I have a parachute on my back. I walk with it where ever I go. You cannot see it, even I cannot see it. But I can feel it. It stays with me all the time, when I am asleep and when I am awake, it never leaves me.
The parachute is open and it is filled, not with air but the baggage of my past. It carries all the details of what I did in my past, good and bad, right and wrong, joyful and sorrowful, happiness and sadness, hurtful and helpful - everything. It pulls me back to those times always. It is like I have become used to the pull. Sometimes the pull is hard and sometimes it’s just a tuck, but it sure is there, walking just behind me as my shadow. It keeps on reminding me of my past. Sometimes my shoulder pains because it is straps are attached to my body there. The weight of my bad deeds is on my shoulder weighing me down.
Many a times I have thought I will get rid of the parachute. I have tried and have been successful some times, but only for a few days, then it again comes back and starts pulling me back.
We all have a parachute on our back and it keeps reminding of our past. It is just like our karma, following us where ever we go. Sometimes we get weighed down by it but still we trod on. It is not easy to get rid of it, though it hurts sometimes but we also cannot live without it.
Living weighed down by the past happens to us all especially when our past is nothing much to write home about. Sometimes thee reactions to our actions in the past take a long time to mature and comes back after many years. When our mind controls us and our actions are impulsive then tend to do wrong. It happens mostly in the young age when it is said the blood boils. Slowly as we age our blood boils less, we mature and we can even control the temperature of the blood. But with age we cannot undo what we have done in the youth. That baggage always stays, pulling us back, repenting sometimes.
But if we can control our mind then we can control the parachute. Sometimes we have two voices coming from our mind. One may be telling to do it and the other not to do it. How is it that the same mind is giving two directions to us? In that case the consciousness comes to play, and it always tells the right thing to do. At that point of time it is up to us to choose the path, to decipher between which one is coming from the mind and which one is coming from the consciousness. A man with wisdom would choose wisely.
Keeping cool under all situations doesn’t come by birth it has to be developed. Calmness of mind is a quality, like a seeing the calm see we cannot fathom its depth, like wise seeing a calm man in front of us under difficult situation is difficult to find. That is because it is rare quality that needs to be developed.
When we develop this quality of calmness in our mind, we develop equanimity of mind. It helps us maintain the same levelness of mind under all circumstances. An only then we can deal with the parachute on our back. Now the parachute will become our force and not our resistance. We can use the baggage of past to take proper decisions in the future; we can go back and say sorry to someone whom we had hurt in our youth, we can become friends with those whom we mistakenly took as enemy.
The parachute will always stay with us whatever we do. We just have to learn how to use it for our benefit.
Nice