Confessions of An Existentialist

I think he saved us all a time or two. What a film, and what a writer!

You should get flowers more often, the flowers you'll never see, touch or feel. Keep them safe, folded, wrapped, and cuddled in pages of that book you love but never read because it's gifted from someone you dearly love.  What if you eventually end up not liking it? Or worse, hating it? But the emotions that the book carries stay unscathed and unburdened because they're all in your heart, right? Why does it matter what's in it? I digressed. Apologies. Where was I?  Flowers. The flowers, yes. So why get flowers you'll never see, touch or feel? That's the whole point of them, we're told. Well, I see flowers, as memories. The more you touch them, the more you bother them with your inept comprehensive abilities, you end up wounding them. You leave behind your little dirty scraps at the rough edges of those flowers in a way they lose their integrity, their incessant powerful fragrance that could save you from your own self. I've seen them light fires, hypnotize couples into dancing in love. I've seen them on graves helping people to talk to their darlings, on sacred places to talk to their Gods and I've seen them as bridges to the worlds unknown, to light revolutions, celebrations, and to break unresolved silences.  So what do you do? You lock them inside that book you'll never open to read. Because it's a precious gift that you might hate if you open to see the carcass of your memories - dried, withered, and forgotten to leave you alone... in silence, as the last known successor of those flowers that were long dead but you just didn't know that yet.

Maybe God sends us with wings and it's life that takes away the sky from us?

The year was tough. Even beyond the obvious reasons, it was a tough year. And it becomes almost an embarrassment to crib about your own struggle when the whole world around is crashing in on itself. So, I wouldn't even dare. But looking at this year's silver linings, that amid all the hopelessness, we got through, when we thought we wouldn't. And even if it didn't come easy, these worst of times did bring out the best of people, sometimes with capes and most times without. But my disappointment was still in having a good year when everything around me was in such a dire state. And my usual good might be a little different from the conventional good. It was a good year for the lessons I learnt and unlearnt, the chapters I read and unread. Sure, it took me a lot of setbacks, a lot of punches were thrown at me and the bruises were made, majorly internally. But the struggle was worth it. Who wouldn't trade being good people for being bad together? Who wouldn't like a misdiagnosis and finally meeting the person they like? An endless collateral beauties? Since I believe every struggle gives you a lesson, my lesson was to see life in retrospect. The struggles that you think are too big would eventually lose their power. The sadness that you think is too real to fade, well it eventually would. Time is fickle, yet powerful. Trust it. Important thing to remember is that in the long run, nothing really matters but you. Almost everything loses its meaning but what remains is you. What stands tall is you. What survives is you. And the handful of those lovely people around you. Explore different suns, invent new beginnings and wander into the unknown. Don't fear the repercussions of everything you do. Look beyond to the collateral beauty. But at all times, stay true to yourself and never lose sight of the person you've to face every day in the mirror. And most importantly, be kind. Wish you a year full of realised hopes and dreams. A year full of goodness and health. Happy New Year folks!

I saw people sharing stories, celebrating Christmas, while also seeing the faded reflection of my sulky face. I don't envy their celebrations. I was never born that way. I never fancied that high octane alchohol-ridden, foot-tapping lifestyle. What I envy is the innocence in their laughter. Maybe it's because they never stepped out of their bubble or they stepped out and finally reached where they wanted to while I got stuck somewhere in between, in search of a purpose. Maybe, there is no purpose at all and life is not really a puzzle. And everyone else has got it all figured out. Maybe living in your safe bubble is the answer to all mysteries of life. Maybe life is indeed a series of closing doors. Who knows? Who cares? Anyway, I didn't want to post a gloomy letter on a Christmas eve. So I waited for your celebrations to get over. Merry Christmas, everyone! Hope you enjoyed your beers and chocolates.

"For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us." - Charles Bukowski

Rule 12: Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street. - 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson

Dear K, I have few questions for you. Starting with the usual, how have you been? Have the scars healed? Have they stopped tearing you apart for nothing? And do you still look as beautiful as the last time I saw you? Sometimes when I listen to people speak about you, I know for a fact that you still look as beautiful as ever. I know for a fact that your eyes sparkle as magnificently as ever. I know for a fact that you still smell like heaven. But if I read between the lines, I sense your caretakers are not taking very good care of you. I can sense your wounded beauty. I can sense the tears in your dazzling eyes. And I can sense your paradise being breached upon by the rotting fires of hell. But I’m not writing to you just for questions. I want to give some answers too. While I am not the one who’s going to save you from this hell fire, I believe the next time Gods visit you, you’ll be a new Paradise, a resurrected Paradise. I want you to know that you will come out of all this storm like a Phoenix. Your soul would be returned to you soon so that you don’t have to care about looking beautiful to the outside world, not anymore. Soon, people would realize that you’re like a raging volcano waiting to erupt, a burning iceberg waiting to be explored in its entirety. This letter is for hope. The hope for a better future, a better future for YOU! A future where you aren’t being toyed with. A future where you’re admired not just for your beauty but for your soul that’s at peace. All I’m asking from you is a hold on tight. Don’t lose the battle just yet. Let the mere mortals try as much as they can to make you lose yourself but you don’t quit. Remember, the Gods are in our favour. And they won’t let us lose. Not now. Not ever. Remember. You’re a home to the wandering souls. And you’ll always be. Yours truly, D.

Man, Schopenhauer would write the best fortune cookies.

"Look, if I have to explain the meaning of existence, then it isn't funny anymore."

