Rebirth is near

When something terrible happens in your life, your desperation and sorrow can choke you and you are one second away from taking a deadly pill, flying off a steep hill or pressing a gun towards your forehead.  When you are betrayed, abandoned or assaulted your veins overflow with purple blood from hatred and your loud heart is about to explode from rage. Your sad soul begins to shed bitter tears of grief and your dim eyes lose the bright sparkle of life. Your world becomes a dark and gloomy place, your sense of goodness is shattered into thousands of pieces, the murky cloud of unhappiness has covered the bright sun of your life.  You want to end it. You want to finish this misery, to stop this horror.  You can’t deal with this life anymore, can’t handle this psychological torture. That’s it.

Some people after experiencing a tragedy give up and say goodbye to their life. Their contaminated heart stops beating.  Others live through the pain and by embracing their sorrow allow their wretched soul to heal and open up their heart for a new life. It is an extremely difficult process – you have to accept your new self and by doing so you will be able to liberate your heart from all the grief and invite a new beam of life.  As American poet Calr Sanburge said : “Life is like an onion: You peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep”. In other words, if something bad happens in your life, you just have to get enough strength to peel that layer off and throw it out as there will always be another fresh one underneath it. No matter what happens, life goes on; after sadness there will always be happiness, after desperation there will always be another chance.

People who decide to cope with their grief and live through their sorrow are mentally strong and psychologically powerful.  They choose rebirth instead of death, bliss instead of mourning, love instead of fear. A bright example of that is the main character of Bharati Mukherjee’s novel “Jasmine”, Jasmine, who after experiencing a horrifying sexual assault the first day she arrives to America from India, has enough strength to embrace her sorrow, to swallow up her humiliation and continue her life journey.  Instead of cutting her throat and ending her life, she realizes that her life mission is not over and there are still many important things in life she needs to accomplish.

After a long exhausting voyage from India to America, Jasmine finally reached the shores of the land of freedom.  Noticing that nobody picked her up after their arrival, the captain of the boat whose nickname was Half Face as he only had one eye, one ear and one cheek, offered her a ride to the nearest motel.  They went up to the second floor of the cheap motel and after the captain opened the door of a small dark room Jasmine knew that something terrible was going to happen. “What was fated to happen would happen”, thought Jasmine to herself (111).  When they entered the room Jasmine detected the TV and told Half Face innocently that her husband used to repair televisions in India. This naive comment made the captain burst with laughter. He dragged her to the television set and slammed her forehead against the screen several times, which caused a small crack on the screen. Jasmine’s forehead didn’t bleed, but she did notice the tightening of the little scar on her forehead, which she used to call her “third eye” (5). By smashing her forehead against the TV the cruel captain tried to shatter and erase Jasmine’s old life; the tightening of the scar represents her previous self that is now experiencing pain and ceasing to exist. Her life in India is over; a new life in America has just begun.

Afterwards, Half Face opened up her suitcase and started looking through it. He found the suit that belonged to Jasmine deceased husband, which she was supposed to burn near the university where she and her husband wanted to study and live in America. He tried it on and started laughing as the suit was too small. He went through all the things she had there and asked her why she brought so much stuff to America. “Travel light, sweetheart, always travel light”, he said (114). By looking at all the things Jasmine brought in her suitcase the captain had a glimpse of her past: her past identity, her past life. He doesn’t understand why Jasmine brought so many things, why she still wanted to carry her past with her to begin a new life in America. By mocking Jasmine’s desire to hold on to her past the sea captain demonstrates that in order to start a new life you need to get rid of the heavy baggage of your past. To have a new beginning you have to empty your heart and mind of your previous self.

Further follows a nasty scene of sexual assault, after which Jasmine’s trembling heart started to cry from sorrow.  “For the first time in my life I understood what evil was about. It was about not being human” (116).  After the horrible violence, Jasmine got up and took a long hot shower to purify her body and soul as not only her body, but her soul was violated as well. She felt dishonored and tainted. She felt as if her heart was ripped out of her chest and cut into a million little pieces.  The pain in her heart was so intense that she wanted to commit suicide and “balance her defilement with her death” (117). She pressed the sharp blade of a knife towards her throat and was ready to leave “her earthly body”, when suddenly she realized that her mission wasn’t over yet (117). “It was the murkiness of mirror and a sudden sense of mission that stopped me” (117). She didn’t feel that she was ready to embrace death, she knew she had a more significant mission in life and her “personal dishonor couldn’t disrupt it” (118). It takes a lot of inner strength to come to this deep realization; it takes a lot of internal power to swallow up your sorrow, your pride and move on. Move on to a new phase of life, to a new beginning.

Instead of cutting her throat Jasmine sliced her tongue and felt the warmth of hot blood in her mouth. This was rebirth.  The birth of new identity, new soul, new life.  She stabbed the sleeping Half Face with a knife, changed into clean clothes, put her dishonored clothes, her husband’s suit and the photo album into the suitcase and brunt it on the porch.  Her past is now gone. It vanished, disappeared in the flames. She walked out of the motel and “began her journey, travelling light” (121). She didn’t give up. She had enough strength to accept her sorrow and embrace her inner pain. She had to undergo physical and psychological violence to shed her old self and open up her heart for a new life.

It is undoubtedly difficult to embrace your grief and start your life with a new page.  But once you peel off that old layer of an onion that made your eyes watery, there is always going to be another one underneath it – fresher, younger, juicier.