Opportunity knocks more than once

Ever met someone who reminds you strongly, sharply of someone else? Even when they don’t look alike, sound alike or seem to have anything in common? What about situations that seem to keep repeating over and over again? We date the same kind of person, our spouses remind us of our teachers, our friends treat us the way our siblings did.

I think we start our lives with a list of things to be done. There are relationships to be built, conversations to be started & completed, memories to be revisited, hurts to be forgiven, actions to be completed. It is all unfinished business.

I remember hearing someone define ‘Kalyug’ as the age where nothing would be carried over to the next birth but avenged, paid back and completed in this birth itself. I don’t know whether that is so or not. But it does seem to make good sense to me to finish all that I came to this birth for. The universe provides me endless ways to do it. I discern patterns, some of which I can’t quite explain the logic for but I see them anyway.

Absence of proof is not proof of absence

said my mathematics teacher and those words underline how I receive these impressions.

There are people I feel a strong…I can’t define the feeling, can only feel its intensity…connection to. These connections are usually characterized by a strong awareness of the person when they enter the room (and my life). I am much more sensitive to their words and actions and feelings than to other people, which means that I am more perceptive about them as well as more prone to being disturbed and even hurt by them.

I’ve examined thoroughly what it is I find so familiar in certain people and I find it is often residual feelings or unfinished conversations. Often I’ve had the same person come back into my life….old friendships that just died away for no apparant reason, almost-forgotten-but-really-not-really loves…..people who have impacted me deeply at one point of time and have been ‘cleanly shut away’. And I find I keep running into the person again and again and again until I finally sort it out. And a few times, when I just haven’t been able to, I’ve find other people who remind me of that person, I find myself in familiar situations and having to deal with the same things. It is sort of like life sending me surrogate situations to learn the same lessons.

This is unfinished business coming back to pester me to finish it. These are examples of opportunity knocking more than once, in different bodies this time. And these are only people. There are things I’ve felt I should do, things I’ve felt I was meant to do, some ways of being that I felt I was born for.

Some of them didn’t fit into the way I had envisaged my life…..things like writing and art and music, things like taking leadership, things like being protector instead of protected. Some of them went totally against my beliefs of who I was and wanted to be. But somehow I’ve found I can’t dodge them. Writing and art continue to haunt me, ideas nudging my logical processes gently and then more persistently till I have no peace of mind until I’ve written or painted. Writing threatens to take me over and carry me away like a river. I fell into blogging entirely by mistake and without my realizing it has grown far beyond what I thought. It is like the ideas and words control me and not the other way round.

Invariably I land up in situations where I end up taking charge, regardless of how inadequately prepared I am. I never thought of myself as a strong person, the kind who could protect and lead others but somehow when the situations arise, it is like someone else has taken over my body and mind and is commanding me to go through the actions to take on the role.

I have no clue what happened when my grandfather died, four years ago. One moment I was an average youngster, sniveling over the boyfriend who had dumped me and grousing about the hopelessness of the education system and my life. Another moment I was rock-solid, dry-eyed fortress into which my family could retreat and feel their sorrow. I didn’t cry a tear….and it wasn’t that I was holding back. I just didn’t feel the need to break down at all, I just knew instinctively that I had to be the wall that held against this storm and sheltered my family from the horrendous pain they were feeling.

It hasn’t followed a pattern. I am not innately strong, especially when it comes to letting go of people I’ve loved. I brood and hurt and grieve long after everyone says I should really stop feeling sorry for myself. It is a bad feeling, especially since I feel that this is my real nature and those odd moments of strength came from an outside force that was just using my body as a vehicle at that time.

As I can see it, I am too small to be ever able to comprehend the enormity of the patterns. What I can do is keep noticing more and more and trying somehow to understand. There are enough of clues; the more I look, the more I find. Besides there is comfort in the fact that when I do miss an opportunity, it will come back and knock again.

Also cross-posted on IFSHA.