I always found that one of the biggest issues with the self-help niche is toxic and dogmatic positivity; the idea of constantly looking at the bright side and shielding yourself from the negativity of life is, at least to me, not the way forward. This world is painful, confusing and horrifying, but it's also beautiful, awe-inspiring and breathtaking and we need to embrace all of it in its entirety.

There are kings, there are rebels, there are winners, there are losers. And then everything boils down to the good and the bad, the blacks and the whites. But essentially, a world so complex doesn't really work that way, does it? If it actually did, we wouldn't have been such scary insecure beings. Deep inside we all know the world doesn't work in binaries. Heck, even our normal social relationships are filled with ambivalence to the brim. But we keep searching for scathing labels till we find them. And then those labels comfort us, keep us sane and away from the fears of the unknown. You see internally, we're all feeble hearts that are constantly in search for validation that the path we're walking on is absolutely right. And the moment we get a validation check from our society, yay, we walk just fine. And that's why the society uses its power over us, to tame us and probably that's alright to keep things in order. But as a famous line goes, "chaos is order yet undeciphered". From the surface it's just another pretentious line looking for attention. But if you read it through, yes, chaos does look like a form of unresolved order. From religion to our governments that rule us, chaos has been at the epicenter. They all have a chaotic history from which they evolved and then used it to control us. And now, they use their exact chaotic ideologies to create order. But we can't blame them, can we? You can't imagine a story without a narrative, a painting without strokes or a society without order. A society without order would just feel like a rambling circus without a ringmaster, right? Man is a social animal and his existence caters to the society he lives in. And maybe that's where our obsession with extremities began. And now we don't invite anyone in our herd if they fail to fall in our blacks and whites or refuses to fit in our basic definition of labels. And that's where art comes to the rescue. It talks about tints and shades of colors, while our society keeps us busy searching for the exact matches. It has multiple perspectives, multiple tellings to a story we've always known. It doesn't follow a template designed by primitve men with long white beards and doesn't even try to acknowledge it just because it's ancient. Rather it keeps trying until its own perspectives finally find their way into the template of labels and then proceeds to design a new one. And that's how art keeps thriving in a society obsessed with its prehistoric glory. And that's why its existence matters the most for a society that needs to grow and not burn out in its own glorious fire.

"It is a wise father that knows his own child."

Didn't I tell you? I walked out to get out of here What did I search for? Oh, somebody just like you

Truth is a beautiful word. Sometimes it can define justice, morality, clarity, sincerity and other times it can just mean nothing. People throw it around too often. They run for it, they obsess over it. They make it a manifestation of their own insecurities, prejudice, bias and everything they have become in their lives. And when that happens, the truth gets beaten so many times that it changes forms, from one single truth it changes to many truths and each truth differs from the other and carries the burden of its own prejudices. Then this beautiful word becomes hideous. It becomes scary. It becomes consuming. And the real sin is committed when it changes completely and becomes something we call 'lie.' But it has been said so many times that all people with common biases start hailing it as the one sole truth. And then somewhere between the struggles, the truth consumes itself or rather we consume it, either way, we start celebrating this lie and this lie becomes our new truth, our gospel truth and our new God.

Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'

Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?

I've often wondered what makes a character like Rust Cohle connect with its audience. I mean he's a pessimist (a realist as he likes to be called), he's a snob and his hatred for the society is deep rooted. He has his reasons too. And they're pretty damn strong. Today I came across "boyslockerroom" - a year old trend that was on different social media handles. It's mostly a bunch of 14-16 year olds or maybe be older, that you can comfortably call sick misogynists objectifying women for fun as if they're entitled to it. Then I see what makes a character like Cohle human and his idealogies grounded and deep rooted in reality. Society has its ways to sicken you to the bone and sometimes makes you question the whole existence of it. Like we celebrate successful people and totally ignore what made them, society actually doesn't want its individuals to dream big but keep being a cog in the machine so that it keeps functioning the way it functions. Any anomaly in the system causes problems but if that anomaly brings/ achieves something big, society itself starts celebrating it. Now this works both ways, we want rapists to be hanged because we "see" them but we totally ignore and even "unsee" the process that made them. An Instagram group promoting misogynistic and even disturbing criminal behaviour is a testament of everything we see around us or have been seeing around us and doing the one thing we do best: IGNORE AND MOVE ON. Now when these bunch of sickos become rapists then we see all the hue and cry, and when the damage is done, the society seeks revenge... The extreme vigilante behaviour of "burning them to ashes" or "castration" comes to surface but when only its ordinary version was necessary, the society chooses to stay silent because it would cause ripples in a "healthy" functioning society. The society itself is cultivating this generation of sickos who are out in the open, thanks to free access to internet, celebrating misogyny with each other as a part of their social media recreation. The society tells them it's normal and they can always have the option of finding their validation of "good guy" by joining candle marches for rape victims later. And yes, because "FUCK FEMINISM", right? What's worse is while most of humanity is struggling to maintain its existence, the sick minds continue to function. We thought all of our misery, our art, our solitude would eventually save us and bring us closer to a better world but once in a while it's always good to look at the harrowing image of the society. This should be our own reality check. Like Cohle would say, time is a flat circle. Everything we have done or will do, we will do over and over and over again - forever. So, yes, we're probably in a vicious trap we'd never get out of. We'd go back to normalizing rape culture and create hue and cry when it's too late.

"By all evidence, we are in the world to do nothing." Artwork by Vincent Van Gogh.

Some people want to become Jedi, Some want to join Starfleet. Some want to Travel with Time Lords, While others battle for the Throne in the Great Game. Some seek adventure in the Shire, While others fight on the battle front of Narnia. Some wish to attend Hogwarts, while others remain youthful in Neverland. And then there is us, those fans who simply want to go back. Back to the Island...