Of Time and its Toll

Chronologically, I’m not that old. Perhaps this is the prime of my youth. I should embrace life with open arms, take risks like I never did before, weekends should strictly be spent being intoxicated, relationships should be stuff I indulged in only as a teenager and ‘action’ (pun unintended) should be the only aspiration. But strangely, none of the above things seem particularly exciting. Neither incessant states of inebriation nor the idea of being wooed by a host of men…cheap thrills seem to be rushes I grew out of even before I began to entirely appreciate them.

Perhaps the one activity that always put me in touch with my youth was driving. The car was not the vehicle to drive me to the destination, it was as though the mere technical skill of shifting gears and pumping up the speedometer drove me to the moon. And it was an overwhelming feeling; it was the feeling of being capable, of being independent, confident and powerful… the feeling of sheer possibility, of hope! But after yesterday, not even that remains. The car is a car, a mode of transport I’m licensed to move around and it brings me home. Somehow, I’m led to believe that old age is making its presence felt in my life in more ways than one, it’s not just the premature graying of hair; it’s the state of my soul.

Paranoid Android

Last week a friend told me I perhaps suffer from an anxiety disorder. Promptly I googled the symptoms and I seem to ‘suffer’ from most of them, and not just once in a while, pretty often, enough to perhaps call it a ‘disorder’. It’s not that I ever doubted myself to be perfectly ‘normal’ but then again I thought, why? What am I so goddamn anxious about? The past that seems so inexplicable or the future that I can’t predict? May be both and neither, only to be coupled with an absolute inability to live in the present. The sheer inability to focus on the present which wouldn’t seem so troublesome if I were to evaluate it for what it’s worth rather than anticipate the dooms that my myopic vision is unequipped to grasp completely. While history repeats itself to the extent that we often make mistakes that we’ve made before, can I jeopardize every relationship or every venture with the baggage of my past?

As it turns out, as I let life take its own course, life seems to be filled with surprises. And if you were to really be fair in your evaluation of life, I think good and evil always break even, irrespective of your mood or your existential crisis. And most importantly, the things that actually screw you over are only ones that were incapable of being conceived by your worried mind. So much for the anxiety attacks!

A Fresh Start

As a child, I had a room which I shared with my sister. I’m not sure if it was her idea or mine, but very often we would rearrange the furniture to make the room look different. When the pushing, adjusting, cleaning, wiping and aligning was all done, we would breathe a sigh of accomplishment and part ourselves on the back. This strange desire has remained with me, until now, one of those quirks I haven’t grown out of. Every time life feels monotonous or too routinized or stagnating, I rearrange the furniture, spread new sheets on the bed, pile up some new books and knick knacks on the side table by the bed and voila, a rejuvenated soul and a clean slate to begin life.

For a week I have been overcome by this very urge, only exacerbated by the dysfunctional tube light above the bed. Of course lethargy got the better of me, but then again, I thought to myself: would a neatly ordered bedroom placate the disorder I feel inside? I guess not. So this time, I leave the piles of newspaper just where they have been for the last one month. I don’t bother folding the clothes and shoving them in the cupboard either. I think the dust settled comfortably on the photocopies would be terribly troubled if it was required to move some place else.

At some point in life you realize that it’s time you stopped deceiving yourself. No amount of people in life can compensate for the inadequacy you feel inside. And even if they do help you constitute your sense of self today, there is no certainty that tomorrow they will be there holding you or your self together. In which case, it’s time you looked in the mirror, see that what you rather not see and confront that which you hide behind sparkling eyes and infinite smiles. Sooner or later, you’re bound to make progress. I'll start by purchasing a new tube light.

Significantly Insignificant

Of Speeding cars,

And Flashing lights,

Of Nights of passion,

And abundant desire,

Of States of inebriation,

And Fluid emotions,

Sailing through life,

Rising as we fall,

Comfortably unaware,

Blindly we crawl,

And when nothing truly remains,

The realization befalls,

Of that that was found and lost,

Tears that melted away like frost,

Too late to perhaps redeem,

Lament over mistakes that went unseen.

Jinxed

It all began on new years’ eve,

Our home we decided not to leave,

Followed by a tedious term paper deadline,

Our body clocks we were forced to realign,

Disillusioned by results, marks we had not received,

Secluded in our apartment we lay, heart broken and slightly peeved,

Followed by desperate attempts to produce a better dissertation,

Times of confusion and endless bouts of procrastination,

Unable to focus on neither work nor play,

About this messy phase, I’d rather not say,

On the whole, the year was a total mess,

Memories that do nothing but depress,

More importantly, friends and foes were lost and found,

My world seems to have completely turned around,

Yet it seems life miraculously fell into place,

I’m forced to wonder, was it God’s grace?

The year is nearing towards an end,

Good wishes I hope the Lord will send,

In search of meaning and a goal,

On the journey called life, I continue to stroll…

Youth

Before I actually begin to write this, I must put out a disclaimer. That even though I recently turned 25 and the (premature) gray hair on my head suggest otherwise, I am a staunch believer of the phrase ’18 till I die’. In fact, every birthday I do a little jig and sing it aloud in the shower. Fine, I’m exaggerating; in fact I’m lying only to prove to you that I am not that old. In fact, I’m a kid at heart. I kid you not. But then again, who isn’t? My parents are in their 60s but sometimes I find them more childish than almost every kid I went to school with.

But the point is that there is something to being youthful, something that has little to do with how young you feel inside or how old you actually are but just with being inexperienced. Often, that has a lot to do with how old you actually are too, but then again it depends on what kind of experiences life threw at you. But just the mere idea of not knowing; not even knowing that you don’t really know…You are young and every time you hit a mile stone which seems like you are now a grown up, you raise your collar and walk all proud as though you’ve figured it all out and know everything that there is to know. For instance, the move from junior to senior school or may be when you get into college after school. You think of yourself as one of the smartest beings there ever was. You think your parents ‘know shit’ about the world today because they are from the times back then. You strut around the streets thinking nobody really knows what they’re doing but you actually do.

But as you grow older, you gradually lose all the pride and the smugness only to realize that you don’t really know much. Perhaps worse, you realize that not only do you not know but that you’ll never really know enough. Worst case scenario is the realization that you might know all you want; but none of it will actually protect you from the impending challenge called life. You’re forced to accept that the world is not as pleasant as you thought and perhaps never will be.

But truly speaking, unpleasant experiences aren’t all that bad if you think about what you learn, not just about life but about yourself. You may find inside you immense strength to battle everything and everyone around you, may be even yourself. The only thing worth reminiscing about is the loss of innocence. The innocence that lets you have faith in yourself and the world, the trust and affection with which you open heartedly embrace people around you without a thought, the pretty picture where except a few minor bumps, the world is rainbow colored and in every living being around you, you see a sprightly soul! Of all the things I lost on my way here, unfortunately that probably qualifies as an irredeemable loss.