There Is No ‘Point B’ – Awakening of a software engineer
I wrote my first book, “Chennai to Chicago – Memoir of a Software Engineer” circa 2015. I shared the story of my journey from Chennai, to coming to the US for my Master’s, some heartbreaks, adventures, travels, and the spiritual quests that ensued. I was always seeking something throughout my life. As a kid, as a teenager, as an adolescent, as an adult, as a software engineer, traveler, writer, friend, yogi, I always sought something. I always thought, “There is a Point B and I need to get there.” I had no idea where that Point B was or how to get there. But I always felt, “Something’s missing.”
And COVID struck. With that first lockdown in March 2020 throughout the world, many succumbed. The first wave devastated the US and Europe, many watched the news in disbelief, gurneys lined up outside the hospitals, patients gasping for oxygen waiting to be treated, hospitals trying to do the unthinkable that they wouldn’t have dreamt of doing in their career – prioritizing people as to who’s worthy of saving and who isn’t.
And, on the flip side, several videos of “nature reclaiming itself” were shared on social media, like the wild dolphins appearing near the shores, wildlife roaming on the streets, beautiful silhouettes of distant mountains revealing themselves after being hidden for decades due to smog, etc. While India was beginning to let out a sigh of relief after a year of lockdowns and struggles, the second COVID delta wave devastated India in May 2021. Almost every one of the 1.4 billion people knew someone in the family who became seriously ill, or worse, died of COVID.
My dad almost died, his oxygen went down to 60, he was in the ICU for 2 weeks constantly gasping for breath, and eventually came out of the ordeal after a month. COVID sucked half his energy and only spat the other half out. He became extremely weak ever since. And to make matters worse, he fell and broke his hip a year later, which sucked whatever was left of him. As much as I would have liked to take a vacation in a mountain resort sipping hot coffee to write this book, what best time to write “There is no Point B” than tending to my bedridden dad with a hip fracture, helping the nurse clean his urine and poop, while working throughout the night on my full-time job with a terrible toothache and multiple root canals while at it.
I don’t know if COVID came with an energetic shift while it was devastating the world. One fine day, out of the blue, a very ordinary thing happened to me. I realized that “This is it. This is all there is. There is nothing more to do, nothing more to seek, nothing more needed to happen in life, I have reached the end, I am home. I am already home. This is home.” And my “something’s missing” feeling that I had been carrying for over two decades, simply dropped. My seeking dropped. There were no lights, no sounds, no angels flying from heaven, no bells and whistles, no kundalini explosions, I simply felt, very clearly, without an iota of doubt, that “There is nowhere else to go, nothing more to do, this is it, this is all there is, there is no Point B.”
All the illusions simply dropped.
It became very clear to me that the past and future have no more solidity than a mist of smoke. I did obviously know that the past and future are just memory and imagination in the brain. But it is one thing to know, and another thing for it to become a living experience. An experience of living in the now without a past-future story. Past and future simply lost their meaning. The running commentary called “life story” that constantly gives a voiceover in our heads, like, “Things are not going to go well,” “I don’t know if I can do it,” “I was emotionally hurt 10 years ago,” “I am anxious about the future,” “He shouldn’t have said this,” “She shouldn’t have done that,” or a million variations of these, simply stopped.
I realized that suffering is a grim gloomy voiceover to an ordinary movie.
For all the stories I went through in my life, I always wanted people to tell me, “Everything will be okay.” I hopped from one place to another seeking a ‘Point B’ where “everything will be okay.” From one job to another, from one country to another, I traveled to 25 countries looking for that ‘Point B.’ I stayed in Vedic ashrams, Buddhist monasteries, Benedictine monasteries, South American Shamans, attended spiritual retreats, sometimes meditated 12 hours a day, even tried being a part-time monk for a year practicing renunciation and non-attachment seeking that Point B where “everything will be okay.”
I spent three decades of my life looking for that Point B where ‘everything will be okay.’
Until, one day, I realized that everything is already okay. There is no Point B. The is-ness, the now-ness, the present moment, is all there is. And this is-ness is infinite and tremendously beautiful.
