This post is dedicated to all the cynics of the world, who I’m increasingly realizing are a pretty lame lot. Excuse the judgemental nature of my thought post but I just had some realizations and I’d like to voice them. It seems to me that cynicism is just a way of being lazy. You keep telling yourself that nothing good comes of anything anyway so put in all that effort? You tell yourself that all things (good and bad) come to an end just so don’t allow yourself to feel too much so when it actually ends, you are not surprised at all. It was expected, so duh?
But what seems to pass in the name of a ‘realistic’ approach to life seems to be just a way of being comfortable in your lethargic skin. That, or perhaps the complete inability to give life the opportunity to let you believe otherwise. If you’re comfortable in believing that life has little to offer in way of happiness, why live at all?
Strangely, I see a lot of old people who look really happy. I suppose they’ve been through the worst and they know it can’t get more fucked up than it already has. And if it does, they have the strength to deal with it. They are not anxious anymore. A good instance perhaps is my father. Even though I shall hold him forever responsible for handing down to me his paranoia gene, he seems to me like a happy man. At an early age he had to take on the responsibility of the household, marry off his younger sister and start a family of his own, a story common for people of his generation. Life doesn’t seem all that stable from his point of view because he often lost jobs, lost children leaving him with little stability and no real reason to be happy. But every time I speak to him about how I’m unhappy, his only advice is, ‘don’t take so much tension, we take too life seriously but life is really to have a good time’. I cannot help but wonder, where does he find the optimism, the courage to let himself be happy when life never offered any evidence to believe otherwise? It seems like as life gets more comfortable, people cease to explore their own limits, the limits of their hearts and minds. You’re so comfortable in your zone that you are too scared to even try, to reach beyond your self and see what life has to offer by means of experiences. To give yourself completely to something is take a risk, a risk that no one is willing to take nowadays. What a bunch of wimps!
Grande! Congratulations for this piece... but one point I wud like to draw here is that cynicism also acts as a curtain behind which we hide ourselves, some of the vices and most of the times our own self...cynics also have this ability of being a selfish lot since they never wish to reach out to what lies beyond, be it the other or any thing else.
ReplyDeleteLet me also propose another outlook, cynicism is also a product of a kind of existential situation we find in, a product also of our class in which in our silos we manage to find comfortable ways of dealing with life... but lets imagine a person who always has to struggle to make ends meet, wud that person be cynical too? Less chances, for her/him it wud not be the cynicism which will dawn but the utter absurdity of the world and of their actions....
I agree with you.
ReplyDeleteAnd thank you, your comment was encouraging.
Do you need to reach higher to meet your aspirations or do you need to lower your standards? Maybe if you chose to walk the right path you would be much less resisted. Your true wingman being the one who believes in you despite your shortcomings, something which you yourself aren't able to do. Why is it that you need darkness to realise your thirst for light and your potential to be it's carrier?
ReplyDeleteLife isn't forever, why waste it after what you don't get, neglecting what you can?