Many years ago, I had gone on a school friends reunion to lavassa. It was monsoon season and it was drizzling. We decided to go up a mountain (a bit of an exaggeration really it was more a biggish hill) . There were nine of us. We were going up and I was towards the end of the line with another chivalrous friend to keep company . I was as usual clicking pictures and hence lagging.

At one turn almost hidden on the curve I saw a beautiful wild gorgeous pink flower. It was nothing like I had seen before. And it was the only one. I managed to go there and I was gushing and clicking. And just then we saw another family also coming up behind us. I jumped clicked ohhhed and ahhhhed. And then went on. After about half hour we reached a place where there was a small pond and people could just sit. Our school gang had already reached and then we sat and ate and laughed at the same 3 jokes that we laugh at all these years. It’s funny when we meet school friends we kind of also regress. – anyway I digress.

And then, the other family that was behind us came up. I saw something that really crushed my heart. One of the kids was holding the pink flower. He had plucked it. I was so distraught. And I blamed myself. If I had not drawn attention to it the flower would still be there.

That incident remain etched in my heart. And I have since been wary of “Significance”. I believe, when we give significance to something we lead it to an unnatural death.

Because in doing so we have ‘projected’ our own unlived fantasies and fears on to it. And unless it is very strong it will buckle under it’s weight. The “Power” that one gets when given significance is not everyones piece of cake. Sometimes like wasabi it can also go to your head.

I have met many people, for whom ‘significance’ is a big thing. Without that it’s almost as if they feel they have no worth. I feel sorry. Because the minute significance is attached to it, it is also trapped. To now, be that at all time. To give significance is to cage. It does not remain light anymore.

We give so much significance to so many things and people. We give significance to happiness, to success, to parents, to children to our work, to death, to suffering, to purpose, to rituals. That, then becomes the single pointed focus, and we stop seeing things in context. We become myopic. Life becomes this crazy race for ‘significance’. This thing about “I matter” can be a great addiction. And certainly a preoccupation.

I wonder – What if we don’t? . And frankly in the larger spectrum of things it does not matter. Think about it in maximum four generations, nobody will remember your name, let alone all the “significant” things you did, or beat yourself up for NOT doing. Ever wondered, how much do we do know of our ancestors just four generation ago?, I am sure they all thought their life was “significant” in some way or the other.

In giving something Significance, we also strip away all possibility of it being anything else, and certainty not it’s opposite.  This is also true about people. They have to be that one thing and have to be perfect. Like Gandhiji, so much significance has been given to the “Father of the Nation”, but that the person, Mohanlal, who knows what happened to him?

In everyday life this bit about significance, looks like, drawing attention to yourself. I have a dear friend, who,  in any conversation irrespective of the context, everything is always about how amazing she is. Even when we talk about another person, totally unrelated, the conversation ends with, because I am his friend, with stress on I. It is literally exhausting to the point I avoid her. I can take it sometimes not all the time. It’s like there is no one else in that conversation. Or as a behaviour it looks like, one has to have the last word. One has to say “I” made a difference in such and such ways, said something profound, how I helped you. There is a sense of unnatural competition even for doing good. It’s crazy and exhausting I feel.

To make something Significant and Important, one must inherently believe it isn’t already. Just by being. Why is just being not significant on its own. Why must it be made significant. I wonder.

“There is no limit to what can be accomplished if it doesn’t matter who gets the credit.”

― Ralph Waldo Emerson

With all this significance, I feel we become heavy. If we drop significance we can be light. More agile and adaptive perhaps. Nature does not give any significance. Flowers come bloom die. Things are just the way they are. Nothing more. Nothing less. A peacock is not weighted down by its beauty nor a coal mouse by its plainness.

So may people suffer and die everyday, physically and psychologically because of this Significance. Maybe its time we changed that narrative.

Perhaps we need to “practice” dropping significance, like Castaneda says. and see how it feels. What all is possible.  How freeing it is to not be significant. As one of my coachess said recently, “Normal is underrated”. Perhaps if we did that people can be who they are, and are free to be anything more, anybody more, and don’t have to be weighed down by what will others think. We often become and then be, people who fit the version of ourselves in other peoples minds. We live our lives, like a cut-out to fit that image. Perhaps its time to not be the ”Significant” Cut-out and be real. Whatever shape or size that may be. Sure there will be people who are “inconvenienced” by that but maybe it’s ok. No-one said freedom was free.

Where significance is dropped Freedom is possible.