We Shall Overcome

Disclaimer: This piece is not one of my general observations about life. This one is very personal, from my own experiences.The topic is serious, and I do not claim to be an expert on it, but as a person who has been through this for a pretty long time, I thought sharing the experiences might help someone who is looking for it.

I was 11 when I had got my first copy of a Harry Potter book, and unlike others, I had started my journey into the Potterverse right from the third book. At 11, I had read the book, never realizing that the dark soul-sucking creatures called Dementors are not just a fragment of the author's imagination. They are real, they can affect anybody around us, and we call them by the term of "Depression". The symptoms and effects were so similar, but I had hardly noticed when I was first hit by it. I was 16, my maternal grandpa had passed away, and I had my first encounter with one of the major truths of life: Death. 

Over the next few months, I was coping up with grief, or at least that is what I thought was going on. On the outside, I had later heard from my parents, I was going slow. I would sit at a place, forgetting whatever I was doing, and just stare blankly ahead. In school, I was acting normal with my friends, but at the back of my mind, I kept questioning everything, I didn't know if it was real, or if it had happened at all. I was lucky that my parents had taken the hints and did whatever was needful. I was lucky, I came back to life in full spirit within a year. I believed so, for the next few years.

I have always been a happy-go-lucky person, absolutely jovial and full of life. I mostly have a sprint in my walk, and a grin on my face, laughing out loud, and talking my heart out. Being an only child, with both my parents working, I had spent a considerable amount of time alone in my childhood, having a ball in the empty apartment. Loneliness doesn't affect me like most others, I enjoy it as much as I enjoy good company. I have loving parents, a doting partner, a successful career and a healthy body, in short, I have quite a perfect life, touch wood. Why am I showing off my good luck here, in a world where many others need so many of these? To prove, that I have no reason to be depressed. It doesn't fit in my life. And that is where the Dementor analogy sets in.

On a good day, when everything is working just fine, my mind starts playing up. It reminds me of a long lost tune that I may have heard in my childhood, and my heart yearns for those times. I feel the void of the people who had once been the most sturdy parts of my life, the good moments, the little things. A yearning, that my mind knows is meaningless, people don't stay forever, they die, we have to accept their loss, but my heart aches. It is a gnawing pain, that defies every logic. 

After a great party, when I put my head down on my pillow, ready to sleep, something tugs at me, sometimes clear, sometimes I don't even know what it is that my heart wants. It simply makes me tear up, wetting my pillow, and I just have to go through it until the pain subsides. As much as I try to make it go, my mind grapples at every memory that would make things worse. The pain increases, I cry harder, still trying to grasp a little shred of happy memory that could lift me up from this hell.

When everything by far is perfect, and I am minding my own business, doing good stuff and making things happen, all of a sudden, a voice in my mind would sound "I wanna die." As mentioned before, there is no reason for such a thought to cross my mind. There is absolutely no regret, no unfulfilled wish, no unearthly craving in me to make me go through any of this, yet here I am, feeling all of it, averting them one at a time.

I do not understand what this is, I only guess it to be a form of depression. I don't know where this has come from, and I only wish one day in the future, I will realize that it has been a long time since I have felt any of these pangs. But till that day, I try to make every moment productive, every memory joyful, and every little bit of me as happy as I can. In short, I don't want to feed the depression, I don't wish to give it any excuse to have more power on me. I don't know if there is anybody else who has similar feelings within. This is the first time I am putting it out here, as I never wanted a discussion about this to turn into a wayward joke, or a ground for anybody to try their self-proclaimed expertise on. I am putting this out here, with the hope, that if anybody has similar discomfort, you are not the only one struggling, I am there with you. I will lend you a ear, and I do not have the capacity to judge you, as I myself know, what is going on in your head. You can conquer it. We can conquer it.

The Heart Wants What The Heart Wants

Our senses guide us through life. We mostly can't imagine our lives without the five senses of sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste. If, any one of them is compromised, life changes for us. We try to make up for it by hightening the other senses. Yet, there are times in our lives when we feel the need or the help of a sense outside these five prime ones. Commonly known as the intuition or the sixth sense, it has helped us all in various situations in life, even before the problem may arise in many cases. Some call it the gut feeling, some say, it is the voice of God in our heart, nobody can really put a finger on it, but we all have been helped by it for sure.

