Seeking misery...

We do the strangest of things to get through bad days but hunting for more misery is the most twisted of them all.

I can understand trying to forget it, running away from it, drowning it - in pills or alcohol - but, no. This involves actively looking for misery. Who in their sane mind would do that?

I do it every now and then, in one of these carefully nuanced moments, when life seems to be getting to that point when every step forward is two steps backward. When every force seems to be a drag to overcome. Suddenly the rules of forward momentum, friction and inertia don't make so much sense, because no matter how much effort you put, there is no net movement. It feels like trying to pull a wagon-load of misery on an oil-spill. The harder you try, the harder you fall. The less you try, the less things change.

That is when I go trolling through other people's memoirs - books, movies, blogs, stories. Anything and everything. Anything that opens the lives of these perfect strangers' to me - in their own voice. And I look for these oil-spill moments in their life. Their miseries and struggles seem to numb my own pain. It helps me wallow in the depths of someone else's misery for a while only to come back and find my own pool a little less shallow.

It doesn't hurt a whole lot less but there is comfort in knowing there are others out there. It also makes me see the flicker of light at the end of the long, dark tunnel - through my cloudy, foggy eyes. If they managed to get out their oil-spill, maybe I will too. If I held on just a little longer. If I just tried something a little different. If the dice rolls a little differently this time.

Perhaps, all is not lost. And perhaps even if it is, there is a new beginning to be made.


Thank God, we can’t see the future because if we could “we’d never get out of bed.”

August: Osage County 

Falling...

I have fallen countless times - tripping over words, blinded by hopes, slipping over trust, guided by shadows and sometimes just stumbling through the dark.

Every fall taught me a different lesson, but more importantly, it helped me get up faster and with drier eyes.

And so today, when I fell again, outsmarted by fate and happenstance, I could not dwell much longer.
It was at a time I thought all was going well and in the right direction. It was when I thought i have found my lowest of lows and now the only way should be up. But then fate had other plans.

But despite all that and more, strangely, I am surrounded by a cloak that's come on every time I've felt a shiver run through. Something has held me through - from shattering. From crumbling. It has kept me going.

I guess, this is the time to thank all those falls - terrible, painful, untimely, brutal and vindictive as they might have been then - today, they let me move on with nothing but a tear or two and a few lines in memory.

Have I stopped feeling or just reacting? Have I become immune to failure? Or is this just another delusion, another fall waiting to happen?

Getting it right...

Gardening is a life-affirming hobby.

You plant the tiny little seeds with hopes and trepidation. You water them daily. You wait eagerly for the tiny seedlings to emerge and find their bearing. You worry about the sun, the shade, the heat and the cold. You worry about protecting them from the weeds, the bugs and the bullies. You worry about giving them all the nutrients they need and then you await the day they will blossom. You await for their blossoming, not just because flowers are pretty but because flowers are about more than beauty. They are an indication of a job well done. Of having taken care of a plant well enough that it could reach its full potential and blossom.

It is a source of great success and pleasure - to know that you did something right.

In many ways bringing up kids is a lot like gardening. Each one is an experiment under your special circumstances. You bring them up in ways you think right and in ways that life allows. You treat each one differently depending on their needs, wants, strengths and weaknesses. You hope that you did everything correctly but you never know that for sure.

But then one day, even as you can't stop worrying about them or fretting about their future, you see that they have turned out alright. After everything that happened, despite it and perhaps because of it all. Not because they won this competition or that, or because they earn this much or that, or because they bought this or that, but because somewhere along the way, they have started to take care of you. Not only did they learn to but they are also able to, at a young age. 

That in my opinion is a big transition - a moment of great pride and joy.

I don't know if my parents have seen that day but I have seen a glimpse of that - thanks to my little brother. I say a glimpse because a child is perhaps a much bigger piece of you than a sibling... 

And yet, coming into this world, seven years after me, he was more of a child and less of a sibling. 

When I saw that tiny, chubby, talkative toddler, growing into a six foot young man, I appreciated nature. But today when I hear that naughty little kid (who once blamed the table to breaking the glass and the bear for jumping off the balcony), talking of embracing life, removing expectations and doing the right thing - I appreciate nurture. 

And then one day, sitting in the middle of a curfew or in the middle of a crowded barracks while giving me honest, practical and sane-minded advice; when he told me to get myself a big gift - whatever I may want; that is when I could smell the roses for I realized that he has made it after all. 

That he has learnt to survive in this world and to cope with it without losing sight of the important things. He has learnt to appreciate money but also learnt to value his people. He has learnt from the flaws we perceived as children and has mended at least some of them in time. 

I finally learn that our little munchkin has finally grown up. Up and beyond the age of tantrums, arguments and fights. He has learnt what the important things are and he has learnt to value them. And now I know that he will make it alright even if I am not there to watch over him. 

It is a moment of great pride and joy - even the memory of which brings tears to my eyes because buried in it was the message - we probably got more rights than wrongs.