THE WEIGHT OF YOUR NAME
- Madhukar Dama
- Jun 10
- 12 min read
1. The Two Types of Human Struggle
Every human being, no matter where they live or when they lived, is caught in a cycle of struggle. But most people never question what they are struggling for.
There are only two kinds of struggle:
Struggle for pleasure
Struggle for survival
And both are tied to your identity — what you think you are.
If you remember your name, you will always struggle for pleasure.
If you forget your name, you will struggle for survival.
This is not about literal name, like “Ramesh” or “Sita.”
It is about your self-image — your status, your title, your social role, your ambitions, your family pride, your religion, your caste, your job, your education, your sense of “who I am.”
This “name” becomes the center of your life. And everything you do revolves around either feeding it or protecting it.
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2. The Struggle of Remembering Your Name
When you live by your identity, you don’t just eat food — you want good food.
You don’t just wear clothes — you want respectable clothes.
You don’t just want shelter — you want a house you can show to others.
This is the struggle for pleasure, prestige, image, and success. It never ends. It only changes shape.
In Indian context, it shows up in many ways:
A father wants his son to become an engineer, not a potter. Why? Not survival. Status.
A woman suffers because her sister’s saree at the wedding was more expensive.
A farmer borrows beyond his means for a “standard” marriage, just to save face.
A man won’t change his beliefs, even if they hurt him, because it would “look bad.”
This kind of suffering is self-created. It is not based on need, but on comparison.
You are not hungry, you are restless.
You are not poor, you are ashamed.
You are not weak, you are afraid of looking weak.
It is a deep trap. And the more educated, urban, or successful you become — the more you struggle for name-based pleasures.
Even so-called spiritual people are stuck. They want respect for being spiritual.
They may renounce wealth, but crave recognition. That too is a name.
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3. The Struggle of Forgetting Your Name
Now imagine you lose your identity.
You are a nobody. You are not a doctor, not a Hindu, not a leader, not a scholar, not even a respectable citizen.
You have no name, no audience, no proof of who you are.
This can happen due to poverty, exile, prison, spiritual surrender, or even a deep mental break.
When this happens, you do not crave status anymore. You are thrown back to the basic needs of existence:
Where will I sleep?
What will I eat?
Is there danger?
This is the struggle for survival.
You can see it in:
A displaced villager begging in a railway station.
A widow left alone after her husband’s death, forgotten by both families.
A mentally ill person, sitting under a tree, talking to themselves.
A monk who walks barefoot, sleeps wherever possible, and eats what is given.
These people may have no image left to maintain.
Their “name” is erased.
But the struggle hasn’t disappeared — it has changed.
This struggle is raw, simple, and animal-like. It is not about what others think.
It is about whether you’ll see tomorrow.
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4. The Illusion of Choice
Most people think they can avoid struggle by becoming “rich” or “renounced.”
But there is no human life without struggle. Only the type changes.
Even the most respected guru must struggle to maintain his image.
Even the poorest beggar must struggle to get food.
You either suffer from pressure to succeed or from pressure to survive.
Even if you leave society, if your body still exists, you must feed it.
And if you stay in society, your “name” must be constantly polished and protected.
There is no escape unless you clearly see how both traps work.
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5. So What Can Be Done?
This is not about choosing between the two.
This is about understanding the root of both.
The root is attachment — to identity, to survival, to outcome, to fear.
What’s needed is not a shift in lifestyle or profession.
What’s needed is a shift in understanding.
A few timeless Indian insights that point to this:
Bhagavad Gita says: Do your duty, without attachment to results.
This frees you from the trap of name and reward.
Upanishads say: You are not this name or body.
This weakens the ego and the fear of survival.
Kabir said: People are busy decorating their houses. No one is looking inside.
This calls out the madness of struggling for status while ignoring the real inner mess.
Jiddu Krishnamurti said: It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a sick society.
This exposes how chasing “name” in a broken system is itself a disease.
These are not slogans. These are tools to investigate life deeply.
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6. Why This Is Especially Important in India
India is full of people stuck in both types of struggle:
In cities, you see the stress of maintaining an image — the right school, job, phone, wedding, furniture, social circle.
In villages, you see the pain of trying to survive — debt, crop failure, illness, lack of water, caste divisions.
Even educated youth are confused — they want freedom, but are trapped by expectations.
They want peace, but are scared to lose their “name.”
Religious rituals, social roles, political fights, and even charity — all often come from the identity trap.
India, more than anywhere, needs to wake up to this.
Because we have inherited both — deep inner wisdom, and deep outer madness.
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7. Final Clarity
If you are living just to protect your “name” — you will be forever restless.
If you give up your “name” without inner clarity — you will be forever insecure.
The only way is to see clearly how both traps function, and slowly loosen their hold.
You can still live.
You can still work.