Yet, we all have had instances in our lives, when, despite being poked by this sixth sense we have gone against it, and have landed up in sticky situations. At times, we didn't have any choice but to do so, and at other times, that is what we have made ourselves believe. With the pressure from the superiors, at the family, at the work, the societal pressures, more than often we find ourselves in a tight position, where we really don't have much choice. Believe it or not, most of such situations are the same as that where an elephant is chained to a plastic chair and they believe that they are tied down, unable to move at their will. Despite as many times as we have been told in the books, or the movies or by friends, and even in self-reflections, we do not listen to our heart. That, needs to change.

Since childhood, we have been taught a number of things. Those lessons have been set deep inside our minds, and they resonate at times in the form of our conscience. While most of them stand strong as principles for life, some of them have become outdated with time, and if we weigh them against the present world scenarios, some of them needs remoulding, or absolute unlearning. To carry on the cycle of society, some of these teachings have pinned us down. While we have been taught from our childhood not to judge a book by its cover, most of us do just that, to satisfy the urge of getting the social acceptance. We settle down with people that we choose, but sooner or later, when we realize that this is probably not the best of our choices, we are tied down with the idea of loyalty, no matter what, we have to stay back, or else the society won't accept us, it will label us with different harsh terms.

What we fail to realize is, how long can we continue with a crumbling structure of unhappiness. In our plight to make things look perfect from outside, we slowly fall deeper into an abyss of darkness. What we have never been taught along with the social principles is that, we cannot make anyone happy, unless we ourselves are happy. Be it our job, be it our partner, be it anything that is important to us, our heart knows what is important. We let our brains to set the priority for us, but, we must also run the list by our heart. Any glitch in that test-run and a reconsideration of the matter becomes imminent.

Pleasing people around us feels really good. The appreciation feels so nice. However, let us not turn it into a force that drives us up the wall, or makes us do things that we don't want to. We are humans, we make mistakes and we learn from them. We must take it in our strides. More than anything else, we must know, that the heart wants what the heart wants, and it will try to achieve it someday or the other. The later it will be, the more violent the outburst is going to become. So best, let's not force ourselves against our own hearts. Inner happiness can make a lot of situations, and a lot of journeys much better than they are, better than the ordinary. We must not deprive ourselves from that chance.

United We Stand

We are molded into our shapes, into what we are, who we are, by everything and everybody that surrounds us. Right from the beginning, we have seen and copied most of the things that happened around us, done by our parents, or family members. Slowly, as we begin to unfurl, going out of the inner circle, into bigger environments, where we interact with people other than our family, we get exposed to different cultures, habits, ways of life and ideas. Just as we start picking up these new traits, we are again shaped up, nipping off the unnecessary extras from us, by our teachers. Little by little, we are trained to think in a way, act in a way, judge in a way. The good and bad are pre-decided. We are taught to follow by that, to live by that. With our growth, we chance upon newer surroundings, however the primitive ideas are set within us firmly.

It is very important for our survival, that we know how to learn as we continuously grow. We must stay updated, we must go along with the time, so we must pick up new skills and ways as we move forward in life. However, what we mostly ignore, or are unaware of is the fact that, it is equally important for us to know the process of unlearning what we have learnt. Time is changing, life is changing along with it. The values, culture and ways of life are in a continuous move, and to keep up with the pace, we cannot let ourselves be tied down to what had been initially installed in us. In the process of updating ourselves, we must also recycle the old ideas to bring in the new ones. Many of us have been brought up in conservative families, with strict ideas that oppose many of the general trends that we have around us today. Legitimate words like homophobia, xenophobia and many such others have been instilled in us, day by day, in the name of right and wrong, in the name of religion, in the name of unnaturalness.

Today, standing in 2020, if we cannot unlearn them, replacing them by kindness, compassion and empathy, then evolution loses its cause. We are slowly coming to terms with ideas like 'Age is just a number'. Even today, people are fighting on movements like Black Lives Matter and Me Too. In all our advancement as an entire race, we should pause and think for a moment that where is the advancement, if we cannot accept everyone as our equal and own, even today. While we teach the kids that the world out there is big and bad, we are using no chance to make it any better on our part. The world is going from big and bad, to downright mean and worse, while we sit in our house, criticizing the external affairs.

A man, who doesn't abuse a girl verbally or physically is taken to be a hero, someone out of the world, an absolute miracle. We look in awe at girls who don't speak ill of other girls, or a young guy who goes out of his way to help an elderly person. If these basic acts of life elicit such awe from us, is it not time for us to sit back and think where we have collectively put ourselves down? Why a pandemic lock down makes the roads safe, because there are no people on them, and the domestic violence and abuse case numbers fly through the roof, because everyone of those people are in their houses? Why a girl feels safer with gay men, but not with straight ones? When we have collectively abandoned the idea of consent and brought out our primal instincts to the surface so blatantly? Today  scruples and honesty are mostly seen in books, and gallantry, at the most can be seen in commercial advertisements. If that is not shameful, what is?

