My First Heart-Attack

Hi my name is Manuj. The few following paragraphs will sum up a brief history of my life. Do not be surprised if you find striking similarities between your life and mine, because if you are like me, then you will probably make the same mistakes in life as I did. Before reading ahead, remember that people who learn from their own mistakes are smart, but smarter are those who learn from someone else’s mistakes.

Love is often taken for granted. A research showed that 98% of those people who received love with less or no efforts tend to value it only at times when they have nothing else to do; the rest of the times, they take it for granted. I never valued love in my life as such because I received excess of it without ever demanding for it. Since I was a kid, my parents have loved me with all their heart and done every possible thing I could have expected from them for my happiness. After I grew up, I got the best girlfriend in this world who later on became my wife. She has always loved me so much that any man in this world would crave for such a wife and value her like a princess every single second of the day if he does get such a wife. But I don’t value her this way, at times I do, but not always. The reason for this is simple- I’ve always had love, I never got a chance to miss being loved, and so I take it for granted. A lot of people in this world understand how important love is, but I haven’t so far.

So you see, love is not that big an issue for me. The pain in my ass has always been revolving around peace of mind. I value peace of mind like crazy, and this is because I never had a non-stop supply of it unlike love. I so strongly wish I could take peace of mind for granted instead of love, getting my wife to love me wouldn’t have been as difficult as getting peace of mind. A lot of people have thrown several theories in my face about being happy and content, and all these theories ultimately pointed out that there is something wrong with my way of thinking- my temper, lack of calmness and my short-sightedness in life. I never believed any of these people, I would get angry every time they would say such a thing and then I would be the one throwing some words in their faces- not so pleasant words of course.

So here’s how my whole battle with peace of mind began. I have always been short tempered, and it was very late in my life that I began to accept this fact. When I was in school, my temper often attracted towards me a lot of hate and being made fun of. Thankfully, I was charming and very nice to people at times when I was not angry, and so I managed to have a few admirers who made life relatively easier at school. However, every time something bad would happen to me at school, the first and most-affected victims of my anger and of the resulting arrogance would be my parents. But they knew me very well, and understood that I didn’t mean any of the hurtful crap I said or did when angry. In other words, they were used to it. In school, I was always in tension and anger, and I always used to think that once I would get out of there and go to college, I would finally have peace of mind.

When I went to college, things moved on very quickly and before I even knew it, I had found a very loving soul-mate in Divya. I was among a bunch of non-interfering peers and was very thankful that my problems had ended with my school-life. But then, there came ambition- the desire to be the best. After the first few semesters, being a topper had become so important to me that I began to find enemies in who were actually just competitors. I wanted things to go just the way I had planned, and every time they wouldn’t, which was very often, I would lose my temper and the victim of my temper would now be Divya. Amazingly, she too had the same level of resilience as my parents, and she continued to love me despite every hurtful thing I would say to her. I felt guilty of letting my problems ultimately hurt Divya, but I used to tell her- “Just once I get out of here and my mind is free from all this pressure and tension, I would treat you like a princess. This tension and pressure just makes me too irritable, please bear with me, for just this while.” She used to tell me- “The biggest problem is not the presence of problems, but the assumption that having a problem is a problem”; I tried to understand, I couldn’t. Divya is a goddess, and I believe so because no human could possibly love and express so much despite the fact that at a very small fraction of times was that love and expression returned. I was waiting for the end of college- the beginning of a streak of peace of mind, and Divya was waiting with me.

College ended, Divya and I got married, and we were both working in very famous firms at good positions. We were happy together, and life was luxurious- it still is. After the first few months of job, my superiors found a very able employee in me, and responsibilities began to increase. As responsibilities increased, so did the occurrences of working late hours. These responsibilities were good in the sense that I felt important and received a lot of appreciation, but were bad in the sense that the fear of screwing up, the desire of doing everything perfectly and the arising of any unplanned problems would simply freak me out. And so, this pressure led to sleepless tension-filled nights, rudeness to my parents and my wife, getting angry at my wife several times, arguments on anniversaries and a lot more. Divya expected me to spend time with here and enjoy these moments of life, while I expected her to just wait till the pressure gets less and the problems get over. “They won’t Manuj,” she used to say “your problems will never get over. They never do, for anyone.” Anyways life moved on with ups and downs at a frequency of every few days.

As the years passed, I climbed to the top of the work ladder in search for a position where problems would be less, and only peace of mind. “Even Divya would be happy then”, I would think every time I would aspire for a higher position. And so on went my professional and personal lives, mixed up like a tangled bunch of hair. I am 36 years old now, and so is Divya. My parents keep complaining that we don’t visit them. Last week, I finally had a chance to meet them, except that they were the ones visiting me- in the hospital, where I was admitted to after I had a heart attack. “Take a vacation”, said the doctors, and while they said that, I wondered who would complete the projects that I have initiated if I go on a leave. “It’s no use”, said my dad as he walked in, “even after a vacation, he would return to the same life, to the same job, with the same work pressures, and the same stress. Nothing will change…” “Hi dad, please don’t start with a speech now”, I interrupted. Pretending to have not heard me, he continued, “nothing will change until you change you attitude, son. Tell me honestly, when will you finally give yourself a break from being angry and irritated? When do you plan to give your wife the life that you promised her of when you first met her?” I kept silent as I browsed my head for the answer, I knew I had an answer, and I wanted to say- “I will dad. I am just waiting for all this pressure to end and these problems to be sorted out at work.” But as I was about to speak, I wondered how long have I been waiting for the problems to end. Thirty-six years of my life have passed, out of which the later 24-25 years, all I have done is waited for this imaginary state of no problems, no pressures, and only peace of mind. And all this while, all I have done is been angry and rude to every single person who loves me. And at this point, do I still know if the problems and the pressures will ever end? I don’t think so. Divya was right- you must not wait for problems to get over, but learn to live with them. I have spent 36 years of my life, dreaming of enjoying all moments of my life with a peaceful mind, all the while wasting all those moments in just running after this dream. All I had to do was halt from the running and look around, and I would know that I could start living that dream right then by just accepting things the way they are. May be this heart-attack was God’s way of bringing me to that halt.

But I am smart, because I have learned from my mistakes. If you don’t believe me, my wife can confirm the same, who by the way just can’t stop smiling all the time these days. But I would like you to be smarter.