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I have lost a muddy green insulated water- bottle with a caption of ” BE LIMITLESS”, capacity 750 ml.
Honest finders return it to me.
Greedy finders may keep it.
Enlightened finders are invited to teach me how to be detached from it.
You see it beckoned me from the shelf while I was sipping a hot cappuccino at Cafe coffee day nine months ago. I had gifted it to myself on Christmas in my self -love shopping spree. Its sexy black twin sister looked classier next to it and I loved them both. It costed me 600 bucks each so I brought both and gifted one to my daughter who loves black. The green companion has sat with me during my terminal phases of evolution clocking in long hours of training at EFT sessions. Through every emotional cycle I was sipping from it hydrating myself soaking in my latest realizations acquiring more awareness. Every overwhelming response required me to reach out to that bottle and dousing myself with the fluid inside. I had to fill it many times in a day. The water in it tasted sweet and sometimes I added salt purposely with a dash of lime and mint. When we are letting go of the “bitterness” we need time to acquire taste of “betterness” through water.
The water tasted different every time in every session as I sipped from it depending on my moods. It travelled with me wherever I went in past nine months and sat patiently in the cup holders in my car, my working table, my bag pocket, my bed side table, my workshops. In its presence one thing I knew I would never be thirsty. I can manage hunger.
And it has gone missing for ten days. I am struck with sorrow and frustration at the loss.
Every time my hand tries to reach out at familiar places, I encounter empty space and feel a void. I am absolutely finding it difficult to come to terms with it even though I am so familiar with loss and emptiness. My life has been full of them. I went searching everywhere and have asked everyone. I have prayed hard to St. Anthony who is a great helper and so far, all my efforts have been in vain. I can not imagine how the wise me have allowed myself to build a bond of attachment yet again after promising myself that off all the principles in my life I truly do not need attachment. Yet the bond I have built with this inanimate lifeless object is truly from the heart. The bottle was a silent container and I feel like I have lost a trustworthy loyal friend. Ever since that loss I have lost interest in the other bottles. I find faults with them and though I can drink from any one I keep noticing how some are made of glass, too delicate to give me company and the handy plastic ones serve me no more and I know about their toxicity. I am feeling thirsty inside for close to ten days and my liquid intake vigil is getting compromised.
I am struggling to convince myself that it’s okay and all is as per divine providence but I have not reached full acceptance yet. I am trying. I am trying to apply the wise principle I have heard so many times before how every person comes to accompany you in a part of your journey and then leaves. The bottle to me started feeling like a person. I really wish my journey with this tangible object which is so easily replaceable could last longer and I could make sense of my intangible feelings around it which one can easily laugh at. I wish at times stupidly if I could give it a ring like a lost phone or if it had a GPS installed in it to send me signals where I could at least try to locate it. Despite being a forgetful busy person I do not easily loose things/people in my life and I do not abandon easily nor I throw them once old. Quiet possessive of my worldly possessions.
They provide me connections that I crave for and I am so good at them and yet when they go, I miss them. I think the familiarity and going through the effort of establishing new ones is teaching me to be by myself because making connection takes time and then sustaining it needs effort and dedication. The feeling of joy that arrives on sudden discovery of the old and forgotten which served a precious part in your life always stirs a memory or two and is something indescribable.
I find it difficult to practice the age-old advice If you love something set it free if it was meant for you, it will return otherwise it wasn’t meant to be “. It teaches acceptance and surrender only when you have truly dealt with loss not when you are aching and mourning it. A coping strategy but does not compensate. The mind needs some wisdom to believe but the heart simply laments till it can cry no more. It has to be empty first.
At the moment I still have not replaced it with just any other better-looking version because it won’t feel the same till, I am ready to move on. I need to be extremely sure and lose the hope that it will never return or be found. I am cursing the thief like anybody else and yet at times before sleep I thank my bottle in dreams for serving me well and grateful for my happy times with it. The way it felt on my lips. I feel wee bit jealous when I see the twin black version in my daughter’s gym bag.
But one thing what I never asked the bottle was what feeling it had for me and whether the bottle wanted to stay with me or went purposely missing for it could not bear me. May be the bottle was quiet done with me and just disappeared because it had a free will. I don’t know but if anyone finds a half empty bottle that is wanting to talk, please report or just listen. That’s one thing I did not do with my muddy green bottle. And finders are keepers they say !
