Love's Labour

Becoming a parent is like stepping in a new dimension. All your adult life nothing can prepare you for what you are about to experience. I used to want to have kids, yes; but not till I held my first born in my arms did it hit me, the responsibility it was to have a small and fragile being completely dependent on me for everything. It was daunting; I was at once scared and over joyed. My son switched on a person in me which was till that point in hibernation mode, from a woman I became a Mother.

I don’t think that anything can make you feel and act as you do for your own child. I will not generalize by saying that all parents are self-sacrificing creatures and everything they do is right; but nothing can explain the endless love you feel for your child. Sometimes you may express it and most times you may not, but you are so strongly bound with this person in ties of love and need that nothing in the world can strangle that bond. It is not surprising then, that all our deep rooted issues are tied up in our childhood and somehow tied up in our relationships with our parents.

It was not with an easy mind that I noted that my second born baby boy was not following the regular milestones. My father started asking me why Sheru didn’t look when his name was called or when something was pointed to him. I shrugged his remarks off lightly, but deep down my mother’s intuition knew that he was right; something was wrong. When Sheru turned 1, I feared that he may have hearing loss and this must explain his lack of interest in his surroundings but then there was Barney, he could watch his favorite toons on the tele for any length of time. It was the humans around him, he didn’t interact with.

The first time I read the word Autism online I froze. Sheru displayed all the symptoms; he had no eye contact, he didn’t respond to his name and he had perfectly fine hearing. I read it, but I couldn’t believe it. It is not happening to me, Sheru will be fine, I told myself and prayed. 6 months later I could not hide behind the fact that he will “grow” out of it. I started my quest, to know what I was up against but even when I read these words “non-verbal” “sensory issues” “no social skills” they didn’t sink in, they were just words. There was a beautiful boy running around with fat cheeks and watching Barney; surely they were talking of other kids, it cannot be my boy.

December 2011, I travelled from Quetta to Lahore, both my boys tucked under my arms to hear my worst fears confirmed. All my life I have talked and now uttering one word was painful; being told that maybe my son will never say a single word.  I don’t know how to describe that moment, there is no correct vocabulary invented to articulate the feeling that I had ; maybe it was as if I was hit by a train and everything broke and still I was conscious, maybe I am not sure.

But I know that I fell in a dark hole that day, a hole of self-pity and remorse. A dark pit of immense guilt and regret. I started blaming myself for having “done” this to my child, my precious boy. If I had not done this, if I hadn’t done that; surely God was punishing me for my sins. It has to be my fault and I am going to pay the price for all the evil deeds I committed, rather my son will pay the price. What a befitting sentence my Maker had sent my way; inflict pain on my dearest one.

Despite my inner battles, I knew that time was of essence and I did not have the luxury to grieve. I started looking for therapies to help Sheru and to educate myself. We started behavioral and speech therapy when Sheru was 2 and half. We travelled to any door that could help us doctors, faith healers and parents with Autistic Children. Sitting in hospitals and waiting rooms; I pray that no person ever has to carry their child to such places looking for answers, for there are none. Autism has no cause and no cure.

Going into the therapy center was a whole new world for me. Children of all ages, small and big with mothers so dedicated, so brave; striving to make their children’s life better. I met with such brave people that all my complaining seemed nothing in comparison. My pain looked trivial compared with theirs. Parents with two or more kids on the spectrum, women whose spouses left them for having special needs children. Where there was so much pain there was also incredible and unconditional love.

Sheru started responding to his name at age 2 and soon after started looking at me, sometimes for a few seconds. Gradually he started connecting with me; but there were no words. He had no connection with anyone or anything around him. Sheru would wander off and I lived in constant fear of losing him. Once we were at a dinner in a public place, I lost sight of him for a few moments and next he was gone. The ten minutes that I spent, again only a parent can understand who loses a child, they may have been ten minutes or a century I don’t know, it was too surreal like living in a nightmare. What I know is that maybe I came out of that trance only when I saw a cousin carrying him in his arms.

There were times when I would wake up in the middle of the night and start fighting with God. “No You cannot do this; give me expression and deny my son a normal life; You will not do this to my child, punish me if you will, make me sick, but don’t deny my son a normal life”, soon my banter would turn to groveling and begging and these nights, I felt as If He was there and He was listening. The next morning I would feel calmer and stronger, I know it sounds strange to a rational mind, but this faith in a higher power has probably been the only thing that has kept me going.

