The Book
Nothing holds any meaning in life. We all die. Even as I am writing this article, the only thing that comes to my mind is the sheer futility of the efforts which will go into composing and articulating all my thoughts. The people who will never know me intimately, will take and then toss this collection of my life's philosophies in a corner for dust to have its way with it, while I decompose 6 feet under to become food for their food.Looking outward, it's very easy to see nothing worth anything. When the plane is as big as the universe, it's impossible for anything to be germane in any way.
However, when that same plane is shrunk to the size of a human mind, suddenly the slightest of cravings, slightest of nicks, the most trivial of quarrels seem as important as the yellow star shining above us.
The greatest hurdle in writing an article, preparing a speech or even finding new ways to kill other living species for a more comfortable life is "coherence". What should come first, what should come last and what should come in the middle, while everyone's rushing to the end so goddamn fast.
We live in a world which is asleep; a slumber which, if broken, could disintegrate everything the human population stands for - deceit, extermination, hunger for blood, sexual satiety and of course, sunglasses.
There's a rather famous song by The Doors called People are Strange. Now one could argue that every cynic is the 'stranger' as mentioned in that song and they wouldn't be entirely wrong. The fact of the matter is, every human being thinks with a different perspective - some shape their own from scratch, some adopt other people's perspectives and make a few adjustments. To top it all off, there's no standard 'good' or 'bad' life either.
It's a very confusing place to live, our planet. Where we learn to follow the rule of substance over form in most of the seemingly robotic, impersonal activities in life, but fail to adopt the same spirit in our daily lives.
Substance over Form, meaning the thing is more important than what that thing is made to look. However, we have industries worth billions, if not trillions, dedicated to nothing but the opposite.
So how do you live in such a confusing place without being manipulated by people to do things which benefit them and harm you?
How do you survive among a population dedicated to kill competition at the very outset?
How do you hold on to your individuality when each and every person is waiting with their brushes at the ready to paint you in the same colour as the subset you belong to - the colour may be real or false, but the demon of prejudices is one which will take this world apart really quickly. In fact, it's a great surprise it hasn't already.
My father always said this one thing which I always categorically discarded, "Keep a General Distance"
It sounded like he was trying to keep me from making any real friends, any real relationship. But that's not the case.. What he was trying to do is empower me with the kind of knowledge which will keep any and all human beings at bay, which could help me save myself from allowing others to hurt me.
And that's lesson number one to living in this place without blowing your head open with a cocked pistol
I have gone from being an altruist to a misanthrope to an altruist and back to being a misanthrope. I somehow always end up hating people no matter how much I try not to. When they speak most of them are boring. If not boring, they are ill-informed. If not ill-informed, they are just cocky. And if they are not cocky, they are patronising. At least, that's the kind of people I have met. Now, I agree that the word "misanthrope" entails that I hate all human beings on the planet but I don't mean it like that. I just hate the kind of people I have seen till now. You can't hate 7billion+ living beings because you can't know them all, as simple as that.
But this trait kills the one thing which can make life on earth beautiful, happy and tranquil - hope.
Hope that you will find the kind of people you'd gel with. Hope that one day, time will be right for you to do everything you want to and most importantly, Hope that one day you will know what you want to do. You will be able to define the kind of person YOU are and go on living in line with that.
I believe that my hatred is wrong but I don't know how to stop this. Maybe my mind has grown from sad to disappointed to shocked to angry and then, ultimately, to depressed because of lack of outlet for said anger, so fast that I don't seem to accept a chance that anything positive will come out of any endeavor of mine. So why try, right?
When you're the best, you have reason to continue being the best, when you're the worst, you have reason to force yourself to come up but when you're in the middle, you're stuck. The middle is like a quicksand which will never leave you your entire life. It's the addiction which cannot be rid of irrespective of how hard you try.. Unless you try impossibly hard (and of course people have done that but whatever)
As I am writing this, I should be preparing for my exams - preparing for my professional life but I am not. Somehow, this seems more important.
Somehow, being able to jot down my thoughts and give my brain the luxury of the thinnest of drains for negativity is more important than looking at a book, mugging shit up and reproducing it on a paper.
And that's the second lesson to living with a knife in your kitchen and not in your bathroom. Have an outlet.
Why I hate people so much is because everyone is so disinterested in the events which led to us being here. I have trouble sleeping every night because this is all that goes around in my brain and I feel that it will stay there forever.
You look at your computer, you play a song or a video. Do you ever wonder how a series of 0s and 1s is able to do such complex things for us?
Imagine a time when there was nothing but metal, and that too in ore-form in mines. How did that convert to super computers we have today?
We have languages. Full fledged rules of grammar, extensive vocabularies and mind boggling ways of using it. But have you ever wondered about the etymology of words?
Word - how does this word mean what it means, for eg.
There are SO MANY examples, from the evolution of math to the evolution of cartography.. Just take a minute to appreciate the art of cartography, for a second.
You are converting a 3D world so huge that you can't even contemplate its vastness in aggregation in a 2D drawing.. With accurate scales? How the fuck did we reach this level of cogitation?
And philosophy. This is the one which pinches the most. That's because no one cares to think about philosophy more than they will think about the death of some mosquito in another country. Philosophy has become the job of the person who can't do anything else. Money has taken over the world so mercilessly and so holistically that nothing else can surpass its importance.
Do we take time to sit and understand what gives money it's value? Where are our values, our principles? Or is it that the only principles we need are the principles of accounting for keeping a track of our money?
There was a time when philosophy was the job of the brightest minds of any civilizations. Friedrich Nietzsche, Plato, Socrates, Machiavelli there were HUNDREDS of them.. And they wrote books which are relevant even to this day.
Why can't we think like them and make our own books for progeny? Why has everything in this world come down to copying from somewhere else?
And this is the third and one of the most important lessons to be learnt in your adult life if you don't want suffocating days and nights for the rest of your life.
The death of curiosity, marks the start of adult life... For a majority of people.
There are a few extremely admirable geniuses who have been able to keep their sense of curiosity intact, but for a large majority of people this is the blatant truth. Because no one likes questions, no one likes to be bothered with thinking about something which may affect their constricted vision of the world around them.
We know through science that earth revolves around the sun, but in the minds of people, we are still 1000s of years in the past where their life represents earth and the world around them, the universe.. And the universe revolves around the Earth like it always has.
Our religious beliefs are arrogant, our 1000 year old traditions clearly not in line with the calendar and yet, we keep on going. Keep on following things done in the past like mindless robots programmed to do nothing more than obey, follow.
Its time for a change and that change is happening in many many places across the globe but they are very small compared to the unproductive, operational part of our species that it's like filling a sea of wonder with the elixir of wisdom, one drop at a time. We don't see it, we don't feel it in our daily lives.
Maybe there will be a day when I will meet someone who will share my sense of wonderment. Maybe I won't. Till now, the experience has been pretty disheartening and hope levels are pretty low.
Going back to my first point - "Nothing matters" - I'd like to end this by saying that Nothing matters only because we have made everything that's worth mattering, irrelevant in our confined, constricted, robotic, never changing and never ending routine.
Essay by Jalaj Soni
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Written on 2018-01-09 at 16:07
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