A New View of the World.
We’re here to give, and give in our very own way.
2017 was shit. I met no one new. Did the same things that I had already done in 2016. I crawled back to my comfort zone. Stayed in the same city for the entire year. Got annoyed about things that were happening in the world, irrespective of whether or not my anger changed anything. My mind’s focus was on politics and economics and Trump. I’d even stopped writing.
All of these were distractions to avoid questions on how I wanted to live.
Someone once told me that it takes a lot of hurt for the heart to learn to be both vulnerable and resilient simultaneously. Something similar happened to me. It took a career failure for me to finally force myself to try climbing a different peak. So, a reserved finance amateur in Calcutta — tried to conquer the life of a people hustling operations professional in Bombay. Thrust into a world where people were doing new and exciting things — I got a kick up my ass.
See, arrogance is always a result of ignorance. People who are actually knowledgeable know how little they really know about the world and are in peace with that. And goodness was I so arrogant! When I finally lifted the veil between me and everything else — reality began to slowly chip away at my ego. So now there was only impatience to be totally rid of it.
The start was tempestuous. I didn’t know the difference between heads and tails. Whenever I met people I was more focused on how they were different or better or worse than me — ignoring the numerous things we had in common. And so I found it difficult to socialize because I wasn’t comfortable with new people.
I had everything going for me. New people with fresh ideas. A different city and a strange job. With zero existence of a comfort zone — what was the only option left? Continuous exploration. From this journey, maybe I’d break down my earlier biases, or I’d develop new ones.
Within me, there lay a desire to explore myself. I wanted to understand who I was and what I wanted. You see, after a certain age, you realize that you can now only attempt to be the best version of who you already are.
Ever heard of people talking about a day that made them feel older by a decade? Or when they felt as if an entire day had passed by in an hour? I had something similar. I was under the influence of something which I can’t disclose on a public forum.
I saw the world as it is; a confluence of both the smooth and the rough. It existed as an intercourse between the solid and the fluid. And it was this harmony between the feminine and the masculine that made life beautiful. I saw its colors and also its plainness. I understood scattered designs that spread on across entire landscapes and meticulous designs that were limited to just one photo frame. I revisited everything in my past and started thinking about what I wanted to do in every phase of my future.
The experience was a mix of both freedom and burden. Freedom from things that should have been irrelevant to me and burden of responsibilities that I owed to myself.
I talked to people that mattered to me about things that mattered to them. I understood my friend’s career aspirations in the field of Fitness without judgment unlike before. I called my parents and tried to realize how they had tried to manage our family — because I appreciated their effort and wanted to be able to handle those responsibilities in future.
I felt for all of those who had ever felt something for me. How frequently do people make real connections in life? Very rarely. And how lucky I was to have connected with so many people in my life!
What didn’t matter was how I cared about what everyone thought of me. I realized that worrying about my past mistakes and trying to conceal them was superfluous as they only hampered my ability to keep going. I have my scars — and they are not evidence of inability, but instead symbols of resilience. And Doesn’t everyone have their own version of scars?
Realizing the size of the wonders of this life and world, I sensed my ego burst because I was nothing but an ant compared to this dinosaur of a universe. Aren’t we all leading meaningless lives in essence? Because whatever we do — won’t matter much in the larger context of the universe and even if it did, we wouldn’t be eternally existing to experience it.
We are all ants, living without any meaning or purpose, except the effort of giving something back in gratitude of the chance of riding this roller coaster.
Oh, we all try to give back in our own way. Somewhere, an architect is making blueprints late into the night to ensure that a house is strong enough for you to feel secure to live in it; a graphic designer toils to make sure that pages and screens dazzle our eyes and not bore us; a flutist exerts his lungs to make you feel as if your eardrums can taste jam; a coder is typing late into the night so that websites like these are worth visiting. Our work is our gift to this world.
A beautiful woman puts on lipstick every morning so that your heart skips a beat because of the shape and color of her smile.
And we don’t just give back through our work; but also through our love. When in love, we give ourselves completely to another person, let them explore us both in flesh and soul — while we do the same. We get rid of our worldly masks and are completely nude with each other. This requires trust; which only gets built through continuous effort. Why trust? Because giving someone the power to make your heart feel warm comes alongside giving them the power to break it. Our love is our gift to those who mean the world to us.
Eventually, there are two facets of our life — our work and our love. Work requires love of your creation. Love requires work on your trust.
All of the above help men in pushing out the thought of life’s futility and instead feel it’s bliss. We become momentarily inclined to experience the journey instead of worrying about the destination.
Whenever you give back, the person accepting your gift forgets — even if just for a moment — about the meaninglessness of life and then yearns to give a similar gift to someone else. So what are we actually giving each other? Reasons to keep going on.
So you see, everyone has their own way of giving. Me?
I have my words.
I can ensure that my words always give others a reason to listen or read. I’m going to strive to make every conversation interesting — whether funny or serious, deep or shallow, emotional or intellectual. I want to make people experience life through my words. And when I am not in a condition to do that, I can make sure that I listen attentively to what they’re trying to say.
But don’t people give back daily in many small ways? You could decide to dress appropriately make sure that whoever sees you is happy that they had the power of sight. Someone can clean and design their room and apartment in such a way that people would want to go there to chill and forget about their daily troubles. A person may really listen to people talking about their lives to let them know that everyone isn’t indifferent to their situation. Sometimes, the little things matter even more.
Can you think like this all the time? No, only when you start appreciating the world and feel thankful for this chance. Because accepting your meaningless existence could also make you hate everything. Instead of killing your ego, you can amplify it and feel worse.
I’ve found my way of loving this world — travelling and music.
Travelling is my big solution, one that I plan to do every few months. And music is my daily fix — one thing that I can summon anytime I want. (Current fix: Parov Stelar’s “Hit Me Like A Drum” — Go YouTube — please also refer to the lyrics)
But everyone needs to find their own way. You could go dancing. You could try out different foods. Read books or watch movies. Visit art museums. I don’t know but you gotta experience something you find beautiful. Small or big, mature or immature — as long as it makes you go on, it’s great.
And so, I’ve finally written something after a span of 18 months.
It’s for you.
Now, how are you going to give back?
P.S. Here’s a picture that someone created for you:
