Around the time when I did something I hadn't planned on doing- get married. Conversely, coming together with another person made me even more alone for that limbo period just before the wedding; and I had to quickly grow up to take a place in society from a space when, as a middle daughter among 3, I had  the luxury of being largely invisible.

Our marriage forced our  families of different cultures and values [theirs traditional,mine not], to require interaction in ways that the other would not easily accept. To keep the balance between them, and internally with myself, forced me to grow up....fast!

And then the wedding day dawned, everyone was happy and smiling, and we were all on time. Unusual in India, two families who keep the time as if by a Swiss clock, and who were marrying off their children for the first time; managed to be joyfully united by marriage. And those preliminary days all were worth it.

I grew into the roles of first married child in the family and only daughter-in-law; and a friend turned wife-housewife.

And that's another growing up that, 26 years on, I've still not done fully!

1) How do you celebrate Mother's Day?

Usually, we go out with family and friends for lunch. I'm far away from my mother, so I can just wish her on the phone; and she'll be happy but bemused because there was no Mother's Day when we were growing up.

2) Pick three words that describe your mother or an inspiring woman in your life.

Wit, wisdom, warmth. [See my blogs on my mother : Mother's Day~ Ma's wit; Happy Birthday Ma!]

3) What qualities do you think are important for a mother? (pick 2 or 3)

Being able to convey to her children that she will always listen to them without reacting; being able to raise children with a light touch so they don't even know they're being guided; and being able to show them how precious they are to her.

4) Do you have children?

Yes! Two jewels.

5) What is one thing you admire about your mother?

Her outer calm and inner strength that enabled her to face difficult people without losing her grace but equally without losing her independence or her will power.  And the way she showed us that she has so much faith in us that she never lectured us on morality or good behavior and thus raised children who would never do anything to betray that trust.

As I am reaching the stage when the kids will begin to leave home; I marvel at the way my mother let us travel and move so far away from her, without ever making us feel that we need to think of her or look after her or even be near her - thus of course,making us rush to our parents whenever we can!

I don't know if I'll be able to do what she did; as she saw me off to university far away from  home: she saw me off with a warm smile, saying :"In our family, we don't cry."

The Mind is a Metaphor, is an evolving work of reference, an ever more interactive, more solidly constructed collection of mental metaphorics. This collection of eighteenth-century metaphors of mind serves as the basis for a scholarly study of the metaphors and root-images appealed to by the novelists, poets, dramatists, essayists, philosophers, belle-lettrists, preachers, and pamphleteers of the long eighteenth century. While the database does include metaphors from classical sources, from Shakespeare and Milton, from the King James Bible, and from more recent texts, it does not pretend to any depth or density of coverage in literature other than that of the British eighteenth century.

The database was assembled and taxonomized and is maintained by Brad Pasanek. He writes:

"I haven't completed all of my planned searches, and my protocol may be classified as "hunt-and-peck." But for the past two years I've been collaborating with D. Sculley, formerly of Tufts University's Department of Computer Science, now a credit to Google Pittsburgh. Employing on machine-learning methods, we have trained a computer to correctly label metaphors and non-metaphors. Our experiments suggest we may be able to automate much of the drudgery by using a classifier trained on a seed set of 100-200 labeled metaphors and non-metaphors. The hand-curated database of metaphors would then be put to work in bootstrapping efforts, repurposed as training data for automated classifiers sent forward and backward in history, departing from the eighteenth century in order to collect Renaissance and Victorian metaphors."

Loving light going out to our earth mother, in this special time of the Vaishakh full moon on May 8th-9th and Mother's Day on May 10th

From the heart of the universe into the loving embrace of a mother
From the Creator energy ~ birthings on Gaia
From  unconditional love ~nurturing, compassion
From the One that we are ~ feelings of connection

Bleaming loving energy from the compassionate heart of all beings to bring a healing balance in our earth mother's energy.

May all beings be blessed by material wealth, emotional health,loving relationships, intuitive willfulness, truthful expression, connected intelligence,

May despair  cease
May hatred decrease
May peace peace peace

-crossposted from The Power of Light

I wrote a while back: Reflections -The company we keep~ everyone is a mirror

Or perhaps


Img srce

We have just had general elections in India for the Lok Sabha [general assembly]. A slightly personal touch for me, is that Shashi Tharoor, one of those who won, was at the University of Delhi when I attended it too; and many a time we'd go to university debates to hear him and other contemporaries! [that's the extent of my name dropping for this one!]


Children wait for their parents to vote;


The wonder that is India's election-With a continent-sized 714 million voters,India has learned to pull off virtually flawlessly the biggest, eye-poppingdemocratic exercise with the kind of ease that is a part of our new brandequity. …”How do you preventelectoral fraud?” “How do you ensure that the voting machines are not hijacked?”These are questions to which Indian electoral juggernaut has now answers to.But, for the outside world, how a poor country puts up such a complicated andmammoth show of democracy remains a wonder.



