Our lives are often like a river charting its course through ever changing terrain guided by a host of factors. We change the terrain, even as it is changing us. It is usually a process of constant assimilation as thoughts and ideas find their way to us, like the sediments that muddy a river - either passively like the specs of dust that float in or through active effort.
As we drift through our lives, there accumulate in us layers of memories. Memories that modify, distort and bury each other - revealing a little more of some things and a little less of some others.
I realize now that I am often passing through life, in its grips, unaware of all my thoughts and feelings at the very moment, I am living it. Things then come back to me as versions of a story. A construct of my own mind. With every passing day, my memories are being altered, my stories morphing from what was to what I think was. What I see as my life today is probably a mix of some fact and some fiction. A melange of how I see the world and how the world sees me - colored by feelings, events, words and randomness. The stories of my life are perhaps written, not for accuracy or factual truths but for rational sense from only one perspective - mine.
Over the years, these stories and memories have congealed into newer, more resilient layers, that now form the foundation of my being. These are the stories that I base my life and its choices on. But they are just stories, stories I tell myself (and others upon intense prodding).
What I am often searching for is a way to reverse this process briefly and calmly. To unsettle the deepest parts of my being, with a hope to make sense of the journey so far. With the hope of shifting my perspective from what is staring me in the face, right at that instance, to what I will see with the benefit of time - an extrapolation as some might say.
I want to unsettle the clearing waters with a hope that it will help me make sense of my life. With a hope to see the end of the story - my story. To visualize the incidents and the coincidences that shaped my life and the choices I made. To follow the thread from there to now - to see what I have survived and what I have not. This usually is difficult because with every telling and re-telling, the story I know, is probably a little bit different from the truth that was.
It is perhaps this quest for resolution that drives my love for stories of others - in the form of books, plays and movies. They magically help me live many lives over, many personalities over - in a span of a few hours, days or months. In their words, I have found my own. Through them, I have uncovered questions, thoughts, ruminations and answers that I have dwelt on over the years. I have searched for characters that resonate with me, that think like me, that have similar strengths, whims and weaknesses. I skim on the surface of their stories as I drift through my own. I see glimpses of my life through them and that shift in perspective makes a difference.
Over the years, there have been quite a few instances where I have cried my eyes out with a book, a character, a story or a movie. But with age and time, I have become a little more impervious and a little more resilient (happy about one, not about the other) and It now takes a powerful idea or a story to unsettle those calm waters.
This bout of introspection and realization comes due to a movie called Boyhood. A movie, that stirred in me a whole horde of questions - questions that had lingered for so long that I had forgotten about them. They had become that unseen part of my life's fabric like the dust that stealthily creeps in. It took the musings of the young man to jolt me back to myself and to see the dust for what it is.
Filmed over twelve years with the same individuals, the movie has a magical influence. It shifts your perspective such that you learn to watch the entirety of your life in a million tiny little moments as they lead up to the present. Somehow that takes you away from the myopic view of life - and shows a bigger, brighter picture. Made me realize that at some point, one has to 'choose' to focus on the bigger questions of life itself.
Like what kind of lives are we leading? Are our lives built around what we wanted or around what was expected of us? How much of our actions are influenced by what we want and what others tell us we want? How much of our actions are a result of our desires and not just someone else's? How much power can and should the society have over us? How does one sever the umbilical cord and move away from the friends, family and society that have nurtured us? Should one? Do our choices make any difference? What matters more - how people see us or how we see ourselves? Do we really change over time? Can we decide to change ourselves? Or is free will an illusion? Do we seize moments or do moments seize us?
What is the purpose of our lives? Does anyone have all the answers? Do we ever find them? Do you even need them?
What is the point of it all?
“‘What’s the point? I sure as shit don’t know,’ ‘We’re all just winging it,’”
"You don't want the bumpers. Life doesn't give you bumpers".
"I just thought there'd be more!"
As we drift through our lives, there accumulate in us layers of memories. Memories that modify, distort and bury each other - revealing a little more of some things and a little less of some others.
I realize now that I am often passing through life, in its grips, unaware of all my thoughts and feelings at the very moment, I am living it. Things then come back to me as versions of a story. A construct of my own mind. With every passing day, my memories are being altered, my stories morphing from what was to what I think was. What I see as my life today is probably a mix of some fact and some fiction. A melange of how I see the world and how the world sees me - colored by feelings, events, words and randomness. The stories of my life are perhaps written, not for accuracy or factual truths but for rational sense from only one perspective - mine.
Over the years, these stories and memories have congealed into newer, more resilient layers, that now form the foundation of my being. These are the stories that I base my life and its choices on. But they are just stories, stories I tell myself (and others upon intense prodding).
What I am often searching for is a way to reverse this process briefly and calmly. To unsettle the deepest parts of my being, with a hope to make sense of the journey so far. With the hope of shifting my perspective from what is staring me in the face, right at that instance, to what I will see with the benefit of time - an extrapolation as some might say.
I want to unsettle the clearing waters with a hope that it will help me make sense of my life. With a hope to see the end of the story - my story. To visualize the incidents and the coincidences that shaped my life and the choices I made. To follow the thread from there to now - to see what I have survived and what I have not. This usually is difficult because with every telling and re-telling, the story I know, is probably a little bit different from the truth that was.
It is perhaps this quest for resolution that drives my love for stories of others - in the form of books, plays and movies. They magically help me live many lives over, many personalities over - in a span of a few hours, days or months. In their words, I have found my own. Through them, I have uncovered questions, thoughts, ruminations and answers that I have dwelt on over the years. I have searched for characters that resonate with me, that think like me, that have similar strengths, whims and weaknesses. I skim on the surface of their stories as I drift through my own. I see glimpses of my life through them and that shift in perspective makes a difference.
Over the years, there have been quite a few instances where I have cried my eyes out with a book, a character, a story or a movie. But with age and time, I have become a little more impervious and a little more resilient (happy about one, not about the other) and It now takes a powerful idea or a story to unsettle those calm waters.
This bout of introspection and realization comes due to a movie called Boyhood. A movie, that stirred in me a whole horde of questions - questions that had lingered for so long that I had forgotten about them. They had become that unseen part of my life's fabric like the dust that stealthily creeps in. It took the musings of the young man to jolt me back to myself and to see the dust for what it is.
Filmed over twelve years with the same individuals, the movie has a magical influence. It shifts your perspective such that you learn to watch the entirety of your life in a million tiny little moments as they lead up to the present. Somehow that takes you away from the myopic view of life - and shows a bigger, brighter picture. Made me realize that at some point, one has to 'choose' to focus on the bigger questions of life itself.
Like what kind of lives are we leading? Are our lives built around what we wanted or around what was expected of us? How much of our actions are influenced by what we want and what others tell us we want? How much of our actions are a result of our desires and not just someone else's? How much power can and should the society have over us? How does one sever the umbilical cord and move away from the friends, family and society that have nurtured us? Should one? Do our choices make any difference? What matters more - how people see us or how we see ourselves? Do we really change over time? Can we decide to change ourselves? Or is free will an illusion? Do we seize moments or do moments seize us?
What is the point of it all?
“‘What’s the point? I sure as shit don’t know,’ ‘We’re all just winging it,’”
"You don't want the bumpers. Life doesn't give you bumpers".
"I just thought there'd be more!"
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