OFTEN, I am accused of being conservative and overprotective of our special friends. As a parent, I confess I stand guilty. Which parent would wilfully want to throw his/her intellectually disabled child into a fiercely competitive world, especially if he/she has to compete with normal people? I have quite a different take on it; others may differ.
Happiness is the only thing that we do for nothing else. — Aristotle.
Pursuit of happiness
The main motivator for human beings is pursuit of happiness. We study hard in school, train ourselves for a vocation, find employment and earn money to be happy. We diet, exercise and cultivate good habits to be healthy and happy. We compare, compete and indulge in one-upmanship in order to win and be happy. We invest time in bringing up our children well to ensure that they are happy. Later, much later, we realise that happiness is always in the small things and that those things are free. Happiness is a state of being. It is not about what you have or don’t have; it is about how you feel about what you have.
Direct route to happiness
We have chosen the circuitous way of becoming happy. Our special friends have found a more direct route; they are happy. What do parents want for their children? They want their children to be happy. The problem begins when we start telling our children, even our normal children, that they should be happy our way, not the way they want. I tell my friends I am sure that Aditi will be happy all her life at Navkshitij. I am not so sure about her elder sister; she will put herself through many tests and trials before she gives herself the permission to be happy.
Acceptance is the key
The day we stop moulding our IDs wards to become like us and start accepting them as they are, their natural happiness will shine through. Our special friends need acceptance; they desire and deserve respect and dignity. They need a safe surrounding in which they can express themselves freely. We must make sure they have a balanced diet, a healthy lifestyle and enough choice of interesting things to do—through which to express themselves. We should ensure that they live in a safe haven where they feel normal. If we allow them to be themselves, they will teach us how to be happy.
Ananda swaroop of Brahman
In Indian philosophy, Brahman is known as Sat-Chit-Ananda; our special friends are the Ananda swaroop of Brahman. Their natural bliss self shines through. They have come here on a mission; they have come here to teach us how to be happy. That is, if we can restrain ourselves from dragging them into our world of comparison and competition. This is why we call Navkshitij a temple of happiness and our special friends the high priests of the temple.
Hardware vs. Software
It is important to understand that our body is our hardware. It is driven to action by the software, which are our emotions, intellect and belief systems. Today, 70% of deaths are due to NCDs (Non-Communicable Diseases). These are mainly stress-induced diseases or lifestyle diseases. Diseases like Hypertension, Diabetes, IBS and psychological and psychiatric disorders are striking our youth as early as the third decade of life. These are the results of performance tension, fear of failure and ridicule, strained relationships, peer and parental pressure, addictions and high expectations from the world and oneself; all this in the pursuit of happiness. These are software issues.
As I said, the software of our IDs is wired differently and they are happy. They seem to have found a more direct way to be happy in spite of their obviously low IQ. There was a time when we called our IDs mentally challenged. I like the term Intellectually Disabled because mentally they are far stronger than us; they have a very high EQ (Emotional Quotient). Maybe we can find a solution to our software issues if we study their software. This will be a role reversal; we will refrain from telling them what is right and we will learn from them. I will mention just a few salient points.
Example of unconditional love
The IDs accept people as they are; they are a living example of unconditional love. In our case, we first want people to become acceptable. That is, they should become what and how we expect them to be! This is the root of most strained relationships and the ever-rising divorce rate.
The IDs do not stack the past and create a story of their lives. We stack achievements to showcase who we are. We stack the unfairness and lack of opportunities that life has dealt us to create a story of our woes in life. Then we spend hours on the counsellor’s couch to learn how to let go of the past. Very early in life, Aditi’s favourite phrase was, Daude, thodun de!! Her way of saying leave it; let go. We attend seminars and sermons to learn to forgive and forget. Do not for a moment think that it is easy for them to forget because they do not remember. Sorry, they remember every slight, scorn and indignity that we have subjected them to; they just avoid contact with such people. Their memory is at the cellular level. At Noopur’s wedding, we were shocked when Aditi remembered friends and distant relatives whom she had not met in over a decade.
