Work in Progress

Joseph, my friend in Vancouver, sent me some old black and white pictures. They depict scenes in Sri Lanka when the country was known as Ceylon, the Paradise Island. These pictures are interesting, provoking a variety of emotions within me. But the scenes have now drastically changed.

I remember, in the late 50’s and the early 60’s, seeing hundreds of fishermen’s sailing boats in Trincomalee where my adolescent life and teen time were spent. People used to call these little boats with huge sails “pai kappal”, literally “mat ship”. In these boats as the fishermen reach the shores they will roll the sails as if rolling the mats early morning from their deep sleep! These boats are now replaced by bigger boats with smaller engines they, upon reaching shores, carry on their shoulders as if carrying pillows. Today, very rarely one might see a “pai kappal” around Trincomalle waters!

Becoming, a kind of changing, an unfolding of the new, an evolving, and a growing are part of not only a landscape -- nation’s history -- but also my everyday life. This is the very essence of life. “Yes, I know it; it is a fact that all know it. So, why bother?” A justifiable assertion!

The need to reflect on the fact of “unfolding”, for me then, is caused by awareness. It is my cognizance of the in-built, or the immanent, resistance to the continuous unfolding, or potential growth. Such fighting emerges from a kind of inclination to the ingrained comfort in the status quo within one’s soul. In Tamil proverbial tradition this is very succinctly announced: “puthu seruppu kadikkum”, meaning, “the new shoe bites”! Hence the reluctance to change!

I have seen this within my soul as well. But I have gone through tsunamic changes in my life. It is this that led to the sudden sharp learning curve -- a process of accommodating the unfolding -- that I went through since the last St Patrick’s day!

I am , I am aware, continually evolving, or becoming into a person I was not forty, thirty, twenty, ten years, or even a year ago. My values -- what I actually now let my eyes see, ears hear, feet walk towards, my hands reach for, my heart desire, or my mind imagine -- has been changed as I journey through new times.

I know, for certain, from the moment my life began, I have been evolving and growing. As an infant, through trial and error, I learned to crawl, walk and speak. In that I am not different to Justin, my grandson, whom I, even as I was recuperating from my open-heart surgery, watched to crawl in my bonus room, then walking in my moccasins and now running around the kitchen island expecting me to run behind to catch him! Earlier, Gitanjali, my only daughter, went through this “becoming” to eventually birthing Justin.

Today with another, almost, thirty years ahead of me, growing in harmony with that unfolding that continues in my soul is necessary for me. My feet yesterday cooperated well with my soul in discovering beauty along the backwaters of Harris road that went beyond the Old Dewdney road into the Osprey Loop! My mind, then, like the bald eagle I saw there in great numbers, took off flying along the Alouette River to the wilderness --jungles I walked as a teen, without a guide, exploring aimlessly, the birds and the nothingness.

Today each experience I encounter, each relationship I enter into, each insight intuitively or rationally I receive, offers me the opportunity to become stronger outwardly and grow in my inner self. I am delighted as I feel that my nerve endings are healing in my chest, left arm, and left leg that were surgically cut to repair my old sick heart. It gives me great peace to know that the one who began a good work in me continues with the same that I may grow and evolve to become the person I am meant to be. I am, in fact, a work in progress that becoming.