Juggling lessons

When majority of people hear the word 'juggling' , their thought process goes like this "wow! -> esoteric -> useless -> not for me". These are the normal people. For some , like me, the thought process goes like " wow!-> wow! -> wow! " and they are stuck with three balls in 2 hands.

I entered a trance as soon as I took hold of the balls for the first time. I could not complete a single cycle of three for the first 2 hours, but I never even looked at anything else. I feel both proud and stupid stating the above fact.

Anyways exactly after 5 minutes of this 2-hours span I was able to complete 30 throws and was already praising myself. Again I was both happy and sad. Sad because I came out of the trance. The challenge was over. I had already lost half the interest in juggling that I started with.

Now only incentive I had to keep juggling was to tell, show and perform in front of people (mostly wing-mates), to earn praise. Not that none of them were awed, but many of them praised me out of instinct of manners.

Over the years I have trained myself not to distinguish between genuine and non genuine eulogies and let them both please me. After all there is nothing more to lose for an ego maniac like me than, an opportunity to get a praise, lost.

So after going to each and every room in the wing (even knocking those doors which were locked), I tried to sell my performance in exchange of praises. I think I was a good salesman or maybe the prize was not much, but everybody bought it.

I came to my room all swell.I was sure that it is only praise that I live for. The mere act of starting to juggle was nothing but an opportunity seen to get praises. I was sure that this was the only reason. I knew it was a bad incentive to live by but I was happy because at least I thought I had myself all figured out now.

Everything was just falling into place when my friend Aditya came in my room, picked up the three balls on the table and casually started to juggle.Juggle as if he had been doing that for years. When asked, actually he had been.

We talked about juggling for a while both enthused,I more than him. Obviously the initial wow! had not faded out completely yet.

When he left with the balls (no need to laugh at the word balls , everytime and everywhere you read it), I looked at him and was surprised at myself, it was only after he had left that I started to feel a little jealous about him, for stealing my thunder. That, I thought later, only proved that I was human.

More interestingly, what I learnt though was that, for that brief moment of wow!, when I was really thinking about juggling, I had evaded jealously (obviously subconsciously... so I am not taking the credit for it).

And then it dawned upon me that it was not the expectation of praises that pulled me towards juggling, in the first place. It is this feeling which pulls me, the time when I am so focused that human tendencies don't engulf me.

That time span (generally small) is my temple.