What the Buffaloes Knew

As a kid I looked after some six buffaloes ( I don’t remember may be more. And when I say ‘looked after’, I was mostly an observant). Hours after eating, their jaws kept moving, as if still chewing the food from the morning. I asked my parents and grandparents why. Digestion, they said. A basic natural necessity.

I grew up, and the word followed me. Rumination. The same mind chatter, returning again and again.

I still believe what they told me. Some things have to be revisited, rethought, reiterated, until they are fully digested. It is the only way I know to cross the traumas, the pains, the losses and the failures of a life.

So don't regret. Don't worry. Don't fear revisiting them. Let them come. Let the chatter keep coming back. You should have a different answer when it ends.

Then why is this not a life skill? Because we forget. Memento mori, the Stoics and all the other sages said. Finally, we are all going to die. Whether you do something new or chew on something old, it is all part of the same grind. You are a participant in it. You do not control it.

But we forget, and we drift. We try to think it through, to make ways, to protect ourselves as a body or as a mind.

Somewhere in the chewing there is a pause. You notice you have drifted. That pause is Thehrav.

I don't know who controls what is to be done. I am not worried about that. Do what you feel like, and don't worry about the outcomes. I am living with what I am trying to do. I am just not attaching myself to it.