Where Attention Goes, Energy Flows!

SRIRAM RAGHAVENDRAN remembers a childhood incident that helped him understand how we perceive pain and suffering, and how we can unlock our potential.

As a child, one activity I relished was to play with my friends on the street. This would typically occupy the entire evening, and I would return home well after dusk. The exact activities did not matter. That we did it together mattered.

One such evening, when I was about twelve years of age, I fell down while playing with my friends. I immediately got up, brushed the dust off my clothes and continued running around. When I returned home two hours later, my mother stared at my legs and asked, "What happened?" I looked down and saw that my knee was badly scraped, blood had oozed out of the wound reaching my feet and had dried up as well.

I recall clutching my leg to cry, for I could feel the throbbing pain in my knees. The injury seemed to come alive the moment I noticed it. The day passed, and I forgot all about this incident til a few years ago, when the memory popped up out of nowhere.

When I reflected on this small, insignificant incident, several questions came up: