Day 1 : Road to Success (?)

How to pursue a goal when you never sure that it is definitely what you want in life. Maybe.

They say the successful people are where they are in life because they knew what they wanted and worked tirelessly to get it. I, for one, am very suspicious of that notion. I guess I have no measure of faith in people's will power. Maybe because of the sheer reason that I have such limited inventory of it myself. The same with the people around me. I truly believe that of all the successful people in life, maybe a handful of them can truly say that they always knew what their lives were leading up to. That they definitely knew their product/book/album/app/business was going to be a success. And knowing such a crystal ball has not been invented so far, I am pretty sure even those handful of posers are lying.

No one really knows what life has in store for them. Far fewer know if at all their hopes and dreams would ever come to be. Most of us have those days in life when we wake up in the morning surprised that our dumb behinds even made it to that sunrise. I have very less hope of our species being able to seem many more of these sunrises.

Alright, I just read all that back again. This really does not seem like the happy happy optimistic posts that I do here. Especially this being my first one this year. Oh yeah, Happy New Year!!

Well. What is so happy about it anyway? Don't mean to be a downer. But come on, sit and think with me for a moment. What has changed in the first couple weeks of this year that makes you truly believe that 2017 is going to be any different that the tens of years you have spent on this planet. Life was borderline miserable back then, it is just as miserable now.

Sure there are some  moments of joy. Small tiny specks of them in the raging crap storm called life. These little shiny objects make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. You love that feeling. You love having that feeling. But also back there in some dark corner of your mind, sits your very own private Gollum, talking to himself. Rejoicing at that thought that even this moment would pass. This moment of content and bliss would pass and Master would be back feeling sorry for himself. This mind-Gollum feeds off of your misery. The more sad and despondent you are the more the mind-Gollum dances with joy. The more lonely and friendless you are the more the mind-Gollum's eyes light up with excitement.

In everybody's life there comes a span of time where the mind-Gollum is at its strongest. He is plump, and fat, and hearty while you reside at the very rock bottom of your life. Now if a person who has made it big in life has had the premonition of how his life would end up for him, can the same be said for the person haunted by the mind-Gollum? If man has the capability to will himself to success, why would he even make himself to be vulnerable enough to face any sort of hardship in life?

Willing yourself to glory in life is a myth. What mostly happens, is life throws a few curve balls at you. Challenging you at every turn. How your life turns out to be is basically decided upon what you do under that pressure. Do you succumb to the torment, surrendering yourself to sorrow and self loathing? Or do you stand up to life's bullying and make something out of yourself.

Nothing in life is predetermined or predestined. What happens in your life, is not determined by the goals you set for yourself in life. It is decided based on your ability to fight for your own survival and to starve out the mind-Gollum.

Day 12 : About Depression

The book I am reading right now is about a high school kid who is suffering from clinical depression. The writer of the book has taken a lot of effort to get the reader better understand the pain and hardship somebody suffering with this disease goes through. He really has been successful at it to an extent. There are parts in the book that would make you cringe, some would make you let out a nervous chuckle because you are not sure if something that horrendous could really even be possible. It is. There are some parts that would make you feel to darn sad and forlorn. This is not a happy book. There are parts where you begin to relate to the things writer is taking about. Parts that makes you think.

Depression.

This is the sort of thing that until recently would've been thought as a illness only inflicted upon the weak-minded. People were taught - if you are to be a successful and a respected member of the society, you have to lift yourself up by the bootstraps, keep you chin up, take the best along with the worst, keep the fight going. You know the sort of motivational mumbo-jumbo that they feed you when they get tired of your whining and have no constructive advice to give you. Nobody ever liked to get their hands dirty on somebody else's mess. Don't ask don't tell, didn't always apply to the gay-rights law they implemented in US armed forces. It used to be the norm when it came to many things that made people uneasy.

I am sure that people back then too got anxious and stressed about stuff. But my guess is that they probably had more gumption than us. They had deeper understanding between them. They were able to cope with it, because they were there to help each other when it counted. In today's world of too much, we don't have enough of that. Media, entertainment, gossip, work, pressure, greed, hate, love, anger, fear. Everything. We have lot of those. But people themselves haven't progressed with the pace in which the things around them have. Sometimes it gets a little too much for us. We all have a tipping point. Where our brains just decide that it cannot handle of this all the time. It simply just goes on a snooze. And it blames you for it. Which in turn makes us feel even more shitty.

I guess there is a term for what I am doing right now - Yellderly. But heck, it is the book talking not me. Not entirely.