The Rome wasn't built in a day, building a better world will take much longer than it took to build Rome. And the task is for all of us. We have our ideas, our prejudices, our pre-installed thought processes, but with a little bit of effort, they all can be rearranged. Human beings are intelligent, capable of doing a lot, able to love so much, yet there is so much hatred around us, so much darkness. If we try individually, our love, compassion and thoughtfulness will shine out like dots of lights. A dot here and a dot there cannot counter this vast darkness, but if we try, we can light up more dots, bring in more loving hearts, grow up better humans, with better understandings of the world. A sea of dots can easily wash over the darkness. Our world looks best when it is lit up.

Keep Me Burning

Humans are social animals, animals nevertheless. No two people are alike. Some love being the center of the attention, some run from attention of any kind. While both of these moves are absolutely their own choices to which they are entitled, it is also the bad virtue of  humans to judge. We judge the others, the moment we find something dissimilar. We judge, when our ideas don't match, we judge because in our own minds, we know the best. The others are never as important as us, and if they are, the same others would stump us out, the basic nature of us, social animals.

We, in our own little stories, are the flames that give the light to others so that they can see what is going around. In glory, we burn bright, in misery, it seems that life is up against our flames with strong winds, we flicker, but we do survive. Our survival, our stories, our ups and downs are all encompassed in that one little lamp of life, and as long as life goes, we must keep burning.

We don't live alone. Humans have built an entire society to live in and live by, and if some of us just can't go through all the rules of the society, still we are not all alone. We have a close few, who make our life what it is. For others, who are extremely sociable, there are so many, far and wide, a big number of people around. Their life seems to be a party, so bright, so much mirth, fun , laughter and light. When seen closely, we are all lighting our own little corners. With a number of lamps lit together, of course, the scene is bright, and pretty and shimmering with joy. But our close knit groups of lamps look equally beautiful from afar. Most importantly, even if somebody is absolutely lonely, their own light is enough to show path to another, to flame up an entire forest, to give the light of life, to somebody else.

So it is our duty to regularly oil our lamps to keep us burning. Our own, as well as of those who are around us, the lights must shine. We must know what fuels us. Desire is one of the most effective oils. Unless we are driven by a desire, what would we aim for? What would our goals be? Desire is important to burn our own lamps. However the same oil cannot be used to fuel those around us. They need something different.

To light up those around us, there is no better fuel than kindness and compassion. It might take a few minutes of our lives, it might be just a mere few words to us, but we really never know the wonders that could be achieved by a few kind words of compassion and encouragement. Maybe that's all that is needed to guard a flickering lamp facing a strong wind. Maybe, those few words could liven up a dying flame. Truly, there is no bigger joy than to watch someone lighten up with a bit of our own help. Whether they acknowledge it or not, we know what we are capable of.

We often talk about the world being a big bad dark place. If we know the right people, the world doesn't remain so dark anymore. It is important to know who are out there to help us keep our flames bright. It is equally important for us to be one such person, who would keep burning, and help the fellow lamps light up the surroundings. Together, we could never fail to create a bright and beautiful world around us.

You Only Live Twice

The journey of life is truly a very colorful one. It is full of adventures, new places to go, new people to meet, new things to see, an extravaganza of experiences. We may almost dare to call it a carnival, where we are lost in our own tune, trying to find our way back, getting shoved this way and that way in the crowd of people around us, but ultimately finding our spot, or maybe not. In all that we see, all that we learn, our life forms its own shape in the process. Our experiences shape it up, our stamina helps it grow, and most importantly, our determination defines that shape. And yet, in spite of all this, at times, we fall short of expectations. These expectations might be our own, might be of others, not always can we fulfill them all. Some of us cope up with that shortcoming, while there are some, who just fade away. Most of us miss out an important point here.

The important point being, you only live twice. Yes, twice. Once for everybody around us, and once for our own selves. The length of these two lives depends on us, whether they will run parallel to each other, or they will come consecutively in order depends upon us. Whether we want to live both of these lives, or just one of them, totally depends upon us.

Our family, friends, close ones and not so close ones, actively and passively bring in a lot of goals in our lives. These goals we love to meet, to see that one person smile, to make that one person happy, to ensure, that one person still has their faith on us. We take up the pressure at our own will, but the task is not always smooth. Like every normal task, hurdles come in, things get complicated, and even before the others come to know of it, we start doubting ourselves. Regret sets in, energy wanes away, things start getting darker, without the slightest of realization that all of this pressure is coming from that one cumbersome yoke on our shoulders. We can easily put it down and free ourselves, but mostly we forget to do so, or worse, don't even consider it as an option. 

