thoughts

THE JOURNEY OF SPIRAL DOWNWARD

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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.

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In another Universe…

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I saw a play called Constellations couple of evenings ago. It is a beautifully told love story between two people and all the possible situations that could have happened to them triggered by their first response to each other. The play deals with various forms of their relationship in parallel universes.

The actual quantum-mechanical hypothesis of parallel universes is “universes that are separated from each other by a single quantum event.”

Now, I was never a good student of physics but I must say that is probably because no one ever taught it with the wonder I now feel about it.

Out of the many best dialogues in the play the first one that struck out for me was , “In the quantum multiverse, every choice, every decision you’ve ever made and never made exists in an unimaginably vast ensemble of parallel universes.”

When I got down to paying attention to this the one part that fuelled my curiosity was the choices that I “never” made and how are they turning out in a parallel universe. Which lead me to think about the “what ifs” that cross our minds every now and then.

Now I don’t know if there is a parallel universe or no, but what I do know is that some of us suffer a great deal from hyper active imagination of the consequences from actions that we did not take. We can call it the “Could have” syndrome. If we had the option we would like to go back to some situations and would like to pick a different choice, even if it is out of curiosity. After all we all live the consequences of the choices we made, but it is not knowing what could have happened had we not followed our stronger instinct, had we not followed the right thing, had we not made the sensible choice…

The idea of parallel universe lets us imagine and indulge in fantasies of what might have happened and allows us to escape in a place of endless possibilities and scenarios. And when we indulge in fantasies we imagine a place where things might be better, more correct, happier, more free and above all different from the universe we know of as our current reality. The parallel universe in our imagination is our bolder choice, in our parallel universe we probably have more courage, less anxiety, more excitement less mundane. In our parallel universe things are going on just fine.

In our parallel universe life is idyllic, devoid of the choices we made that now pose as regrets in our current reality.

And the second dialogue was, “One of the basic laws of physics is that we don’t have a past and a present. Time is irrelevant at the level of atoms and molecules. It’s symmetrical. We have all the time we’ve always had.There’s not going to be any more or less of it.”

This dialogue was said in the context when she tells him that she is dying and he wishes they had more time.

When we think of our time with someone we love, and whether in moments of joy or loss it always feels too less. But to me the absolute Physics logic of the dialogue somewhere suggests the concept of destiny. When she tells him that, “we have all the time we have always had and there is not going to be any more or any less”, it simply says that is all the time we were meant to have. The time that it takes for the falling object from my hand to hit the floor is all the time that exists and once it hits the floor that journey is over. And who knows maybe in a parallel universe it is not, it is somewhere in the middle or about to start and may end very differently.

But irrespective of which universe we are in the fact is, that all that has a Beginning will have an End. It may or may not be to our liking but an End is inevitable. And if we remembered that, then perhaps we will be a little less miserable bunch. Now if we can get there with the help of Physics, then so be it. In the meantime there is a whole lot of in-between that needs our attention.

Destiny.

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Recently while traveling to a place which was fairly far flung from my imagination, strangest of thought struck me. There I was, looking at the beautiful landscape, enjoying the winter sun, breathing in fresh air, and for a moment I wondered, “How did I land here?”. This place was never a part of any plan, I did not even know it was there. But there I was, in a place that was not part of a plan but somehow connected by random dots of people, events, conversations somehow made me feel all of it to be a story and slightly unreal. It was one of those really light moments when you smile for a long time not knowing why you are smiling.

The randomness of being in that place made me think of “Destiny”.

Destiny, supposedly the one thing that no one escapes, it has the sound of certainty, it comes with an element of acceptance – acceptance of all the bad that happens to you (we are not necessarily thinking when the good is happening and saying, “Why me”?. Destiny comes with the weight or heaviness of a “forever”. People often take Destiny to be their destination, the end point, the point where everything comes to a halt, the point from where life will almost, always be the same. And most importantly Destiny is something that we all believe is completely out of our control.

But being in a beautiful place, a place I never imagined, or thought I will see, or the people I will meet, I thought that maybe destiny is not the end point, it is not a forever, instead it felt like a potent combination of my thoughts, my imagination, my passions, my impulses, my irrationalities, my idealism, my desires.

