Home » Reflections » Is environment powerful than the will?
“The environment has gathered me in illusion. I can feel gray clouds hovering above my head. My purpose is shrouded because I have surrendered to the environment. They say and I believe. The genius loses path and becomes a mediocre. Absence of focus. Who is it? Environment or me?”

Each of us predominantly carries a persona that is both directly and indirectly a result of the environment in which we grew up and exist in at the moment. We are often the way we relate with our parents. Our personalities are molded by the ways in which we were brought up and treated, the things we saw and were told, imbibed and experienced as children.

Is white better than black?
At workplaces, bosses and their behavior become topics for gossip. For the bosses, taming the different personalities of their team members is a pain in the neck. Mothers-in-law are troublesome. All men are obsessed with sex. Women are nothing more than a sum total of body parts. Animals and nature are properties to be used, else damned. People who study engineering or medicine are intelligent than those who choose humanities or sports science.

Almost all human communities display some sort of preposterousness. People from a certain country think that theirs is the best country in the world. People from another nation live assuming they are superior to all other nations. We are rude to even food which nourishes our bodies. “My food is better than yours!” We forget to respect the fact that cuisines have been crafted over generations as per the local geography, genetic constitutions and locally available food materials.

When I am brought up with a certain community label, I am expected to comply with the norms of the community. We have our own caste names, gods, customs and lifestyles, all within a secure boundary. Sadly, this leads to preposterity in the long run and the presumption that one is the best of the rest, leading to divisions. The way we think is a consequence of this conditioning. No more pure like that of a child’s. We live in conditioned and closed paradigms. As J Krishnamurthi put it rightly, “We are second-hand people.”

Our professions too condition us. Marketing professionals are usually the loudest and tend to be persuasive and intrusive. PR professionals typically indulge in extracting information from people. IT professionals from Indian middle-class backgrounds want their children to study computer science as it is the only education that is worthy of being pursued to earn a living.

It comes as a jolt when you realize just how much the environment that you are in determines your thinking followed by actions.

The mind constantly plays radio tapes of attachments, egos, desires, assumptions, manipulations and what not all. A sum total of what our five sensory organs perceive. How would the world have looked and felt with six or more senses, or lesser? So whose world is right, wrong or the best?

One can hardly doubt the fact that environments can overpower us and dictate our actions even when we aspire to fly away to newer lands. But this is not a life worth living.

What is your core intention? What is it that calls you inwardly and yet you continue ignoring the voice. Amidst the perpetual trance of predictable routines and comatose living, despite whatever, are you able to pursue what you really want to do? Is your immediate environment encouraging or deteriorating your spirit?

Does your living each day make sense to you? If not, it is time to step out. Step on the unknown lands. Question your own belief systems and understand your own behavioural and response patterns. What do you value and why? As veils lift up, clarity and peace will follow. Issues resolve and life is spent in better ways.

May you find your true heritage on this earth.

“We are second-hand people. We have lived on what we have been told, either guided by our inclinations, our tendencies, or compelled to accept by circumstances and environment. We are the result of all kinds of influences, and there is nothing new in us, nothing that we have discovered for ourselves: nothing original, pristine, clear.”
– Jiddu Krishnamurti

And i found this today (Oct.25, 2021 – https://www.facebook.com/AnandaSanghaChennai/photos/a.537652449659393/4593143110776953/