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Neither your ‘best’ defines you…nor your ‘worst’!            

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…All they help identify is your ‘range’, but not your nature. Thus, a mistake you committed, a relationship you messed up, an exam you flunked, a decision that backfired, or an opportunity you missed cannot define you. But still a lot of people tend to build their perception of themselves around that one-odd event or phase. Well! While it is okay for someone else to use them to form your image, it is a grave error to let that define your identity in your own eyes.

Yes! Peaks – whether negative or positive – are not representative. In fact they are often misleading. As a result, I often come across people who have either not forgiven themselves for something in the past or are still under a hangover of a bygone glory. They continue to drag a tomb or an emblem in their subconscious that weighs them down heavily as they walk ‘in’ present…‘towards’ future. Eventually, it affects everything about their life – the pace, the direction and the motivation.

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The truth is that we could never grow out of childhood fascination for angels and demons. Thus, we either create them in stories…or yearn to spot them in others or ourselves.

Well! How about just staying humans – flawed, random and…full of contradictions. 🙂 

I have always believed that “In life, sadness is always bearable as a standalone…but gets heightened in contrast”.

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I discretely remember everything about that day. It was a festive night and I got the news that one of my loved ones got pretty unwell. And from that moment on, every single detail of that experience is etched in my mind like a name on the rock.

As I drove through the messy traffic and cluttered roads, I could not help but notice how high everyone was on nonchalance. Maddened by the spirit (s) of festivity, there were laughing faces all over. Faces that saw me as an interruption to their right to cover everything with sparks, sound and smoke. And I remember all the angry looks they gave, wanting to shoo me away.

Well! Somehow, I managed to reach the place and entered the room which was almost sealed so that the sufferer can be spared to some extent, if at all.

But, not to be…

That whole night, I saw him going through excruciating restlessness…trying to sleep but twitching on a cracker-noise every now and then. All the while, he kept turning over in the bed, bereft of strength to even open his eyes. And the whole night, I was numb. Not angry or sad – simply numb. The agony I felt in those hours was so deep-seated that it is still fresh in my mind, and gives me shudders even now.

That day, I learnt that the most damaging experiences of life are not that of sadness. They are that of helplessness. You don’t feel bad, you feel violated…humiliated.

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And that night, I also learnt that…the most painful loneliness in life is when you are amidst a sea of people and nothing around you suggests that you are lonely…but… you are.

In life, everything cannot be right or wrong! Some things can be just… different.

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My first real exposure to homosexuals was in a different cultural setup. We had gone to meet an elderly gentleman, and he was waiting for who he was referring to as his ‘partner’. Initially, we read the obvious in the term, until his partner joined us. And well! What I felt in the succeeding interaction was really an education in human relationships…

Well! I am a heterosexual (that too a pretty ‘driven’ one 🙂 ), so I really don’t know how homosexuals feel. And I prefer to not to have an opinion on something that I don’t understand. Yet, in those fleeting moments, as they looked at each other, I saw something that I have only seen between two persons who are deeply connected to each other.

That ‘look’ shared by them had the elements of ‘attachment, respect and trust’ that are not seen in 90% of the normal couples I come across. Now, I don’t know what to call the ‘feeling’ they shared, and I also don’t have a judgment on whether that feeling is legitimate, ethical or even ‘normal’. But honestly, that day, what I witnessed was…‘abnormally perfect’.

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Well! What happens in the bed, or how it happens, alone can’t define ‘normalness’. It’s also what is shared by two persons between their two ‘embedding moments’ that defines how ‘normal’ their relationship is.

Am I wrong? …

She is away from home…feels depressed…mostly lives in nostalgia, denying her ‘present’ the space it deserves in her life…

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The other day, as she talked to me about how much she suffers because she misses her family, I said to her what I always wanted to. I said…

“Well! That’s not your family; it is your parents’ family!”

She looked shocked. So I elaborated…

“Yes! That’s not your family; it is your parents’ family! You are a part of it. ‘Your’ family would be the one that you would build in the times to come”.

She looked confused. So, I explained…

“Look! A seed can see itself belonging to the tree whose fruit it is a part of, or it can see itself belonging to the tree whose root lies within it. The fact is that it is ‘both’”.

I went on further…

“You feel lonely and away because you are seeing your ‘present’ in terms of your ‘past connections’. But if you would see your ‘present’ in terms of your ‘future connections’ then you would find that this period is the one of transition. And ‘transitions’ are usually lonely and uncomfortable! But, you have to see it as a preparatory period for the roles that your future holds for you – the period in which you can learn to see yourself as an ‘individual’ and develop ‘self-reliance’ which is an ‘essential’ for playing your future roles effectively”.

I could see her expressions changing…                     

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Well! Yes! It is important for one to be emotional and dutiful towards one’s past connections, yet one should not stay sentimental and ‘clinging’ to those connections. The truth is… “The only way one’s past connections can prove their strength is by… preparing one for one’s future”. 🙂 

“You prove a mistake a mistake only in two cases – when you ‘take what you should miss’…and when you ‘miss what you should take’”.

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What I mean by ‘taking what you should miss’ is that after a mistake, people focus too much on ‘how they are feeling about it’. They typically roll themselves in self-worn guilt and flaunt a ‘long face’. While this reaction is a natural one initially, people deliberately elongate it either to prove their sincerity to those around them or to feed their own ego… Yes! It’s the junk that most people hold onto uselessly…

And what I mean by ‘missing what you should take’ is that after a mistake, people lose an opportunity to take valuable observations – ‘why it happened’, ‘when it all went out of their hands’, ‘what they should do now’, ‘where does it all lead to’ or ‘how they can salvage what still can be’… Yes! Every mistake should be followed by a heightened awareness and sharpened sense of objectivity…

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Well! The fact is that “More than the mistake, it is what people do after it, that costs more”.