I thought while our destiny may lead us to places we never thought we would land, our imagination, our thoughts, our escapes, is what takes us to our destinies. Our paths cross places, people, we stop, we smile, we walk away to more thoughts, more imagination, more escapes and some other destiny.

Destiny, is nothing but a continuous series of magical moments.

The Cornerstone Of Our Life.

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Within the span of two days I watched a documentary called “One More Time with Feeling” about a singer called Nick Cave and some episodes of Westworld.

Now, while the two don’t connect either in plots or the nature of the narrative, both of them had one thought in common which when one starts to think about, it can take us on a journey to unravel a bit about ourselves.

In the beginning of the documentary, Nick Cave had said that, “Time is stretching right now…..”, and only comes back in the end to explain what he meant, he elaborates that Time is like an elastic, and while you keep stretching and moving away, it brings you back to that one point where it is tied, that point where you are tied. And that point is usually an incident. A turning point of our selves.

In Westworld, when one of the Robots realises that the reason why despite of all his memories being erased, one memory just wont go away as that memory is his Cornerstone. It is the whole thing his story is made around. And if that Cornerstone is taken away then there is nothing to him.

Incidentally, in both the cases, real and fictional (Nick Cave and Westworld) the incident or Cornerstone they refer to is the death of their son.

And that got me thinking of the Cornerstone around which my story is made, that incident that no matter how far I go from, pulls me right back (Thankfully, it is nothing as severe as in the case of Nick Cave).

In real life as opposed to Westworld, the Cornerstone of our life tends to change us forever, in ways we never thought we would, in experiencing the feelings which we never thought we can. And unfortunately, this cornerstone is mostly not a happy reminder. I know we all have one, that one incident which can still take us to indescribable pain -mind numbing, distant, yet so close a humdrum that one wonders if it ever happened at all, yet one feels so much loss that you know it did.

And there is no comparison on whose Cornerstone is the worst. It is the worst to whom it is happening. But here is the thing, despite of all that, we live, and after a while even engage with life and its joys. And despite of the pointlessness of this exercise called “Living” we will find a way. And in more cases than not, a new way comes along and it takes us to a beautiful place. And for few moments we may even forget that incident and be blissfully happy. And that feeling, the memory of that bliss is what makes us go on, the ability to feel joy and life again. That gives us hope and no, we don’t forget or disregard that Cornerstone, because we will always remain connected, after all that is the thing around which our story is made, but at the same time we will know that there are so many more feelings thrusting their way at us and we have no choice but to give in.

So, I guess if the Cornerstone of our lives has “Loss” written all over it the one thing we can do is find out how far does the elastic time takes us.

Old books & lovers.

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I want to meet you again, with the familiarity of re-reading an old favourite book.

You know the story, the beginning, the middle and the end.

But in between the lines detail is what has been slightly forgotten.

I want to smile again. At the sentence that I have read earlier, but it feels anew.

Because, even though my mind forgot the memory of those words,

that familiar glee never fails to reach my eyes.

You may say the same sentences or different ones,

but I know that I will still smile.

Because what I remember is not what you said,

because what I will always remember is how I felt when you speak.

I just want to sit quietly and hear you say things, random things,

because I want to remember your face,

your face that you are so conscious of,

when you look away because you are feeling shy,

when you purse your lips because you don’t know what to do if I cried.

Like I hold that old and familiar book,

I want to sit across the table and hold your face with my gaze

examine if the grey hair that you have,

is more than when we met last.

I want to smile wide and honest so you can see my wrinkles.

I want to inhale that smell of you like we smell old books.

They are musty and comforting.

I may find something new in the book this time.

We may find something new in the conversation.

But the feeling of familiar, comforts me for very long.

How can something so old and so familiar still give a feeling of new, fresh excitement?

How does that feeling remain?

Is it the time, is it the distance, or is it just the memory?

Memory that misses the details but only remembers parts of elation.

The parts where words across a page made me think and re-think.

The joy that was brought by that thought.

The words that made me discover a whole new me.

The words that added to “me” being who I am today.

That is why I want to meet you again.

To just watch while you speak.

Miss the details of your words. But remember that feeling which made me find who I am today.

That feeling which nudged me to test myself and see what it really meant to love.

That feeling which makes me remember not the details of your words but the intensity of my feelings.

I want to keep you like that book I am re-reading by my side, for a while. At least, just that while.