Time to talk about our feelings, let’s talk

So, if you are too tired to speak, sit next to me for I, too, am fluent in silence. – R. Arnold

Descartes said, ‘I think therefore I am’, some say, ‘You feel and that’s how you know you are alive’. So, whom should I believe? Whom should I trust? Should I move ahead in the monotonous race of my life from birth till death- constantly thinking, analyzing, deliberating and wondering but not feeling anything. Or should I dwell and ponder upon every feeling over which I stumble in my path? What should I do?

When I decide to put my feelings into words, a Pandora’s box appears in front of me out of thin air. I am curious, and I open the lid of the box with my feelings. And god! At that moment, a wrath is unleashed upon me where my childhood fears, my vulnerabilities, my phobias of opening up to someone and this bright, crazy light of healing comes in front of me. I feel afraid. I start to feel more sensitively, I begin to comprehend things in a much better and reasonable way. The darkness of my thoughts gets removed and I feel inspired. Inspired to live. To hope. To love. Myself and others around me.

Is that what happens when you open the windows of a room that has been closed for too long?

But I never remembered closing the windows of my heart, or what a more knowledgeable neuroscientist would say, the amygdale and pons region of my brain (responsible for controlling my emotions). Then, when did it happen?

Did it happen when I saw people close to me arguing and saying mean things to each other? Did it happen when I saw people crying their eyes out for someone who they have just met months ago? Did it happen when I saw a person lying cold when I talked to them over call a few days ago? When did it happen? Was I responsible for it alone? Such free will makes me feel guilty, in fact.

So to move away from such burden of emotions, I busied myself with tools in my hand, creating a gorgeous, Mughal-inspired design window for my soul, heart, amygdale or whatever. If I wanted to bar my emotions from coming out, at least, let me have my aesthetic pleasures.  So I did. I closed my heart from letting my emotions come out. But emotions are, I have seen, like tiny gusts of wind that can make their way to you through the tiniest creaks in windows and doors. And my beautifully created, Mughal-inspired window had tiny creaks from which these emotions came out in the forms of words, poems, stories and random thoughts – just the like the one I am putting right now.

However, hear me, you fellow emotionally-charged person (I believe you are because you have read this till here), that this time I am not trying to bury my emotions within some window or some pages or some poems. I am here to announce them, proclaim them and urge you to speak your feelings as well. Because after the Pandora’s box emptied itself, I saw one tiny thing still remaining inside. It didn’t throw itself upon me. Instead, it was stuck in a corner, waiting for someone to pick it up and acknowledge. And God! I had my luck this time. I did notice it. I took it out and saw it snuggled comfortably in my palm. A little, furry ball of light. Hope.

Hope is what we choose when we decide to talk about our feelings. We are afraid to talk about our feelings because we fear the wrath of those vulnerabilities, complexes and fears. But once we move past them, we see this beautiful entity called Hope. And this is what will matter the most when you talk about your feelings. Hope.

So, to my hopeful, emotional, and kind reader (since you have reached the end of this and I wish to impart some wise, sage-like words on you), I just have to say that the world is cruel, it’s gruesome with all its monsters. But with no choice, we just have this one. So, speak up your heart, let others do so and see if the world can become something comfortable to live in and live by.

Lastly, a couplet that you might resonate with once you open your Pandora’s box and accept yourself better –

Umr bhar ghalib yahi bhool karta raha,

Dhool chehre pe thi aur aayina saaf karta raha.

All my life, Ghalib, I did this mistake, I kept cleaning the mirror when the dust truly lay on my face – Mirza Ghalib

Pandemic, Bell Jar and Homo Anxious

Shakespeare in his time period said that it is human tendency to err but in the modern context, there is more to the tendency of people. The homo sapiens have evolved into an advanced species that doesn’t have a name for now but let’s call them homo anxious. This species knows its way around all the technology and is very close to unraveling all the secrets of this Universe but there is one thing that they are not able to accomplish – their fear and anxiety. These humans are constantly in an anxious state because they worry about future, they fear what might happen tomorrow. For that, they prepare themselves, they plan things very accordingly in advance.

