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!