You can still raise a family, grow food, build things.
But you don’t have to do it from identity or fear.
Do it from clarity.
Do it from freedom.
Do it with awareness that struggle itself is not your enemy — your ignorance of the struggle is.
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Part 2: How This Truth Changes Life Around You
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1. How It Changes Parenting
In most Indian homes, parenting is not about raising a child — it is about building a name.
“My son is an engineer.”
“My daughter topped her school.”
“We gave a grand birthday party.”
The child is treated as an extension of the parent's name.
So the parenting becomes a pleasure-based struggle: trophies, status, approval.
Even poor parents fall into it. They want their child to “rise above their level” — not necessarily for survival, but for social proof. The child becomes a project to clean the family’s image.
When this shifts, parenting becomes grounded:
You don’t raise the child for society.
You don’t force the child to decorate your name.
You help the child understand survival, freedom, ethics, and awareness.
If the child’s life becomes focused on pleasure-struggle, they will grow up neurotic.
If it becomes about only survival-struggle, they will grow up traumatized.
But if the child sees both, and learns to stay free from both — they become wise.
You stop forcing schooling as a trap to build identity.
You stop pressuring them to be “great.”
You start helping them see the traps early — and that is real parenting.
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2. How It Changes Healing
Most people do not fall sick because of disease. They fall sick because of chronic struggle.
A man who is constantly proving himself — gets acidity, blood pressure, heart problems.
A woman who is constantly covering up emotions to maintain family image — gets migraines, fibroids, fatigue.
A child who is not allowed to be themselves — gets asthma, stammering, sleep issues.
This is struggle for pleasure through name-maintenance, poisoning the body.
Then, when this fails, people fall into survival-struggles — debt, hospital, begging relatives for help, selling land.
Their “name” is shattered, and survival panic begins.
True healing is not about just castor oil, herbs, or yoga.
Those are support tools.
True healing is when the person sees:
What they were struggling for all these years.
How their identity kept them restless.
How they were always afraid of being a nobody.
Once they see it, a major part of disease starts reversing.
They simplify food.
They return to body rhythms.
They stop overdoing things.
They rest — not just physically, but mentally.
And healing begins — not as a treatment, but as an exit from unnecessary struggle.
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3. How It Changes Society at Large
Indian society is torn between two masks:
Those who are dying to be somebody.
And those who are dying because they are nobody.
Between these two extremes, truth is forgotten.
Let’s see some societal examples:
a) Education
It was once about learning tools for life.
Now it is about marks, ranks, degrees — name decoration.
So even literate people are unable to live intelligently.
Their name is big, but their mind is weak.
b) Religious Life
It was once about breaking the ego and realizing the truth.
Now it is about building group identity and pride.
So temples, rituals, and gurus become name factories, not peace factories.
c) Jobs and Careers
People work jobs not for survival — but to defend their image.
Even when miserable, they stay, because “what will people say?”
So we have millions of workers who are alive on paper, dead inside.
d) Politics
Leaders don’t serve to solve problems.
They fight to preserve their name — vote banks, media presence, caste base.
So every election becomes a pleasure struggle for the few, and a survival struggle for the masses.
This is why India feels old, tired, overworked — despite its youth population and history.
The real issue is not lack of money or progress.
The real issue is confusion between identity and life.
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4. So What Can a Simple Person Do?
You don’t need to fix the nation.
Just see your own struggle.
Are you parenting to preserve your image?
Are you working only to feel important?
Are you constantly afraid of being seen as “useless” or “ordinary”?
Are you wasting energy trying to build a name?
Or have you collapsed into survival-mode without clarity?
Once you see this, a third space opens up.
You can still live, love, grow, help —
but not from identity, not from fear.
That’s the space of real human freedom.
It is not glamorous.
It is not dramatic.
But it is solid.
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5. The Real Exit: Simple, Slow, Silent
The exit is not in becoming a monk.
Nor in becoming a millionaire.
Nor in becoming a preacher.
The exit is slow, invisible, inside.
You slowly see:
You don’t need to win every argument.
You don’t need to prove yourself at every moment.
You don’t need to decorate your family, body, house, or caste.
You don’t need to compare your journey to anyone else.
You also see:
You don’t need to collapse in fear when identity fails.
You don’t need to panic if you are alone.
You don’t need to cling to survival if death is part of life.
You stay awake.
You do your daily duties.
You walk lightly.
You don’t add extra struggle on top of life.
That is not laziness. That is awareness.
—
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Part 3: Death, Memory, and the Pointless War Between the Two Struggles
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1. The Name is a Delayed Death
The strange thing about identity is that it doesn’t protect you from death.
It only delays your awareness of it.
You feel:
If I become successful, I won’t die worthlessly.
If I become spiritual, I won’t die fearfully.
If I become useful, I won’t die forgotten.
But this is all delay logic.