A big part of this burden also comes from comparison. Either we ourselves, or our near ones, put up an ideal figure before us, and the comparison begins. Our life, our story, our journey, everything is compared to that one figure. Down this path, after some time it does not matter anymore if we begin to judge a fish by it's flight capacity, all that matters is, if they can, why can't we! Needless to say, this path is absolutely unhealthy. Our mental health, physical well beings, moral judgement, everything suffer, we change as people. Nothing else matters, except the fact that we have to reach that bench mark that has been marked by somebody else. Comparison blurs out everything else, comparison kills.

The second journey is more self -centered. It conveniently evolves around self-set goals, self-evolution and self engagement. We set our own goals, smash them, and set the next. No peer pressure, no comparison, no rigidity, just what makes us happy from within. Our life, our story remains unique, having its own beautiful colors, reaching its own unimaginable heights. This may sound very self-centered, but then a person who is happy and contended from within, can best serve the others to make them happy, within their own capacity. Not only does the fish swim as far out as it wishes, it leaves behind all of them, who would expect it to fly up in the sky, even at the cost of life. 

Our lives are a combination of both of these journeys. Many of us have traveled down the first path way too long to ultimately realize how exhausting it is. Many of us had chosen the second path at some point or the other, to realize the bliss that comes along with it. We do not fit in every available shoe, no matter how fancy it is. Our shoes, our stories, our lives best be their unique selves, bringing out their own combination  of colors. It is upon us when to switch the paths, where to stop on one, and how to steer the chosen one. It is highly unlikely, that we can't turn one of these two lives into our own proud canvas full of arts.

Truth or Dare

As a child, I was told that to lie is to sin. Now what does a child know about sins, so to bring things to a clearer picture, it was explained to me, that if I tell lies, which is a very bad thing to do, I will have to face punishment, God will punish me, and will send me to hell, which is a very uncomfortable place. I tried to live a secure life, as a God-fearing little girl, never lying, always saying the truth. But life is not easy, not even for a little child. Soon enough, circumstances arose, when I would either have to tell a lie and face the wrath of God, or tell the truth, and face a sound beating from my parents. In the face of such horns of dilemma, going to hell seemed a far away prospect, even slightly amendable if I pray hard to God, but my parents looked far more dangerous. Thus came out the first untrue words from my lips, and I slipped slightly downwards, towards the gates of hell.

The results of this sinful act turned out to be very much in my favor, I got away scot free from the situation. But then I prayed hard, with all my mind and soul, asking God to forgive this one time, and I would never do it again, little did I know, that this promise was my second lie, to God and to myself. A second situation soon arose, and with a little more hesitation, I sinned again. The results by now were looking pretty neat, and the burden on my tiny soul was growing heavier. This time when I prayed for forgiveness, I dared not promise that this would never happen again. I was saving myself from getting into another trap of lies, I was opening a new path for myself, the path of crime, sin and treachery, on which, I didn't know back then, I would be cat-walking my way through.

By the third time, the little pious part of my soul had resigned. I knew that I had previously sealed my entry to hell, and this new lie wouldn't really be anything worse. So I lied, I lied left and right, up and down, big and small, here, there and everywhere. I had started my journey down this treacherous path with a mere " I didn't do it" for a broken plate, and now I am standing on an ever-increasing pile, throwing caution to the wind, knowing, I am not the only one building their own empire of falsehood. We are all in it together.

We truly have developed this habit, where it is not a big deal to slip out an innocent lie that'll do no harm to anybody. We cautiously say bigger lies to save our skins at times. Sometimes we lie to save others as well. At times we lie so that our principles may live, do what you will with that information. And the worse of the lot, there are those lies that we feed ourselves, consciously or otherwise, to make life a bit easier to deal with. Now life will remain what it has always been, difficult, not a bed of roses, and none of that can be changed with all the truth of our lives. But when we face ourselves at the end of the day, or look back at the path we have walked over the time, there remain some lies that look unnecessary, which were better of unspoken. Some lies about us, the ones where we tell things that we should have done, or how we should have been, yet we are not. When asked why,the most common answers that come to us are that the situations have turned us this way, or life itself has conditioned us in this way, and this, is one of the biggest lies that we tell ourselves. The last and most damaging lie in this series is that, now what's done is done, and nothing can be changed, we have to live with it.

