Never Adds Up

MINESH KHASHU





We have somehow come to think that we progress mainly by a process of addition. That is, we start off deficient and we progress by addition that gradually minimises the state of deficiency state. This is a big flaw in our perception; it leads to us wasting our lives in adding things at all levels, physical or mental. We accumulate objects and information, opinions and perceptions. But the truth is that we were not deficient to begin with.We need some self-appreciation to take us on the right path to divinity . However, we complicate things by our desire or longing for `something' from outside that we think is `missing' and that is required to rectify the defect in us.
What we actually need is some way of clearing the `dust' that obscures our brilliance. What we tend to do, instead, is think we are `dirty' or `faulty' or `incomplete' and add artificial layers to mask the `defect' in us. Human progress is based not on addition but on subtraction. The aim in life should be to strip down to the bare minimum.
Stop asking, `What do I want?' Instead, ask, `What can I give up today? What is superfluous?' Subtraction then becomes addition and our joy multiplies. The bad habit of `addition' makes us `hoarders'. What we hoard makes it difficult for us to move forward. They also create a lot of `noise' in our lives such that we can't hear the real melody of life. To listen to our inner self, we need silence. We don't want to be distracted by the `noise'.