Death does not care about your role, success, enlightenment, or image.
Whether you are a king, saint, criminal, or child — it wipes you clean.
So, when you struggle for pleasure through name, you are just decorating a temporary grave.
You are still heading to the same ground.
Only now, the journey is heavier, not freer.
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2. The No-Name is a Fast Death
And what about those who forget their name?
They become:
A forgotten tribal woman who dies in a government hospital corridor.
A mentally disturbed man found under a flyover.
A faceless migrant worker, collapsing in a field.
Society forgets them before they die.
This is not a peaceful escape.
This is abandonment.
Here too, there is struggle — not for glory, but for just one more day.
So even this path — of being nameless — is no guarantee of peace.
It can also become a living death if not supported by inner clarity.
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3. Memory Is the Middle Trap
The real disease is not name or no-name.
It is memory.
You remember:
Your importance in the eyes of others.
Your past achievements or humiliations.
Your childhood labels.
Your father's expectations.
Your village’s gossip.
Your religion’s pride.
This memory — emotional, social, historical — is what fuels both struggles:
The struggle for pleasure wants to improve your memory-record.
The struggle for survival wants to avoid being erased from memory.
In both cases, you are haunted by memory — even though life is happening now.
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4. Why Both Struggles Are Pointless in the End
Ask anyone close to death — a cancer patient, an old person, a soldier, or a farmer in his last days.
They are not interested in:
Nameplates
Promotions
What society thought
What rituals were done
They speak only of two things:
1. The regret of wasted energy
2. The peace of letting go
This tells you something —
All the war between name and no-name,
between pleasure and survival,
between image and hunger —
is a pointless distraction.
What matters is how lightly you lived,
how much truth you allowed in,
and how less you demanded from life.
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5. Then What Is The Real Life?
Real life is not found by struggling in either trap.
It’s not about winning the identity game.
It’s not about abandoning the world in despair.
It’s not about escaping pain.
It’s not about seeking titles or pity.
Real life begins when you stop trying to be remembered, and start being fully present.
You live simply.
You speak honestly.
You don’t hoard.
You don’t compare.
You don’t chase.
You cook.
You sweep.
You help.
You rest.
You grow food.
You forgive.
You watch the sky.
That’s it.
You die as a person who lived — not as a name, not as a forgotten scrap, but as a being who understood.
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6. And That’s the End of the Essay
Not because all has been said — but because nothing more needs to be said.
You saw:
The trap of identity and pleasure.
The trap of namelessness and fear.
The role of memory in fueling both.
The fakeness of this war.
The stillness that sits beneath it all.
The rest of the work is yours.
Quietly undo everything false.
Quietly return to what is real.
And stop struggling for what was never yours.
—
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"You Died Before Death Came"
they told you to make something of yourself
so you took the name your father gave you
and started painting it.
every morning
you dipped it in soap, shirt, shoes, respect
and sent it to school.
you got marks,
not knowledge.
you got a seat,
not direction.
you got a job,
not meaning.
but it didn’t matter.
because the name was growing.
they said:
buy land
marry the right caste
be strict with your wife
invest in SIPs
vote carefully
keep your family name clean.
you obeyed.
not because you believed.
but because
you were terrified of being ordinary.
you knew how to cook
but you ordered food to look modern.
you knew how to live simply
but you upgraded everything
until even your breath became monthly EMI.
you wanted to sleep on a mat
but forced yourself into a bed
because “what will they think?”
and that was your real God:
“they”.
you didn’t bow to Shiva.
you bowed to whispers, relatives, resumes.
you didn’t fear death.
you feared being invisible.
you didn’t crave life.
you craved applause.
and slowly, piece by piece
your body started breaking.
your eyes lost light
your voice lost weight
your back became stiff
your mind — noisy even in silence.
you called it stress.
your doctor called it lifestyle disease.
your wife called it mood swings.
but it was none of that.
you were just
a man who had been
carrying his name like a dead goat
on his back
for forty years.
you forgot how to walk without it.
and then
one day, you collapsed.
not with drama.
not with fanfare.
just
collapsed.
your name didn’t come to save you.
no award.
no applause.
no caste pride.
no alumni group.
just
the silence
of your own breath
leaving your body
while your mind still screamed:
“but I was someone… right?”
and that’s when the truth hit:
you died before death came.
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if you want to live:
drop the name.
drop the label.
drop the struggle for pleasure.
drop the struggle for survival.
just
do your work,
eat quietly,
love with honesty,
walk without a flag,
sleep without a mask.
your children don’t need a legacy.
they need a father with lungs.
your wife doesn’t need your promotions.
she needs you present.
your body doesn’t want imported painkillers.
it wants you to sit down
and stop pretending.
be a nobody.
fully.
only then,
you can live like a king —
without a crown,
without followers,
without noise.
—
