The Healer

I think I have had enough. I’ve had enough at work, enough of this traffic, enough of everything.

It has been a pretty tiring week. For that matter, it has been a tiring month and perhaps even the whole year. The work has been relentless, coming at you in waves; particularly within an organization in major transition and transformation, where the understanding of what needs to be done and commitment to it varying from apathetic non-existence to complete-harmony; and the underlying tension between those two extremes. The past three days at work was an offsite planning session – it was ugly – there were quite a bit of disagreement amongst the group; the opinions proffered and the engagement to the cause spanned the spectrum of ridiculous to the passionate. Of late, I find such meetings to be emotionally tiring and at extremes, draining. It seemed to me that such meetings had become retrograde, regressive and a forlorn exercise in mental regurgitation and jumping through hoops needlessly…for someone who wants to do forward progress, I find extraneous noise and the high ratio of noise to signal quite disconcerting and often frustrating; to the extent that in the recent past, it has made me think – perhaps I’ve had enough…

I’m jolted to the present as the car brakes to a halt – an auto driver has cut in front of the car. I realize that the there is a traffic jam building up. As the speed slows down to the crawl, I see the traffic slowly turning into the chaos – slowly, starting with the bikes, then autos, then cars and then bigger trucks, start passing the line of vehicles on their wrong side and stack up the breadth of the road and slowly choke up the lane for oncoming traffic slowing them down; the traffic in our direction has stopped. I see a lone traffic policeman struggling to keep the order. A moped tries to thread the needle and pass between my car on the left and kerb; he nicks the car and looks back sheepishly; my first instinct is to get out of the car and talk to him; but then I see the absurdity of the situation, the traffic is so logged that I cannot even open the door; I stay in and loudly curse my luck… I give up, I’ve had enough…

Finally, what seemed like eons later, I reach my home… I’m really tired and hungry. I haul the heavy laptop bag, the luggage bag packed for the 3d stay outside; as I go to the elevators, I see a sign that the elevators our out of order. That seemed to be last nail into the coffin!!! Sigh… when it rains it pours. I manage to carry the bags up two floors and knock at the door. I’ve had it up to my ears – its enough !!!

…As my wife opens the door, I see the eight-year old wide-eyed innocence full of joy and optimism, standing at the door-way, behind his welcoming mother; I see genuine delight in his eyes and in his gait. He rushes in jumps up and gives a bear hug with an accompaniment of hi-appa and unadulterated joy… As I feel his soft hands and his energy, I feel all my frustrations drain out… As my son loosens his hug, I hold on for a bit more – that healing touch is never never enough…

I have my personal healer. Miracle worker. I’m ready for tomorrow’s battles; Tomorrow’s frustrations. And Tomorrow's possibility for that joy at the end of the tunnel !!!