The term “Spiral Downward” is used pretty often and mostly by others.

Lately, while talking to some friends about the going-ons of our lives, I heard their fears said out loud. Fear that the passion they are following may not lead them to the destiny they desire, fear of losing someone they love and coping with whatever came their way just to keep the other person in their life, fear of not knowing when the bad will end and fear that, what if this will be life from here on, forever, and that nothing will change for better. Of course, no one really says that out loud, but once we hit a stonewall of circumstances which just wouldn’t budge in our favour, we tend to topple over that edge and then starts this “Spiral Downward”. I have been there myself quite a few times and no matter how well you may know what it is in theory, it never feels the same.

The thing about “Spiral Downward” is that while we are falling into the abyss of hopelessness, at the same time there is something about the Heart that refuses to believe it. It holds onto Hope, it continues to believe that just because of the intensity of one’s passion, one’s love, one’s belief the circumstances have no choice but to change. Heart is a very stubborn piece of shit and that stubbornness is what I love the most. Heart is the only thing that challenges the Gods and the Destiny and secretly prays at the same time. And in this journey we clutch onto Hope, and rationalisation that at the end of it we will get what we want, that after all, all this is Karma, or a tale of magic that will be told again and again. While we are speeding down into the depths of darkness, Heart idiotically believes that there will be happiness and joy once we hit the ground. The only problem is that we don’t hit the ground quite so soon.

In the meantime, Mind, the sensible one, knows that the Spiral Downward has started, it keeps feeding in ideas to protect ourselves. And while the foolishness and stubbornness of the Heart may make a person think that things will change, Mind knows that they may never change and what is needed is a change within which will bring a change on the outside. Mind cannot control the Heart, but it manages to negotiate with the Heart into agreeing to make what we call, superficial changes, changes that won’t take us away from our passions and thoughts but work as stop gap solutions. And these changes , these stop gap solutions lead to healing. These changes may not take us to what we wanted, but they land us to what we needed.

Healing is nothing but getting back on one’s feet with same energy and renewed Hope. The only thing about the Spiral Downward I have observed is that while feelings overtake control of everything, we need to keep thinking. We need to keep going against the Heart a few times just to see where it takes us. And then we never know where we will find ourselves, it may be a beautiful place we did not even know existed.