Unifying heart, mind and actions

At times after office, I take my daughter – Adviti – for a walk. It was such usual day when after office I took her to the nearby market area where there were seats to sit and gaze the moving vehicles leisurely. She enjoys watching buses, whenever I see her look at bus or point at moving buses I start singing a nursery rhyme – “Wheels on the bus go round and round…”. Recently, this outing taught me – once again – how can one unify heart, mind, and action together.

She is generally very observant – as with any infant – she also gets completely engrossed in the observation. This one day, I rediscovered and realized a very cliché known fact. She was sitting on a bench, watching the buses and enjoying the sight. After a while, an old man came and sat. A decent looking, in his mid-60s or early 70s, an old man who was new to both of us was sitting next to us. Adviti started feeling uncomfortable and started crying. I told her, see Advi he is like Aba (dadaji). She is too young to understand it. She kept feeling uncomfortable for some time. I tried diverting her attention and again showing her moving buses and singing the rhyme. The old gentleman too tried talking to her and pacifying her but to no avail.

After a while when it was a bit irritating to the nearby people, I took Adviti to another bench. When we sat at new nearby she repeatedly looked at the gentleman intermittently. However, this time around I could divert her attention to the original purpose of our visit – leisure visit to the market, looking around vehicles and causal amusement.

When she was happily looking at vehicles and had forgotten the incident, I revisited the event in my mind. Until she was focused she was completely engrossed in the activity. The moment she got a distraction she lost all her fun and joying. This happens with us also a lot of times. We get distracted with some or the other thing. It impacts our productivity in the office our personal life when we start looking at others rather than concentrating on what we do and enjoy doing. Small incidents teach us a lot.

Earlier I had written on focus. I had put a point in that blog – “Distractions are felt if you are not centered”. The corollary is equally correct – If one is distracted it is difficult to be centered. I always feel that the solution for this is meditation and spirituality. Meditation helps improve awareness which eventually makes it easy to bring together the heart, mind and action together.