Letters To A Young Siddha: What The World Thinks Of You

Dear Siddha,

As you move through life, the world will weigh heavily upon you. Most specifically, the weight of the world’s opinions about you.

For many years, you will not notice the effect that it has had upon you. You will not see the behaviors that you change in order to appear a certain way. You will not notice the change in your tone when speaking to one individual versus another. You will not detect the subtle insecurities that you attempt to hide when conversing with a member of your family.

It is most ironic that it is in your family that you will feel the greatest weight of worldly opinion. You will attempt to garner, that which “should” come for free.

You will seek to be adored by your children. You will attempt to appease them through behavioral and monetary means. You will attempt to show kindness to them even when you do not feel it is warranted. You will attempt to demonstrate humility by speaking of your own faults. You will attempt to demonstrate accountability by owning up to your own mistakes. And though this will seem noble to you, it will create within you a heavy wind of resentment when your demonstrations do not have the effect that you hoped for.

No matter how “good” you may try to be, once they reach a certain age they will never again view you as they once did. They will belong more to the world than to you.

When they were young, they longed for your attention. When they grow up, you will long for theirs. And both of you will be imperfect with your timing.

They will say some things to you that will bring you great joy. They will say other things to you that will make you doubt that they are your children.

And as the years pass, you will begin to wonder in the quiet of your room, if they were ever really “yours” at all.

Your spouse will have your best interest at heart. But you will reach a quiet compromise in which little is truly said. The weight of all the years will be heavy between you. Each smile will be laced with pain. Each pain will be lined with hope. You will live as “related beings” more than you will live as independent ones.

Your friends will be more acquaintance than friend. They will serve as a relief valve for the pressures of life. If you happen to find a “friend” that is by your side through anything and everything, you will have found a small fortune. But it would not be wise to hope for such a thing.

You will claim that you do not care what people think of you. But it will be this very statement that exposes your disingenuousness.

The Truth is that everyone who claims to love you is but a situation away from hating you.

Those who gloriously praise you today are the ones who are most likely to condemn you tomorrow. For extremes in one direction, very often beget extremes in the direction opposite.

You will seek the world’s approval. You will seek your family’s validation. You will seek your friends’ praise.

And although you will likely receive some of this, it will never be quite enough. For the mind is a craving machine.

Each ounce of praise you receive, will be matched by a pound of criticism. There is no ill will in this.

In order to understand this you will have to understand that praise and criticism are both unnatural things. No human being is as “happy for you” as they say. And none of them are as critical of you as they appear.

If you are sensitive and acutely aware of the effects that the world is having upon you, you will begin to see the way out.

You will naturally arrive at the conclusion that the world’s praise creates pride, and the world’s criticism creates animous. And neither of these will allow you a moment’s peace.

You will begin to slowly see that one’s own life is too heavy to bear the weight of another.

You will come to see that human beings are caught in a struggle to survive. “You” are simply someone they happen to comment upon as they come up for air while drowning in life’s turbulent tide.

Some days your spouse will scorn you. Other days she will caress you.

Some days your children will betray you. Other days they will embrace you.

And if you crave one of these types of days, while fearing the other, you will live in perpetual turmoil.

For the number of “pleasant” days tend to be rather astoundingly outnumbered by the “unpleasant” ones.

If you seek Truth, you will eventually come to see that all the games that you have been playing are games that no man can ever win.

In seeing this, you will one day quietly leave all the games behind.

And perhaps you will, for the first time in your life, be able to watch and interact with all humans in peace and freedom.

Because, for the first time in your life, you no longer need anything from them.

Namaste.