This is the 30th of April 2018.
I took a decision today.
I decided to never be dishonest with myself again.
I took a decision today.
I decided to never be dishonest with myself again.
Monday, April 30, 2018
Sunday, April 29, 2018
Two species of aloneness
On days that I would be alone in India, in the sense of not being around family and friends, I would still run into small, individually trivial but in aggregate meaningful encounters with auto drivers, bus conductors, tea vendors, shopkeepers, ironing guy, vegetable vendors, cows, temple pujaris, street food hawkers, internet cafe owners, and random dudes on the street that I knew from one time and context to another.
On days that I am alone in the US, I am alone.
And then again, days that I'm alone in the US are much more frequent than days that I would be alone in India. And since there is this completeness to the aloneness of the US variety, I'm compelled to intensify my search for what to do with those times.
Mostly, it has helped me explore areas of study, habits of self-sufficiency, and patterns of self-development, that I probably never would have had I continued to live in India, and for which I am grateful, but once in a while, it leads you to a dark place that you either dread in the moment or an escape that you regret later.
Dread alone, and regret alone, too.
On days that I am alone in the US, I am alone.
And then again, days that I'm alone in the US are much more frequent than days that I would be alone in India. And since there is this completeness to the aloneness of the US variety, I'm compelled to intensify my search for what to do with those times.
Mostly, it has helped me explore areas of study, habits of self-sufficiency, and patterns of self-development, that I probably never would have had I continued to live in India, and for which I am grateful, but once in a while, it leads you to a dark place that you either dread in the moment or an escape that you regret later.
Dread alone, and regret alone, too.
Wednesday, April 18, 2018
Beginnings
It was some time in the summer of 2015 that I started turning to spirituality. Looking back, it was entirely spontaneous and not in the least bit planned, or even something I aspired to at any point in my life before.
True, a couple of months prior to this, my mom had come visiting me for the summer and I accompanied her to temples quite often, and it was one such visit that prompted a great urge, but it's unlikely that the temple visits were what set off this quest. (But quest is what I can call it now; at the time it was more of a refuge for my curiosity.)
A more potent catalyst had already set it in motion, unbeknownst to me, two and a half years prior, when my relationship of more than three years with my then girlfriend had come crashing down. In the year that had followed that, there was a texture of defeated daze to the very air that I breathed. Every waking moment was filled with a kind of uncontrollable self-doubt that surrounds one the foundations of whose well-established world-view are newly shattered, as if a single overarching event swept meaningless all your life experiences, all with a calm, terrifying apathy.
Initially I tried venting out with some friends, but soon realized the futility of that exercise. It became clear to me that the depths of what I felt were unsharable; in speech or text I could at best have created a poor, elementary imitation of the reality within. When I stopped talking about it, my sorrow was complete and pure, uncluttered with imagination of what it made me look like or what its verbal expression to someone might elicit. For the first time, then, I faced my sorrow squarely, with close attention rather than haywire self-pity, and then again, and then again. Every day and every night, for years to follow. That kind of inquiry into the deepest recesses of your mental and emotional landscape does something to you, it transforms you into something new. The word that comes closest to describing it, somehow, is spiritual.
But then again, the very first steps on this path were more likely, instead, those first few steps of my life, when as a toddler I must have found myself focused with all my being on the idea that I was all by myself and it was extremely, terribly important not to fall.
True, a couple of months prior to this, my mom had come visiting me for the summer and I accompanied her to temples quite often, and it was one such visit that prompted a great urge, but it's unlikely that the temple visits were what set off this quest. (But quest is what I can call it now; at the time it was more of a refuge for my curiosity.)
A more potent catalyst had already set it in motion, unbeknownst to me, two and a half years prior, when my relationship of more than three years with my then girlfriend had come crashing down. In the year that had followed that, there was a texture of defeated daze to the very air that I breathed. Every waking moment was filled with a kind of uncontrollable self-doubt that surrounds one the foundations of whose well-established world-view are newly shattered, as if a single overarching event swept meaningless all your life experiences, all with a calm, terrifying apathy.
Initially I tried venting out with some friends, but soon realized the futility of that exercise. It became clear to me that the depths of what I felt were unsharable; in speech or text I could at best have created a poor, elementary imitation of the reality within. When I stopped talking about it, my sorrow was complete and pure, uncluttered with imagination of what it made me look like or what its verbal expression to someone might elicit. For the first time, then, I faced my sorrow squarely, with close attention rather than haywire self-pity, and then again, and then again. Every day and every night, for years to follow. That kind of inquiry into the deepest recesses of your mental and emotional landscape does something to you, it transforms you into something new. The word that comes closest to describing it, somehow, is spiritual.
But then again, the very first steps on this path were more likely, instead, those first few steps of my life, when as a toddler I must have found myself focused with all my being on the idea that I was all by myself and it was extremely, terribly important not to fall.
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