Underthought Redux

It has been another hell of a year. Since it is no fun to go into the “did not think it could get harder” trope, I will not do that. The idea that the hard bits are an interlude is an idea that is wrong. If you live a responsible adult’s life, there will always be tough parts to it as the norm. The trick is in finding the most optimal way to deal with it and still, somehow, find the time and means to do the truly spectacular things. And this is something that everyone goes through, just that some make it look really really easy.

The tens of thousands of words written about living in the moment (and for the less disciplined, the day) and not looking too far ahead is made as quite an emphatic point when it is forced down your throat. Life changes in a rather dramatic fashion when the point is made, again and again, that you control very little of it and even the little control that you seemed to have is mostly a trick of your own mind.

I have gone from “living the moment” on a whimsical trip to the mountains that I undertook while being answerable to nobody and nothing to “living the moment” for the next 10-minutes. Because, that is all the time I will get to spare today while a pile of things stack up and a good chunk of them do not work out. This makes for wonderful writing when you have the luxury to sit back and elaborate on it when things are OK, but it makes for some really hard living when you are battling a stream of things that continually go wrong.

On the other hand, you can trace a direct line for all that to my insistence on not settling for less than what I think is ideal. At every stage, where I have chosen otherwise, it has been a disaster and once you choose this path, you have to grind on through a lot of rock before you hit that speck of precious you have been looking for. Naturally, the question arises — is it worth all that effort? If I am honest, I must say that on bad days, it feels terrible. You feel like such an idiot for ploughing what is often a lone furrow, while others seem to have it easy. On all the other days, it feels like the only right choice that is there.

A superstition that I seem to have acquired along the way is that if I publicly acknowledge something good, something terrible happens to it immediately. Logically, I know, that is not the case. Both good and bad things happen to everyone all the time, but we tend to remember the bad things more and what can be considered probable cause. The things will happen anyway, whether you wrote about it or you wore the unlucky yellow shirt is just your way of finding a way of apportioning blame or a simplistic explanation.

On an unrelated note, after getting a bit too battered with events in the past few years, this year, I started therapy. It was a trying experience initially. But, over time, it helped me manage a lot of my anxiety and my incessant guilt tripping. It did open up a lot of other fronts, because, after all, a successful process will end up making you feel more and also make you feel a lot more vulnerable. Overall, I am glad I signed up and it has been easily one of the best accomplishments of this year.

Did I say earlier that life has been terribly hellbent on making me live the moment? That is what is there to be said about the coming year. There are so many things that I want to do, but all that is happening for the foreseeable future is holding ground and putting together little pieces, one at a time, without getting too invested into what the puzzle will finally reveal, if it reveals at all, that is. We still do not know what will happen in the months to come. We have never known what will happen in the months to come.

Living that knowledge is the biggest thing for the 2017.

You have a great 2018.

In a couple of years, I will turn 40. Which is a strange age to be at as people don’t tell guys much about turning 40. There is a wealth of literature out there for women as it also happens to be the age around which a lot of physiological changes start or are about to start that are irreversible. In general, it is a far more difficult time for women (which is true in any case, the age notwithstanding) than it is for men. 

The twenties for me was mostly a blur, a decade of constant chaos and persistently being on the edge and little leeway in terms of opinions I held and even less leeway in terms of accommodating opinions others held. I really don’t remember much of what it was like being 25 or 28. Lots happened, which does not help and I was drawn to chaos, like a moth to a flame. Come to think of it, it is easier to remember the time because of the year than the age.

The thirties have been a different ballgame. From the slowdown the body starts exhibiting in the early part of it, to the active management you’ll need in the second half, your body makes you much more aware of how much of work goes into keeping the bag of cells, liquid and energy on the road. There are people who are at their peak in this age group, but it does not happen on its own and they really do earn their keep with it.

One interesting thing I do notice is also how I perceive death and mortality. Earlier, my thought on dying used to be one of relief. I do not know what would happen after that, but least I know that I won’t have to deal with a thousand things that I really dislike about daily living after that. Now there is a bit of thought about how my loved ones will be taken care of, how to provide for them etc. Then it comes back around to recognizing there is not a lot I can do about all such things and try to live as a better person.

The other aspect that I seem to have come around to is not being able to live a regular 9-5 working life. I had experimented with it for over a year and it is soul-crushing. The commute, the politics, the culture built around hoarding knowledge and talking people down — are things I can manage well at all anymore. Being able to make time for myself is a critical centering mechanism for me and going months without having time for it is really difficult.

That said, it is not easy to make a good living without being part of that circle as work and working environments that value and respect another person’s time and presence and their skills exist in places that are not around a lot and it takes a lot of looking around before you can even find some of them. 

The last big change is more related to the times we live in. The world itself seems to be in a mad race to try and work itself into a fit of rage and anger. The overwhelming liberal bent that was there most of my lifetime seems to have replaced by one that is cowering in fear of a thousand things — some of it valid, some of it imagined. We are replacing evidence-based beliefs to affront-based ones that seem more inward-looking, closed and a far less friendly a place.