Sheru’s autism has been different from day one; he has been slowly improving and coming out of his bubble. I realized that all that the therapists told me was not correct; there is no way that anyone can define what a person’s autism is like. One therapist told me that when your child turns three, his symptoms will become so bad that you wouldn’t know what to do. I started dreading every second that led to his birthday; what will happen when he turns three. Three came and went and Sheru didn’t not fall apart as I had been told, rather with every passing day he surprised me till last September when one day he looked at me and said “Mama”.

This is just a word, one small word for any other mother maybe; but not for mothers of autistic kids. This one word means everything. I heard his voice and again I couldn’t believe it; Sheru knew who I was after all.

From a desperate parent out to “fix” his autism, I gradually made the transition to a parent who accepts their child for who they are; he was never in need of fixing. All he needed was acceptance for who he is, I didn’t need therapists to tell me when he will get better. Sheru is limitless like the rest of us and no one has the right to put a cap on his capabilities and his strengths. So he is not like a normal child, who is normal anyway and who defines normal?

I have learned that it is not for me to try and control his future, to live in dread of tomorrow. What will happen five years later, no one knows. All I know is that this boy has changed us as a family and changed me as a person . I have written this article today on his 4^th Birthday, my gift of acceptance; so that one day when Sheru reads my blog (and I am sure that he will) he will have some understanding into the journey that has been mine.

Happy Birthday Sheru, May Allah bless you always as we are surely blessed to have you.

Cross Roads

Many Years ago, I was faced with a crucial decision. Since I deemed myself too young, I decided to formulate a Council of seven people. People who I believed had my best interest at heart and knew me well enough to take a decision on my behalf. I further fool proofed the process by soliciting Divine guidance by the popular methods employed at the time.

The Council and the Divinity pointed in one direction; here it is worth mentioning that in the first “Blink” moment my instincts guided me against it. Regardless of the fluttering in my stomach I overruled my gut by sheer rationale; The Council and the Divinity cannot be wrong, I am young and my experience limited.

The outcome of that decision was a disaster. The shattering of one glass led to the subsequent shattering of all other glasses. I started a quest to know myself better, to know how I could have been so wrong in my judgment. This journey took me to many doors and one such door was that of a wise old man in Karachi. I arrived at his doorstep a tangled web of questions about life, about fate, about destiny. I kept asking, he kept listening; then asked me join him for a stroll in the courtyard of a mosque.

He said, “tell me, when you made that decision was your heart content?”, I fell silent. “See Allah has blessed you with many guides to light your way, you don’t need to seek Him in dreams or in books. All you need is to listen to your heart, if you make a decision and your heart is content; know it is the right decision to make, fear not the consequences, Dil ka itminan sub say bara Istakhara hai”. “Donot blame Allah for the bad decisions you make, He blessed you with a rational mind to think but a mind is prejudiced, listen to your instincts and you will never be led astray”.

The only person who is going to live with the consequences of your decisions is you, and where there are people who one should consult in matters of great importance, the only deciding factor in your life is your inner voice. I have made some pretty radical decisions since that day which seemed crazy and impractical at the moment but in hind sight they are the source of this inner strength that never ebbs. My mistakes are my own, my life not a borrowed ideology of someone else’s notion of right.

Society designs laws to curb this very impulse of honesty, whenever we lie to our-self it is only for the benefit of others, however a person not honest with oneself cannot expect life to embrace him. A person willing to let others take the helm of his life must live a borrowed life. To relinquish this precious freedom is a form of mental slavery so in grained in us that we keep looking around for approval.This approval will lead us down a secure path indeed but not necessarily the right one.

Run...

We are all troubled with something or the other; mostly we are troubled by the devils in our brains. Our own thoughts and beliefs, our own complexes. Our troubles are all related to this world, the reality of matter that exists around us. Better job, more money, more this and less that. Everything around us these days is a blur of motion. People running from this to that , it’s important to constantly run….if you start sitting still and quiet, if you start breathing in the air from the mountains or start looking at that crazy thunder you might start hearing things.

