Finally Some Positivity.

I have tried to escape a lot of situations in life so far. They say the grass always looks greener on the other side and I have given myself a hundred reasons to follow it with absolute conviction. I had a rough break-up and I won’t go on rambling about it like I usually do, because I can finally look back and see myself like a third person and point out where things went wrong. I don’t know how most people get over their break-up or what should be an ideal way but how I did was via another escape route. This time, a dangerous one.

I made myself busy to escape my own emotions; to escape anything I was having a recurrent urge to vent about (which was lots). I took myself to solitude, fled away from everyone who could remind me of this phase — which I will forever be guilty about — some of them were my best people I could count on any day, all days. I did not let myself be upset, took a sabbatical from all of my social media accounts — I was trying to escape everyone I could look at and not feel very good inside. I also quit listening to songs altogether.

I had not perfected the art of stoicism to put a check on my mind from subconsciously wandering back into the vicious loop again. And though, nothing so far sounds like what a brave-heart would do, I feel this realization was a game-changer. I got to know my limits and like Kabir said in Dear Zindagi, it’s not always necessary to do the most difficult thing possible to feel good about yourself. I spun a cozy cocoon for myself, and tried to get comfortable within for starters — being at peace with myself. I cannot emphasize enough how much this matters.

This phase of mental social distancing came harder than I thought, especially with the coerced physical social distancing — enter Covid 2020. I was in my little room, for four months at a stretch, reading puzzles and good articles and about Seneca and Picasso, painting like an amateur and watching videos to fledge my pseudo-intellectual self. I gradually began helping my Mom with cooking a little and we made some nice dishes together, like everybody all across the world. Remember Dalgona Coffee? That as well. And we watched TV together, saw Europe and Vietnam and how pizza is made and what is Civet coffee and how insensitive it is to acquire it. I started waking up a bit early to catch some early morning sunlight and after a few weeks I began working out a little as well.

I talked a lot with Mom throughout and I realized how I had been my own cause of misery lately. Post my breakup I had stopped laughing much or talking too much. I used to be cranky most of the time and though I never felt this was unfair or wrong or that it shouldn’t have happened and if I could have averted it, but as I tried to accept the reality I was also simultaneously accepting the fact that it let a huge part of my happiness slip away.

I did not visit Youtube and query in ‘meditation videos’ but we have all been generally made aware of the fact that happiness lies within. However, this entire process practically taught me what it means to say that happiness lies within , how underrated it is and how most of the social media websites are designed to have us glued to them and have our mental state tethered to their content curated solely for us.

I forced myself to have one person to express to, and once I started expressing myself I found myself feeling better. From minor things like like how did our call with the client go like to the big questions we have at our age — am I meant for what I am currently doing in life — is this what I wanted out of life, can I survive the corporate world? She came with an experience of 33 years of job and she taught me how life is a journey, it is not a destination you have to reach. And like everything I have said so far, these are all things we know, we have had someone during our highs and lows who have told this to us but we keep forgetting it.

We humans have an inherently terribly low attention span, most of us — thanks to the age of the internet. You can try it yourself. Try reading a book you’ve read before (so you already know the story beforehand) and pick a recurring word like went. Try reading at your normal pace and counting how many times this word occurs. Now you know in the back of your head that you have to count the word but we tend to forget and lose track of the counting a couple of pages later. This is exactly what was happening with me. I know life is a journey but this was when I had to be reminded about it the most. Moreover, she told me, we’re a privileged generation to have the opportunity to choose our vocation. It is on us to inculcate our interest — if we have not found a God-gifted passion within us that would be sacrilegious to not pursue — and that, instead oflooking out for the greener grass in a garden across a wall, we could pull out the weeds in the one we’re in and plant roses and gladioli in it and make it our paradise.

Fancy words, but I gradually began getting back to my normal self — laughing and messing around with her, and doing my little dance and calling it an evening walk. I finally began listening to new songs — I did not want to listen to an old one yet, what if it burst my bubble? I starting talking to some people I was studying with, started washing my hair more often and brought of a bunch of clothes on my wishlist. (If you think these are unrelated things, they all helped revive my dying dopamine production cells). I was learning to manage my anger a manifold better. I finally wished to challenge myself and tried talking to some new people, making new friends. And finally, today, I’ve been able to listen to an old song, it was suggested to me expectedly, by the background protagonist of this anecdote and fortunately, it did not burst my bubble. It is probably not a bubble anymore but a porcelain cocoon, perhaps. I could listen to it and I was moved by it, just like I was when I first heard it and it did not pull me back into pointless misery again. Maybe it was the morning sunshine or the priceless reminders or probably a conflated influence of both, I finally feel like a better and more stable version of myself now.

PS: The song — Take me to Church, Hozier

PPS: I’ve quit social media forever🙂 Ping me for tips or a hundred more reasons to go ahead and do this.