But the year 2020 gave this species of homo anxious a fear that they were not ready for – COVID-19 virus and the accompanied worldwide lockdown. All the plans of this species, all their preparations turned waste in a tiny amount of time. The stability for which people craved so dearly was nowhere to be found. The lockdown increased dramatically and all the hopes people could stick to a better tomorrow started fading away. The routine of this species, that used to be hectic and covering each second of the day in a productive manner turned into a routine of a old writer living alone in the hills. Waking up each day, having breakfast at home, reading or watching something, having a nap, eating again and sleep at night. In the beginning, it seemed as a good way out of the tiredness and rush of life but soon, people started realizing the true reality.

The whole world around them was static. It wasn’t moving and this was a static that no one wanted or no one could control even. Living in an uncontrolled static and unknown future looked like a dystopian sci-fi movie brought into reality to people. There was nothing they could do except try different dishes, play games with family or connect with friends online. It was a reality people were trying to construct despite the reality of the world outside their homes. The simplest tasks of buying grocery even became a mission which, if accomplished, was considered a big success.

In the midst of all this existing in a void like situation where once you enter, you can’t realize the passage of space and time, there was one thing that people did notice and that was their increasing dependency on technology. From concepts of ‘work from home’ to online ‘multi-player gaming’ to binging online shows, people’s hands, eyes and brain too were glued to the screens in front of them.

Here I would like to use the analogy created by Sylvia Plath for  her novel – A Bell Jar. In her book, she considered the bell jar as something that had trapped the protagonist in it and was slowly driving her to madness. In scientific community with which our modern species, homo anxious are familiar with, a bell jar is used to contain some gas or chemical and studied with curiosity and a scientific observation. But my analogy would be much closer to Plath’s because I consider the technology as the bell jar that trapped the eyes and brains of people in this pandemic and made them an object kept in a vacuum, completely away from the real world by creating a false, social world in its own. The creative minds of the writers, poets, artists, musicians, etc. were all blocked by the technology’s inventions.

Imagine now! If during the great plague of London, Newton would have played online Chess all day long. If Leonardo Da Vinci would have not worked while being confined in his home during the pandemic in his time, we wouldn’t have got some of the art we have today from him. Even in this lockdown, we don’t know how many Oscar Wildes, Keats and Austens have spent their time worrying about the Pandemic, thinking what will happen tomorrow and showing remorse over and over again of all the plans they had for their year.

To put a pause to my thoughts here, I would say that Yes, Even if Pablo Neruda said that ‘For once on the face of the  earth, let’s not speak in any language, let’s stop for one second and not move our arms so much.’, he didn’t mean to do all this permanently. Life has more to give than the bell-jar we all are struck in. I hope that the way Archimedes one day got his ‘EUREKA’ moment, we all will too and get out of this bell jar to create the master-pieces waiting for to be created.

Yours,

A homo anxious,                   

Residing in a bell jar next to yours.

Ocean and River

For a common man, standing before a river or ocean is just like feeling the cold air or seeing gallons of water but when I stand before it, don’t know why but the water in it reflects different opinions of the people or the way in which they think. The water in rivers always moves forward leading a progressive way. But this is another symbol of human behavior stating the progressive and advanced thinking of some people who move forward in life leaving impressions behind. It is so dominating that it even forces the lives in it to move forward.

Speaking of ocean, the amount of water it carries, the depth it seeks, the unknown life in it, darkness of depths, reflects a complete different person. A person seeking wisdom is symbolized by the ocean. It’s enormous amount of water represent the knowledge in one’s mind. The depth represents the curiosity in him or up to which level he could go into the matter and give statement regarding it. A river always end in an ocean so a progressive person also turns into a wise person only at some point of time in his life.

Since experience is like a pair of wings which allow the mind to soar in the sky and reach heights. Next time, you see a river or ocean, don’t just enjoy it but also feel it.

Till my next post, keep living life full of smiles.