Hearing things you don’t normally hear, don’t want to hear. Inhaling and exhaling your own Being in the stillness of that moment, when you are not your profession, you are not a relation, you are nothing but an energy connected with all the energy around. You hear strange murmurs that are not connected with your personal desires. You hear a perfect silence…. it is acceptance, it is humility, it is subjection to the grand design ordained by Him, it is feeling one, it is feeling at peace.

It’s dangerous to be in that time and space, you start connecting to the oddest things, the wind that blows, darkness, silence…soon you start to realize that all that running is for nothing, it gets you nothing, it owes you nothing, you owe it nothing. It doesn’t matter what you think you got and what you didn’t, it doesn’t matter what will happen tomorrow or ten years hence, the big car the gold rush all mean nothing. The only thing that matters is all that is inside you, that feeling of being one and being content.

It is dangerous, this stillness, it makes you want to do crazy things, impractical things and illogical things. So run…

 

 

Reason;Mind over Matter

The human brain is magnificent; it’s a real work of art. I say art because even today we are unaware of its real potential, its real power. It is not a machine, like all works of art, it depends on the beholder to derive little or more form this incredible organ. The human brain, where responsible for a complex number of functions is the home to a magnificent talent; recalling moments or experiences we call “memories”. I will not go into the science of what a memory is; but rather what a memory does. This single most important function makes us who we are, as individuals.

Who are we anyway? but a lot of recollections and experiences take that away; and all other functions withstanding we will lose the essence of what it means to be“you”.

I was in the car the other day and I heard a song I hadn’t listened to in quite a while. Instantly, I was transported back in time…..

......I am driving the car and it’s the kind of sunny winter morning, where you can taste the fresh crisp air, the kind of day when you feel very, very alive. I remember the people in the car and I remember what we were talking about; most surprisingly I remember my feelings in that particular moment and the thoughts in my head….. I re-lived it all. Till the song came to an end it was like I was experiencing the past and the present at once, it was wonderful.

However this phenomenon also works in reverse. A particular smell, sound and taste can take you back to a very unpleasant memory stored in your head, hence we dislike certain things based on the memories that they bring back. A juice you used to have when you were sick; the smell of a certain incense that’s reminds you of a loss. Our brain recollects things all day and night; moulds us, protects us rationalizes and reasons, judges and decides based on the millions of memories, good and bad.

I saw this movie once, "The eternal sunshine of the spotless mind", It discusses an interesting aspect of this brilliant organ. It explains that we will fall for the same kind of people again and again even if our short term memory was erased and we were somehow given a clean slate. Its a great watch and one aspect of the brain I completely agree with; our abilty to make the same choices given the chance. But I also believe that if we choose to, conscious modification of our thoughts (our short term memory) can alter its more irrational patterns.

See, what our head does is, it rationalizes. It justifies why it wants something or why we should be inclined towards something or not. Understanding our own limitations; may they be caused by some emotional trauma or child hood complex; we can break the vicious cycle of making the perpetual bad choice. For example you have been made to realize that you like emotionally controlling people and you can trace a pattern where subconsciously you keep falling for the same category of people without wanting to. What do you do? After all it is your head that attracts you to that person, so how do you break that cycle?

The answer is, by talking to yourself. Aloud or silently but constantly; get your head talking to your head and somehow in all this talk create a new path for your brain to follow. I know it sounds crazy, but it works.

Ever wonder about pathological liars; they work on the same principal. You keep repeating a lie to yourself all the time or remember a situation in a particular manner. You remember what you want to remember and keep repeating the story to yourself; after a time that story will become your truth. In the Michael Jackson murder trial, Dr. Conrad Murray was charged with involuntary manslaughter, the man was found guilty. The Doctor to this day pleads not guilty, psychological analysis show that he genuinely believes he did not kill the Pop Star, he was merely doing his duty. He kept telling himself he was doing the right thing, he believes he is innocent, in his mind that is the truth. Lie detectors confirm the same; this is the power of the human mind.

It is very important to sometimes step back and view what we are constantly telling ourselves; how we are rationalizing our actions. Listen to yourself sometimes and see what your mind is telling you. You will be surprised by what you say all day, about work, about people, about life. This capability, of talking to your head and changing the thought pattern is a life changer. The only difference between an average person and an extra ordinary one is there approach to a difficulty in their life.

The Human mind is incredible, it believes what it believes.