Congress Coalition Set to Return to Power The India National Congress party and its allies sailed tovictory Saturday, securing a strong mandate for the designated primeminister, Manmohan Singh.

Viewpoint in the Wall Street Journal about the issues a new government should address: India Journal: Let's Get Going

Two winners who may make a difference:

Indian Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi, greets supporters at anelection rally in Baliguda, in the eastern Indian state of Orissa. Forhundreds of thousands of people in this largely rural swathe of northIndia, Rahul Gandhi is their prince. The boyish looking 38-year-old isthe latest political incarnation of the fabled Nehru-Gandhi dynastythat stretches back over 60 years


Shashi Tharoor creates history -Shashi Tharoor has created history by winning the Lok Sabha seat from the Kerala [Images]capital, Thiruvanathapuram, by an unprecedented margin. Never beforehas any one not born in Kerala or not educated here or not proficientin Malayalam registered an electoral victory in the state. 
[Yes, he's the same person who was being considered for UN Secretary General ]


Indian voters




[cross-posted from World Heritage Society]

Like Maslow's heirarchy, another model useful in understanding ourselves, and becoming aware is the Johari window.

As we encounter another person, a window opens: into the other person and also into ourselves. This happens whether the encounter is face-to-face, or through other media. Whether or not we are conscious of it, through each interaction, we learn something about ourselves and the other.

	KNOWN TO ME	NOT KNOWN TO ME
KNOWN TO YOU	1.OPEN:easily seen, known, factual, 'in the light'   What you know about me, and I know about myself	2.BLIND /shadow   What you know about me, but I don’t know about myself
NOT KNOWN TO YOU	3.HIDDEN: suppressed, un-expressed   What you don’t know about me but I know about myself	4.UNKNOWN: unconscious, potential, 'in the dark'   What neither you nor I know about me

Many years ago, two psychologists JOseph Luft and HARry Ingham described this metaphorical window.  The JOHARI Window, as it is called after its founders, is a model that helps us to put a framework on our understanding of ourselves better, in relation to people that we meet and who know us. Though it is commonly used for interactions between people, we can choose to extend it as deep as we would like to.

 

The interesting aspect is, that as one quadrant grows, the others become smaller. In this, it is a closed system.

 

1. The “open” quadrant represents things that are known to both – people who know me, and I know - my name, and other facts about me. If we get to know each other better, the window shade will move, making this first quadrant bigger. As it becomes bigger, quadrant 2 or 3 may become smaller.

2. The “blind” quadrant represents things that you know about me, but that I am unaware of. For example those around me can see my body language when we’re face to face, and I do not. Whether or not you have met me, based on my behavior, and my writing, you have made inferences about me.

Why is it important for this quadrant to be smaller? Because this is the part of me that influences other people’s behavior towards me, but I am unaware of it.

3. The “hidden” quadrant represents things that I know about me that you do not know: ones that I may be unable or unwilling to share. This is typically the area of motives,private thoughts, stream of consciousness, communication skills.

What did I do today? What do I plan to do? What am I reading? What do I think about you? What is my opinion about the world today? As soon as I tell you any of this, I move the information in my hidden quadrant and enlarge the open quadrant. We decide what to share and keep hidden about ourselves from others. Sometimes, some things that we hide may actually harm us or others [e.g. a child hiding an abusive person from his parents as we are now reading so much about in the news]; but at other times, we are probably wise in not boring the other with details about ourselves!

How can I know what to hide and what to disclose to another?

4. The “unknown” quadrant represents things that neither I know about myself, nor you know about me. Our dreams, repressed memories, forgotten events, fall into this category. Why is it important? Because it comes up in surprising ways- dreams, inexplicable emotions, gut-feels, intuition, visions. Opening up this quadrant is a matter for each of us to decide for ourselves. But it is something to keep in mind: that we don’t know everything about ourselves.

How do I view the parts of me that are unknown? A Pandora’s Box of memories and painful incidents that I am scared to open? Something unimportant best left unknown? Or a mystery worth unveiling?

Some events in our lives cause parts of the unknown to become known: it could be a major event like marriage or becoming a parent or a death of a close person; or an unusual one like talking in public for the first time, being forced to do something we’ve never wanted to try before; it could be meditation, or sometimes feedback from a wise one. We discover hidden strengths, surprising weaknesses, and unimagined qualities in ourselves. And if were really lucky, we begin to discover the dimensions within ourselves and our connections with each other.

This intriguing quadrant is like a black hole in the universe- who knows what it contains and where it leads!

Each person we meet, is different from the other. In our dealing with each person, we uncover things we didn’t know about them and what we didn’t know about ourselves: there may be a tenderness we discover only if we have a child; or a nasty temper that is uncovered only when we meet someone who lives with rules completely different from ours.

No one is static- so we not only uncover, we also change as we meet people.

Something to think about, is the role that emotions play in each of these quadrants. That defines our feeling about light and dark.

©2002 Meenakshi Suri. All rights reserved

[Cross-posted ]