There is a certain helplessness that prevails as values that seemed to at least aim for something lofty, brave and noble all seem to have gone like dust in the wind. The world is being transformed right in front of our eyes, with tools that we never doubted could be put to such use. I fear my old age will see this cycle peak and destroy and transform pretty much all that I value. I do not particularly cherish the thought.

A-year-ago, on April 10th 2016, we lost our son. He did not even have a chance to see any of the world that we were so eager to share with him. It still feels very odd writing this down as he was, till his last moment, as complete and as real as a human being could ever be and yet there was very little that we ever really got to see of him. The 12-months that followed has been extremely trying, beset by various health issues, an ongoing battle with cancer in the family and challenges related to work and other things.

The loss of your child cannot be expressed in words; or by any other means. I do not know how do people ever come to live with it. We have struggled our way through it and often times it has been extremely hopeless. It is similar to trying to heal a hurt somewhere inside of you that you cannot reach. All words of comfort and all sorts of logic eventually fails at the simple point that we lost him and there is absolutely nothing in this world that will bring him back.

I have been through so many battles in life and pulled myself out of them all, one way or the other. The scars from those battles always remain, but the dismemberment caused by it has been devastating. It has taken considerable effort for me to occasionally go beyond the fact that I failed him and that every thought — good or bad — must be ended with that thought as the only conclusion.

All these multiple brushes with mortality has left a crushing impact as I now know how real the loss can be. With all else that has gone on, including the cancer, my own life’s self-indulgence has been whittled down many a notch. There are days on end where life comes down to living just the current week, day or just the few hours of normalcy that it affords at a time. There is often no tomorrow as you do not know what it will bring and a lot of days it only serves to bring more frustration or bad news.

With age also doing its thing, it makes my own place in the world something I wonder about. At best, I am looking at another 20-years at the most of being able to make a significant contribution — that is if I am lucky enough to live and be functional for that long. The work I do from here-on has to amount to something more than just helping me earn a good living. It has to be meaningful and help people live better. It has to be something that I really believe in.

The last 12-months has left little of any belief standing. My own hubris regarding a multitude of things has been decimated because of everything that has happened. It is the greatest challenge to overcome as this is a fight that is for life itself. To live in fear is to experience a slow drowning of sorts. The first step is to be able to overcome at it as it is not life to live in fear that way.

I did not write the end-of-the-year note for 2016; which is what I normally do when a year comes to an end. 2016 was the straw that nearly broke the camel’s back. I have rarely been this out of touch with what is going on within; nor have I felt this lack of gratefulness for all the good that is there in life.

2016 was expected to be a year of big welcome changes, before it turned into a nightmare of a loss that hit really hard. Failing health of ones close soon followed. Meanwhile, volatility or chaos in nearly everything else continues to be a difficult shadow to dodge.

The lack of gratefulness hits particularly hard. On one hand, I am acutely aware of the privilege I have, while, on the other, the recent difficulties prompts various convoluted coping strategies to kick in and drains out all the appreciation for the privilege I have.

Somewhere along the way, I swapped the freedom, of knowing that it is only the present I have to count on, with the fear of a future peppered with more losses. How can the exact same thing turn around and evoke a totally different reaction compared to what was there earlier?

It is not a lack of awareness, strangely. In fact, it is more acute than ever. I can pinpoint the evolution of my coping strategies and how differently I react compared to my younger years. There is more resilience and responsible behaviour, but it provides scant relief from the unexpected episodes of gutting that happens ever so often.

There are so many other puzzling aspects too. For someone who used to be really comfortable hiding in a crowd, I am now really not able to handle crowded places, people and a lot of noise. Perhaps, it is that peace, quiet and silence are hard things to chase down these days for me.

The is also little urge left to charge at anything anymore. Both mind and matter feel weary. Familiarity pushes things on, but the plunge through the depths of an endless mourning continues. I am not sure if it is the darkness that is refusing to let go or if I am refusing to let go of the darkness.

Travel continues to save the day. We left behind a beautiful home to live out of a suitcase for a month. We met nobody that we knew in that period of time and felt the happiest we have been in recent times.

There is something deeply comforting about seeking asylum in the familiarity of strangers. 

It is so meaningless; even when we have so many ways to measure it. We have seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, fortnights, months, years, decades, millennia. So little of it — months, years — have felt like amazing lifetimes. So much of it — months, years — have felt like nightmares that never ended.

The hours spent not being able to afford mourning a shattering loss as the threat of an even bigger one loomed large on the horizon. The seconds when the eyes open to the flicker of recognition. The enormity of that moment and of an unconditional love. Time is an eternity.

The medals turn into rusted metal. The titles turn into letters and sounds that bear no importance. Every moment is to be cherished like an eternity. Make every measure of time into a lifetime. Leave nothing to chance. Leave nothing unsaid. If another moment comes along, do it again. And again. And again.

And love like you have never loved before.

With everything that you have.

Without fear.

Without regret.

Without the fear — of not having enough time.