude because it reveals to us that despite our frenzied activities and constant workaholic bouts, we are really nothing, and what we have accomplished in this temporary plane of existence is just nil or insignificant compared to the vastness of Eternity! We hate solitude because it bursts our inflated balloon of self-importance and puts our puny achievement in the light of the overall achievement of the ongoing Universe.

We sometimes fill our lives with constant and hurried activities because we want to run away from ourselves. There is an old Taoist parable I fondly remember just now while typing this essay, the parable is entitled: “The Man Who Is Afraid of His Own Shadow”. We are like that man! We are so much afraid of our own shadow and we want to get rid of our shadow by running away from it. But ironically, our shadow continues to haunt us while we are running away from it; until we exhaust ourselves to death in running away from it, but never escaping our own shadow no matter how we flee from it. However, the solution to this dilemma is not to run, but to simply sit still, to be quiet and unruffled: to be like the Buddha who simply sat still at the foot of the Tree of Enlightenment, or to be like St. Mary Magdalene who merely sat and patiently waited at the feet of the Messiah. In just being still, of being in solitude, our shadows will also stop chasing us and will not be able to haunt us anymore. We are our shadows and our shadows are us. The shadows of our insecurities, our failings, our regrets, and of our self-condemnations will also rest in solitude when we are in perfect calm and in serene equipoise…

Let’s stop working for a while, let’s stop escaping from the meaninglessness of our lives by our “on-and-on” working with no ends and with no respite. Let’s rest for a while. Let’s throw that running shoes to the sky, lie down upon the green meadow of our being, and chill our life a bit! It may be that the second-wind of zest for life and enthusiasm for living will come-in and will grace our bored, monotonous and jaded existence once again… Please take this clearly: I am not preaching to you, readers of this my essay. I am talking to me, to myself—this article is primarily for me, inasmuch as it is for you. In solitude, we win our life—in our hurried and obsessive-compulsive frenetic activities, we lose ourselves and dehumanize ourselves in the process. Therefore stop chasing that elusive rainbow for a while and you will realize that the rainbow you are chasing is just a mirage, a fleeting scene, an illusory play of light and darkness. The real rainbow you are trying to vainly chase is that Light inside your heart! You can only reach the Light in your soul by being quiet, placid, peaceful and still… So how about it? Something worth pondering for just a little while.