Like a Feather Surrendered to the Will of the Wind

By Angoo Ba

He had done all that he had wanted to do in life. He had visited many parts of the world—travelling was something that he once really enjoyed. He had written several books. He had worked at several places—and these were, he used to say, all a ‘paid holiday’ for him, because he thoroughly loved his work and never thought it drudgery. He had met some lovely people. He had done acts of kindness that had given him much satisfaction. He had also indulged in pleasures of the body and mind that at that time had seemed so attractive.

He had done all this and more and now he was simply tired of doing. He just didn’t want to do anything anymore! This predicament had been building up deep inside him without his conscious awareness, and it came to the fore when, one day, while surfing on the Internet, he came across a saying: “We are human beings, not human doings.” That little sentence struck him as a really profound realization! He hadn’t before been conscious of the reality that it enunciated.

The sentence drew his mind to reflect on the course of his life till then. All this while, he had been very busy, doing many different things—studying, earning, working, travelling, enjoying, indulging, writing, reading, interacting, and so on. But what about the being aspect? While he could tot up a long and very impressive list of his doings, how really was the quality of his being? The more he thought of it, the clearer it seemed to him that this was one dimension—the most crucial one, in fact—of himself that he had given scant attention to.

It was not only the realization that he had not devoted adequate focus on the being aspect of himself that had led his tiredness with obsessive doing. It was also that he was advancing in age—he was now in his mid-50s—and his interests and priorities were changing. He no longer had the same sort of energy to do several of the things that he once used to. Moreover, he was faced with certain contexts and circumstances that he felt almost intolerable and that he didn’t know how he should handle. And there was also a certain exhaustion with the state of the world—the enormous misery injustice and evil that he saw around him—that had led to a deep disillusionment. The optimistic enthusiasm that had once driven him to try to change the world was now something of a faintly remembered past.

One day, as he was chatting with God about the happenings in the world (this was now one of his favourite pastimes), he said, “God, I am really not interested in doing even a single thing on my own. I am so tired of it all, so fed up! It’s You who sent me into this world, and so, if You still have use for me here, some tasks left for me to do, then You do these things through me. I don’t want to do anything—not even lifting a finger—on my own.”

He conversed with God in this vein for a while, repeating himself over and over again. “If the things You may have wanted me to do on Earth are over and done with, Lord, please take me away right now. I have no desire at all to do even a single thing—not even taking a sip of water—unless it’s something that You want me to do,” he said. “And, Lord, if You still want me to remain in this world in order to do certain tasks, then, I don’t want to do them myself. Lord, You do them through me. You be the Doer of them all.”

He fell silent as he imagined God acting through him, doing various things, while he functioned as simply a passive instrument for God to act through, exercising no will of his own.

How light and free he felt, how joyful! It was like being a little feather floating about high up in the deep blue sky, twirling this way and that, completely surrendered to the will of the wind, which took him wherever it wanted to.

(Angoo Ba likes to identify as a soul, one that presently happens to inhabit a certain physical body)