In a continuous journey like life, where constantly people are changing, situations are arising, problems are being solved, and miracles are happening here and there, we can do away with the last lie, that we have to live with how we are. Change is the only constant, and we are definitely subject to change, just that we need to wish to bring it to ourselves. If we spare a few minutes of our ever-so-busy lives, taking time to judge whether all the things that we tell about ourselves to others, and that we believe within, are true or not, a couple of facts are bound to catch our attention. Here at this point, it is like a truth or dare situation. Do we start telling the truth, where we are not so perfect, not so ideal, not so adorable, but a very truthful version of ourselves? Or do we take up a dare to simply change ourselves to turn the lie into the truth, and become a better version? Truth, or Dare?

None of the choices is easy. This game we are playing against life, and when has life ever been lenient with us? If we just sit down to think on this line, we have started the game, and now we have to choose. Well, of course, there is always the easier, more convenient choice of calling quits on the game and simply continue with our well-polished lies, who would ever know? Nobody except us. But then, we will always know, that little tug at the back of our mind, that little prick in the corner of our heart will come back now and then, time and again. This is a game for the courageous, for the ones who can take up a challenge and complete it. And it is upon us to decide, are we game for it?

In Pursuit of Happiness

The year 2020 has brought with itself one bad virus that has got us all down to our knees. We have ranted about it for more than three long months now, locked in, unhappy souls that we are. However we have unanimously failed to realize all the pretty little lessons that covid-19 had taught us in these few months. Every year thousands of people die due to various common reasons like road accidents, tuberculosis, liver cirrhosis etc etc, but have we spared a second thought about that? Not really, we have crossed the streets like we own them, we have smoked out billowing clouds from our nostrils, and we drank like we would drown the world in our glasses. In came covid_19, and slapped us right across the face with the realization of how short and uncertain the life is. How today we are all here, but tomorrow, this pub would be empty like a graveyard. How happening places like shopping malls would be devoid of all, except the mannequins. How in the comfort of our homes we would start feeling claustrophobic.

'Life is short' is only the tip of the ice berg, when it comes to lessons that Corona has brought in. In one swipe, it has made so many of us much more self dependent than we used to be. With a dearth of  available facilities, there are so many basic skills, that we now have at our fingertips. We started by managing, scraping through, while practice has made us a pro these days, or we are on our way, to each, their own. This self dependency has its roots deep in our lives. In every sphere, this is one medicine that can cure most of our problems. Most importantly, this, can bring us to the end of our pursuit of happiness.

Great masters have spoken the wise words, to be happy, we need to give up our expectations. Without expectations, there shall be no disappointment, no reason to be sad. Very well put, but then, the words of wise men, and the life of a common man does not have much in common. The common man has wishes, expectations, hopes, and they all need to be fulfilled for life to go on, to take shape. If things don't go according to our plans, life seems to be spiraling down an abyss, and we try nails and teeth to catch on to something, and rise up again, and thus, the journey of life continues through the ups and downs. We cannot be too wise and live our common lives, we must follow the routine track. Yet, there is a loop, which can make things better for us. We may give up our expectations from others, and keep them solely to ourselves.

In the beginning it sounds all high and lofty, but when we come to think of it, it is the easiest way we have got to find our happiness. Waiting for others to fulfill our wishes, disappointment and heart burn on being turned down, we have all been there at one point or the other. However, that feeling of having it under our own wing, being in charge, and nailing it down, that is different, exciting and absolutely satisfying in its own sweet way. If by chance, it cannot be done, well, at least we know that we had given our best, and there is nobody else to blame for it. It sounds difficult, no doubt, but in the pursuit of happiness, it surely is the easiest way out.

Our dreams make us who we are, our ambitions and our choices shape us in and out. Depending upon how much of it we can achieve, we are labelled as successful, or, in unfortunate times, as a loser.  The label is put on us by the world. The world only sees the end result, no proceedings, not how much work was put into the matter, not how much effort went into it, none of it, only the neat end result. That is how the world has been for a very long time, we cannot change that. But when things are completely our under our own fingers, somewhere deep inside, a flickering light still shines on, that reminds us, no matter what the world may be saying, we know, why and what got us to where we are. Do not let that light out.

Life is a long long journey in this pursuit. Happiness, like a bright big ball, floats out in front of us, just out of our reach, tempting us to come and get it. One ball after the other, floating just out there, waiting to be grabbed. Now it is upon us, if we will dive head first into the water ourselves and capture the balls of happiness, or wait for someone to do it for us, if at all, they feel like doing us the favor. We may or may not reach out to the balls of happiness, but even if we cannot clasp our fingers around it, rest assured, we will still have the fun of one refreshing swim in the tides of life.