Recently in school our class got too energetic and before we knew it, our teacher got irritated. Our teacher asked us to take the weekend and think of what being mindful means to each one of us. At first it felt like a punishment, but then became quite an interesting topic for me to introspect into. As I was discussing about this topic with my Dad at the park last weekend we came about a comparison between life and flying a kite.

Though we had a lot of fun flying the kite in the park and it went high in the sky, at the end it got wrapped up in a tree and no matter how hard we tried to get it out, we could not. Later, we cut the string and watched the kite be controlled by the forces of nature and we could do nothing but watch it. At that moment my Dad said that this is the journey of life and if we are not mindful of our life it can be like that of the kite where we have no control of it. Here is how I understood what he explained to me.

When we want to fly a kite, initially we give it our 100% attention and effort to get the kite up in the sky. Then as the wind comes, we let go of a lot of string to get the kite higher and stable in the sky. Even though the kite is stable and flying well every few seconds we need to give small “thumkas” (Gujarati word for a small jerk of the string) to help navigate it from left to right, up and down. It does not require a lot of effort but for a second if we lose focus on the kite it either comes down fast or gets tangled up somewhere. While we had an amazing kite flying experience and for a moment thought now nothing can bring the kite down. After thirty minutes we took our attention of the kite for a few seconds and before we knew it was stuck in a tree. No matter how much effort we made, we could not get it out.

This is just like our life; in the early day we make 200% effort to learn and we start progressing just like the kite gets stable in the air. This is not bad and exactly what should happen when we make effort, but now comes the part of making continuous progress and preventing ourselves from getting tangled up with the distractions around us. To do so it does not take a lot of effort but only requires us to be mindful in the smallest of actions in our day to day life, just like the small “thumkas” we use to control the kite.

For sure I do not want my life to get tangled like the kite in the trees and lose control of my journey of life. At first when I started thinking of mindfulness, I thought it was more associated to only the big things such as respect or our responsibilities, but this kite analogy has now changed my perspective completely when I now think of mindfulness. Next time I will share what I have learnt and achieved in this area of my self-development, but meanwhile love to hear receive your guidance on mindfulness.

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