Living in the Here and Now
The IDs live in the ‘here and now’; they take each day as it comes. We go for meditation courses and Vipassana to drag ourselves to the present; so busy are we in remembering and recalling the unfairness, guilt and lost opportunities of the past and in worrying about our future. Our friends teach us how to live meditatively.
The IDs find happiness in small things. We have bought into the ‘more is better’ philosophy of life. We are trained to think contentment as under-selling yourself; you deserve and must aim to be at the top. We have stumbled upon the perfect formula to be unhappy all our lives. The economy, whatever that is, hates contented people. It wants people to buy more. Advertisement agencies excel at the art of making you want things that you don’t need; spend money that you don’t have to impress people who you don’t even like. We fall for the ploy; the IDs do not. Their needs are few. Once these needs are fulfilled, they are happy.
Our special friends are happy being what they are and who they are. Most of us are busy trying to be someone else. This has become a habit, so much so that eventually we go into spirituality to find an answer to the question Who am I?
The German philosopher Schopenhauer says, “It is difficult to find happiness within oneself but it is impossible to find it anywhere else.” Our friends have found the fountain of happiness within themselves; they have done the difficult. We are trying the impossible—seeking happiness—outside and failing.
Our special friends have a direct, instinctive perception of their inner blissful self; they are not just happy, they are happiness itself. I am worried about the borderline IDs. They get glimpses of their blissful self but are also dazzled by the glitz and glamour outside. Friends with a lower IQ are not confused; their happiness bubbles from within. The borderline IDs have to choose between their natural state of happiness and the “normal” misplaced conviction that happiness comes from money, job satisfaction, dignity of labour and from things that we can buy. We have to allow them to find the right way for themselves. They have lesser ground to cover than us. Our high IQ does not allow us to grasp the obvious; happiness lies within not without us.
Unconditional happiness
Our friends teach us unconditional happiness. We have put so many conditions on our happiness; one more bedroom to the house, six more inches to the car, one more zero to the bank account and so on. Until then, we choose to be unhappy.
At Navkshitij, one can see that our special friends dance to express their joy of living. We do everything not to express ourselves but to impress others, to take selfies, post them and draw the envy of others.
One last and significant point. I am reminded of the day we lost Aditi’s mother, Neelima. Aditi saw her mother lying lifeless on the bed. We wept together for some time. Within an hour, Aditi said that she wanted to go back to Marunji—her comfort zone. She was the first to recover from the shock. Was she not attached to her mother? Had her mother not been her lifeline? She remembers her often but shrugs her shoulders and moves on. She became my role model for resilience.
A Zen master is one who acts without acting. Aditi started Navkshitij by just being herself. Our special friends teach us by example. They show us the way to happiness by just being themselves. That is why I call them Zen masters.
Please pay a visit to Navkshitij to learn how to be happy. I, with all our friends, will be there to welcome you. Yes, I have joined them and they have accepted me. However, I am privileged to have had a personal Zen master in Aditi for more than three decades. She never gave up on me.
I am reminded of an old Marathi song. Kalpavruksha kanyesathi launiya baba gela (The father departed after planting a wish tree for his daughter). In the case of Aditi, it was her mother who did it by starting Navkshitij. The other parents and I can’t even begin thanking her for the great gift she has left for the world.
Read Previous Blogs:
- Abnormal
- Impact Analysis
- Understanding Inclusivity
- Self-advocacy
- Navkshitij: An end-to-end solution
- Why Navkshitij
- The Corporate Way
- New Horizons, new challenges
- The ID-Centric Home
- Deep diving into the world of IDs (continued)
- Deep dive into the world of the Intellectually Disabled
- Through the eyes of a parent
- Rehabilitation and Inclusivity: An Introduction
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