And one came back at dead of night-
Said he'd seen my enemy,
Said he looked just like me...
...I look out at the stars
And wonder where did i go wrong..."
There's nothing more touching than a soft music dear to your heart,when you feel blue. I've been having my "blue" period for quite sometime now - about four years. But it doesn't mean I didn't have my happy moments in it. Its just that,i think I've been literally "growing up" now...! Yeah,you could call it my deluded "bluish" phase of transition from teenage to adulthood. Through a lot of nasty experiences I've learnt some things about life and myself: I think, and sink IN BLUE !!!
Finding no real companion to whom i could read out my mind loud,I sat to search for quotes, to check how many people before me have felt exactly what I feel now, and how precisely and beautifully they've framed it in words.I've been scared of writing this piece because i knew my troubled state of mind would produce only a chain of unrelated and irrelevant sentences,making no sense at all(like all my previous writings!).... But I finally found the courage from a piece of writing i read recently- a letter by Jawaharlal Nehru to his daughter Indira Gandhi,prior to his release from 2 years' imprisonment.There too he tried to jot down everything that crossed his mind,and even admitted the irrelevance that it created.... So these are some of the quotes that caught my eye:
"Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth";
"If we never get lost in our lives,there's a chance we may never be found";
"If you haven't rejected any major opinion or acquired new ones in the past 3 or 4 years of your life, check your pulse. You may be dead.";
"Tears come out when words cant express your feelings";
"Compromise is often the result of indecision";
"The love that lasts the longest is the one not returned"...
But i guess the quotation on which i have mostly based my recent ideologies is: "When you feel that nobody in the world understands you, it is because you dont understand yourself".
And from it i derive the infinitely self-destructive will-power of findig faults with my own self, which often tires me out so much that I wish to stop the wheels of my racing mind... but cant....hence grows my inconfidence.
I think im petty and insignificant enough to not ask the devout question :"What is the Truth?", but what really haunts me is: "What am I ?".... Like a biologist who studies a certain species for days and notes its characteristics by observing its behaviour under different situations, i have tried to observe myself in several circumstances and draw inferences about my own nature, my own mind, my own heart. But everytime i do this, i fall into the crevice of a bottomless hole, a redundant cycle of never-ending questions; its like a dog chasing his own tail...!!!
On a similar day, after being similarly hurt, I was lying down and wastefully brooding; thinking how lonely i was, how nobody and absolutely nobody understands the way i feel, when it sudddenly occured to me- what if i could meet myself and be my friend?
It seemed such a fascinating idea! the picture that ran through my mind was that of my dear old school - Carmel, its vast playgrounds beside the buildings, the scorching sun above, the hot summer blowing its breath on our faces, some distant birds calling out, and nobody else in sight but me and myself, face to face. I must have been still crying then, when I could see thesilent, all-understanding and caring look in her eyes- the look that i had been searching in all those faces from which i had sought help before, but failed. When I ran to her in tears, she gave me a big hug- the kind that seemed to absorb all my pain in her chest, the kind that made me feel that my feelings resonate in her heart too: the reassuring touch I had searched for so long. I didnt have to tell her, because obviously, she knows it all. She would be my mother, my father, my lover. I rested my head on her shoulder and wept as much as I wanted to, without having to think what the person in front is thinking. Then she dried my tears and gave me strength to live again. On this entire planet, she would be the one who understands me prefectly and would never leave my side...
As soon as my fantasy touched the ground of reality, i switched my role from subject to observer, AGAIN, And tried to analyse why I had this dream and what message it brought? I took it from the beginning and started scrutinizing. Why did I imagine my rescuer as another person, who was actually me? Why did i choose to personify my own soul? ... I inferred, it is the human nature to seek a savior in others first than finding it in ourselves. We read thousands of sermons about self-help and inner-power but when we really feel helpless, we search for it in another person, another heart which will testify to its scars from wounds like ours. A protective embrace, a living body of flesh and blood with a heart beating like our own, few kind words... are enough to bring us back, to give us the hope that if another person can survive with the regular sorrows of human life, why cant we? It helped me more than brooding alone in my dark bedroom.
On the other hand, i'm not very sure if boys feel like this, but i've observed a similar trend in most women from conservative Indian families- so dependant, so emotionally deprived since childhood that we waste most of our lifetime in search of that reflection of "Myself" in someone else. I'm unsure if that would mean supporting the sexist view that women are the weaker sex.... But maybe we are forced to lead such insulated lives that deep inside the emptiness has filled us to our throats, stops our breath and makes us cry out loud at the dead of night..... for we need someone to share our grief , our pain, our happiness with.
My dream made it clear to me that in future whenever i'll fall into a whirlwind and find myself alone, it is ME that i'll always have to bank on, no matter what. Eventually my dream showed me that to find the solution to your problem you have to come home- its nowhere else in the world but within yourself. You are your own Messiah!
And finally it taught me not to expect too much of anyone.
" Love leads to expectations and expectations lead to mangled hearts."
