Last weekend I had the opportunity to visit a small town in Illinois called Danville . I was there to attend the wedding reception of my wife's cousin. I felt a bit nervous and unsure about this trip because I was pretty sure that I would walk into a hall full of strangers and be forced to socialize and make small talk. Frankly, I was not in the mood to do that. Just two days before the trip we had had another round of layoff at work (third one this year) and been informed that there would be significant changes to our reporting structures. I was also contending with a rather complicated commercial settlement issue with one of our suppliers from China, which ran into several millions of dollars. I called up my boss during the drive to Danville (on a Saturday afternoon) and and talked to him for nearly an hour, just pouring my guts out, complaining about the stress that we are having to go through in this economy.
But the experience at the wedding reception did me a world of good. The bride's dad is a rich doctor who had invited his colleagues and other Indians that he had met during the course of his stay here in the United States. There were nearly 300 people in the reception, most of whom were retired or past their prime age and had seen their fair share of success and riches. They drove luxury cars and wore expensive jewelery, but mostly talked about religion, politics and the lives of their own children, who invariably lived very far away from them. They were liberal with compliments for my children. When we complained about how difficult it was to raise two children under five, they reassured us that things will get better and we have to enjoy this stage of our lives. After dinner, there was loud, fast paced Punjabi music that had the sixty-year-old grandpas and grandmas dancing with a devil-may-care attitude. I danced, too, and felt both tired and exhilarated. We all slept well in the hotel room that night.
The next day we visited the couple at the doctor's place, where we entered a world or riches and opulence. The house had tall cathedral ceiling and the curio cabinets in the living room were filled with hundreds of jade statues and expensive collectibles that they had acquired from their travels around the world. But the part that impressed me the most in that house was the three-season's room that had been converted into a puja room. The ceiling windows bathed the room in bright light and the pictures and statues of gods shone beautifully. It struck me that the doctor had built this room to withdraw from all the opulence that surrounded him and enter a haven where he could think and meditate on things that are not materialistic. In this, he was exactly like the other older folks that I had met the previous night. For them, years of hectic pace and anxiety had left an empty shell that they were trying to fill with thoughts and opinions that were well beyond the realm of their immediate life.
During my drive back, my wife and I talked at length about the people that we met there at the wedding reception. We told ourselves that such a life of withdrawal and otherworldly thoughts is in store for us as we get older. This thought was not scary, but somehow reassuring. It reassured me that all my anxiety about work and financial security is transitory and meaningless and will not mean much in another fifteen to twenty years. I had a very pleasant sense of calm overcome my stress and insecurity. Being a part of a social gathering has its own pleasure and we need to seek it actively, even if it causes nervousness and seems overwhelming at first.
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