Digging for Meaning

  It feels as if the existential despair has no beginning nor end. It is like the Ship of Theseus. It is made up of many issues – climate change, rising xenophobia, fake news affecting perspective of family members that you can’t change, health concerns of family members in increasingly polluted cities, threat of violence in a polarised world, financial insecurity owing to shifting economic landscape… and so on. With time, the concerns grow and recede, but the heavy and concrete shape of despair remains.

There's a me from past. There's a me that exists now. There's a me in the future (hopefully).  Does it do any good to consider these three me's as one? I make excuses for the past me. I push my responsibility on the future me.  I never really am conscious of the actual 'me' of now. To live responsibly, to live at my maximum capability, I need to live in now. to be here. to own up the moment. to not begin with the assumption that i will have another chance, that i have enough time, i was the best in the past, that i have proven myself...  i must truly cut my past and future self away from me.  The me from past is another person. I can judgementally look at him and must see his faults for what they truly are. I shouldn't give him the benefit of doubt of being me. His successes are his successes, so are his failures. His story is his. And everyday i have an opportunity to start anew. I am born anew everyday. And as such, i must not take for granted anything. Mu...

Its june 2020 now. its been five and half months since the start of the year. But it feels like decades now. Three months of being anxious and home-bound. Rising covid cases. Migrants dying of govt apathy. Cyclone ravaging parts of country. Police brutality everywhere. The inspirational Black Lives Matter struggles in US. Libya, Lebanon, Iran, Yemen in crisis. Mass unemployment across the world. Economy in tailspin even as stock market zooms up for god knows why. Earthquakes. Mudslides. Oil spill in Russian arctic. Oil well burning uncontrollably in Assam. Wildfires in US, Canada, Russia. Warming planet. Wild life in peril. World being led by idiots like Trump, Bolsonaro, our esteemed great leader. Only countries with women leaders fared better(Germany, NZ). That says something, doesn't it? Trust in authority is waning. news is suspect. facts are questionable. conspiracies lurk around every corner. So misinformation rules and scapegoats get crucified even as the real players conti...

On our birthdays, do we really 'turn' a year older? or to put it another way what changes when we grow older? what does it mean to be 35, 59 or 87? there's the reality of degradation of body, accumulation of experiences, calcifying of certain biases and prejudices, getting used to certain rituals and practices and so on. but none of these things are linear. so why should age be? I wonder about notions of age among people in pre-industrial societies. they probably weren't as obsessed about linear growth as we are. Capitalism thrives on an ever expanding baloon of abundance and consumption. So that sense of growing permeates everything. we are supposed to get better, stronger, wiser, faster at everything. if we can't we are supposed to 'buy' tools for it. That's the basis of capitalism. if we stopped that want, the engine of capitalism will come to a grinding halt. Imagine yourself free of that want! no need for 'growth'. no sense of milestones. no...

"why are you laughing?" Laughter can be the pin that deflates egos. Whether it was intended or not. The laughter is merely the trigger. It can only deflate egos that are outsized, stretching beyond the reality of self. the one sticking to the skin of self-awareness, doesn't get punctured by anything. At moments like these, laughter is the sound of punctured egos. *** "Why are you laughing?" For a mind that tries to see more, it finds reasons to be amused by. There's the amusingly drunk ant. There's that ever so slight tilt of the wall (or maybe the ground?). There's that scent from someone's perfume that reminds you of the time you threw up the first time you drank. There's an accent which makes you curious. There's that sideways glance your colleague does mid-sentence, that alerts you to your own body's impulse of betraying you when you bluff. There's that profound absurdity of staring at glowing rectangles all day. T...