I really do thing we take on too many stuff on our plates. It would be good to take a break from all of this. They have even started to have these zones in some cities of Europe where they promise to have no tech or internet signal. You just go there and sit and relax for a bit. Get away from everything. Doesn't that sound marvelous.

I guess that doesn't exactly fit the bill for what clinical depression exactly is all about. That's for the doctors to talk about. I feel that everyone has the possibility of being depressed in life at some point. Not everyone always has to face it. But then nobody is exempt from it either. Some do manage to cope with it by themselves. By the help of medication and therapy, or in the case of a lucky few, wonderful friends and family that help through it all. In the end, feeling alone is a lousy thing. And if you have a disease that makes you feel like you deserve to be sad and alone, it makes life all the more tough to handle.

I guess, what I am saying is, you are not alone. Not truly. Whoever it was that created us, created like billions of other people in here just to ensue that we are not alone. And if you just give it a chance, I am sure you will find at least a few people out there who you could relate with and who would hear you out and give you a friendly embrace.

Sometimes that is all that is needed. Listening to each other. Just talking to someone who care about you really does help. Unloading your worries. To know there there is at least on other person on this planet who knows you and the shit that you're going through. There really are such people. Always.

You are not alone.

Day 46 : The Beast of Depression

There is this one thing that I've often wondered about  - that I do wonder a lot.

There are times with a book or a movie or a wall in front of me;  and I just stare blankly at it with my mind somewhere seas apart.

I am sure a lot many people do this. After all it is so comfortable there inside our heads. The world is such a convenient place. We can be as brave as we want. There is no one smarter than us there. We always know all the right words to say. We won’t have to be cautious about anything here, and always will all the battles. This world is so much prettier than the real world. Who wants this 'real' world anyway? A world filled with burden and sorrow and bitter disappointments. Half the time our life is spent making up for lost opportunities, and the rest is spent wallowing over how we’ll never make up for the loss no matter how much we try.

We all have a deep depressing beast inside all of us that we never fully understand, let alone satisfy. This beast is always going to push and prod us and hold something or the other over our head. This beast will always wail and shed rivers of tears over the sadness that we've have brought upon us and the over the people we hold dear. This beast knows just what to say and show us to bring us over to his side. It will always have that power to tantalize us into thinking there is no scope of victory; that there is no chance of any change in the tide of events.

Things were always sad and hopeless for you, and just because you decide to do something to fight it won't mean your future would be any different.

We in our inexplicable way always feed its hunger. This dark beast breeds off of your hopelessness and grows bigger and fiercer by the day, till the time when you are nothing but a hollow shell of the person you were. You lose your battle even before the results are declared.

Our lives are just too confusing and tiring for any of us to hope to keep hold of our sanity for any long duration. Every once in a while you will find yourself that you have started lashing out at the people around you. Or that you are holed up in a room letting nobody in. Or spending more means to try and keep people away from you; letting them see the bags under your eyes due to the lack of sleep. You sulk around, drag your feet, and sigh your sad sighs over every blow you take. Fate has beaten the life-force out of you. And now your existence seems nothing but a sad process to the eventual downfall to mental annihilation.

But you see... sometimes, you also find a little glimmer of light showing at the end of the tunnel. This bleak damp seemingly endless tunnel of despair you’re in has an end!

You slowly bring yourself you move your feet towards the light. It is hard work, your legs are heavy with the weight of all the burdens and sorrow that you have been carrying through all this time. But still slowly but surely they keep moving forward. Even your body knows how much you need to see that light with your eyes. You move forward.

Slowly your shoulder seems to grow weary, the burden seems too tough to bear anymore. And the light is so close now; you can almost feel its warmth. You cannot stop for a break now. You cannot trust yourself to make it this far again. You shrug your shoulders and let the burden slowly slid off of you one by one. It feels so much better now. You almost chuckle wondrously at how it easy it was to let go of the weight. It seemed so fearsome before. You look back and see all of you misfortunes lying there behind you like your many footprints in the sand of time. So small.

Now you are there. Right in front of the end of the tunnel. There is a door there. It is old wood, seems sodden and damp with age. This door has not been used in a long while. But there is warm air through its hinges, and from below it there is sunny yellow light pushing through onto your feet. Your feet look bloody and dirty with you waddling through your dark tunnel. But now in that light, you like the look of it. It seems callous but firm and hard, ready to step confidently through whatever may be in store for you beyond that bright inviting sunshine.

Today, you shall open that door and step into the light.