My Inner Revolution
Written by Naren on October 26, 2008
“This is my first entry and I was struggling on a topic to write on, so I thought it might be appropriate to talk about myself and my experience in life that has sparked a revolution inside me.”
My love for movies started when I was a four-year-old boy. I still remember sitting next to my mother in the middle of a crowded theatre, watching attentively the images projected on the screen, wearing a large smile on my face. This deep-rooted passion for movies brought me from the dusty streets of Kathmandu, to the bone biting cold expanse of Moorhead, Minnesota, and finally to the alleys of showbiz Hollywood. This journey has most certainly enriched me with many experiences in life but the path has been full of hurdles and challenges.
After graduating in 2004, I moved to Los Angeles from Moorhead for a better future. In Los Angeles, I ended up taking various odd jobs from a gas station attendant to a 7- eleven clerk to support my stay in the U.S, while applying to film schools for my master’s degree. I was accepted to a few, but couldn’t attend them, being unable to finance the tuition fees. Yes, challenges are building blocks to success, and they have made me a stronger person. These challenges wouldn’t make any sense if build up to the extent they render you functionless. Torn in between financial burdens, family responsibilities, and trying to maintain my international student status, at one point I even thought of returning to my home country. Fear, guilt, and hopes kept me hanging at the edge, though.
There are two types of man in this world: One who keeps on hoping until he has only a last bit of breath left inside him, and the second who keeps on fighting until the end. I don’t know into which category I fell, but after having encountered failures and disappointments everywhere, all I knew was that I had become completely hopeless and extremely exhausted. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know where to go. I felt so suffocated that I wanted to toss away the blanket of dreams and expectations with which I had covered myself for so long. All I wanted was to breathe a fresh air of freedom.
In such utter state of hopelessness and haplessness, I came to realize that in a mad rush of achieving name, fame, and success, I had made my life miserable. I didn’t realize how my passion for movies became an obsession, and then apprehension, all augmenting my frustrations. I had already invested so many years of my life in a pursuit of my dream; thus, passion became obsession and obsession forged into a fear-- a fear of not getting what I wanted; a fear of losing all the investments of time, money and emotions that I had made when I made a decision to come to America. Finally, fear took on the gigantic shape of guilt --- a guilt of not making my parents proud, a guilt of leaving them back home, a guilt of not being their old age support.
This burden of guilt had weakened my spirit so much, that for the first time in my life, I no longer cared about movies as I used to. I said, “Screw success and screw fame.” Instead a question arose in me, “What do I really want in my life?” I relaxed myself, closed my eyes, peered into my heart, and sought for an answer. Suddenly, I realized that life’s biggest joy is not in achieving external mundane dreams, but it is in one’s own inner contentment. The cause of my misery was my own actions and desires. For the first time, I deemed myself responsible for all that had happened, and not on the circumstances of being an under-privileged stranger in a foreign land. I dropped the load and let go of all my stress and pressure. I felt one thousand and one times lighter, and instantly, an inexplicable stream of happiness rushed into me. Since then, my inner revolution has begun! Yes, I may not be a great filmmaker at the present moment, but I am much happier and conscious man than before, and I am certainly enjoying every bite of my life.
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