Just like many, I also have had the opportunity to walk a diverse set of experiences in life. To use the popular vocabulary, I was into “mainstream” when I did my engineering, MBA and worked with some of the biggest and best MNCs in my domain. I saw the glamour and comfort and the highs of being in mainstream. Later, I was tagged as “walk out” , drop out, escaper of rat race when I quit my job to pursue a passion, I didn’t have !

Thus, slowly I learnt that I am now in something called “alternative” side of the world. I was considered different and people had expectations of me having a different behavior, lifestyle and world view. Slowly, as I moved deeper into the tunnel, to be labelled “radical” / ” rebel” when I challenged the regular norms of alternative movement itself. This was when we started natural farming at Madman’s farm with very high morals and values. (some of which we dropped on the way, some we continue to hold on to).

This morning, as I write this blog, I may be perhaps labelled a “walk out returnee” as I sit in the capital city inside a concrete house and planning my next move with Artificial Intelligence.

Interesting journey indeed and I am so deeply grateful to every single friend who was part of it. I feel so loved by life and people who’ve met me in this journey.

After setting the context let me come back to the title of this blog and the realization I wish to share. I feel during this journey nothing has hurt me more than this fragmentation of life and world into different compartments – mainstream, alternative, spiritual, materialistic, radical, mundane etc.

While the compartmentalization started very subtly and appeared innocent, it soon became a religion. I was now taking pride is being an alternative guy and looking down upon the people stuck in rat race or so called ‘ mainstream ‘. I was now discriminating in my actions, in my choices and my compassion ! My language was now centered around “they” ! They are killing the planet, they don’t want education to change, they don’t care about masses, they are conspiring against humanity – so on and so forth.

Frankly, today as I sit calmly and write this – I can see that life is a continuum. World is one. All the divisions are illusory and unreal. The differences , the fragmentations are mental constructs and may have a utility in some space, time and action but from life’s perspective, from nature’s eye – it’s all one.

It brings peace unto our hearts if we do not cater to artificial mental categories – which are on the rise in every domain of life in modern world. (Everyday, we are inventing new categories to divide ourselves – the materialist, the capitalist, the Hinduist, the vegan, the bisexual, the introvert, the intelligent, the dumb – so on and so forth. ) It is our mind that is programmed to learn about world through categorization and it does have a limited role and utility. Any kind of fragmentation will eventually become ‘religion’ and thus fundamentalism will be inevitable. But living occurs not in mind but in experience and experience is holistic and so is life !

Thus, moving ahead – I am trying to dissolve as many partitions I can, inside of me and meet every person as “human” , an extended part of me, who is an integral part of the whole.