Nighttime Ferocity.

You wake suddenly, an inexplicable panic welling from within. You open your eyes and gently make a grab for the cell-phone beside the lamp, ambivalently noting the curious time of about 4am that stares from the screen. No it wasn’t a nightmare, nothing of that sort really. Like you said, just an inexplicable sense of fear that ejected you from slumber, leaving you supine with eyes towards the ceiling wondering about its source. It has been some time since you last dreamt.

It has been a couple of years since the last lecture wherein you learnt (in a somewhat detached way you thought) that individuals in developed countries like yours have a rather high life expectancy whilst enjoying low morbidity rates, the product of stable policies and first-rate infrastructure. There was a subtle sense of comfort in the learning of such, the knowledge of which also acting as insidious encouragement for those present to, once again, relish in some warped form of nationalistic pride while subconsciously affecting sympathy for those with lesser plights. In this regard, what you have seen is profoundly dissimilar from the rosy portrait so expounded to you.

This is from where your panic stems. The recent spates of deaths or mortal afflictions coming down on those close in your socio-familial circle have been unmitigated in their capacity to bear on you the reality of your mortality. It dawns on you that no one can actually be spared the insane randomness of which nature partakes, leading to the obvious conclusion that your chances of affliction – natural or accidental – are about just as high as the person next to you; this despite all the nonchalant complacency you and your likes have engaged in. It isn’t exactly a terribly fortunate thing that you could potentially become a statistic of some malady, but your main concern here is not this, though that be a story in itself. What is making you feel the way you are, and were, is the idea that should anything to this effect be realised, you would face an immense regret, almost profound, in relation to all the opportunities you deigned to take, the opportunities you wanted to but did not create, the things that should have been said but never were (or for that matter, said too late), the emotions that should have been expressed but never too were (or, also for that matter, should have been more explicitly so). You caution me not to misunderstand.

Your recent living philosophy of a life without regrets (how lofty!) is relevant not in the sense that you would have to experience everything life can offer, but relevant insofar as you take the opportunities and chances afforded you. And that is precisely what you have not done. There are many similarities between your life and a game of chess – too calculated and planned, too cautious because of the fear of missing a footing. But in doing so you have missed the potential joy should you have lent yourself to a greater degree of spontaneity, risk-taking, passion-following (the irony of it all!). You have let go of the precious things that were already in your palm, or could have been so had you merely stretched to reach for them.

This is why you wake at 4 in the morning pondering the unfulfilled or intentionally suppressed wishes. These recent events are a strong imperative for you to seize what ought be. That should resolve the matter. Carpe diem, place no trust in tomorrow. Or so they say. Now go back to sleep. This is funny in a curious way. What’s our life expectancy, again?

Served on a Palate for You.

It has been an unmistakably long while and this one fine night you receive a message from her, which did little other than to arouse the whole violence of your passions once again (this little weakness of yours!). From where you had left off, then with threads of concealed exasperation intertwined with prospects of her elusiveness, it suddenly seemed that not all was gone. You have a wild imagination I’d say, though like you, I cannot pinpoint what exactly made you feel more than what was necessary even for the throes of the deepest friendship. Even for all going on that escapes your knowledge. After the occasional roughing up, I’d second your decision for passiveness. After all, there is so much you can do within your pathetic mortal means; I suggest leaving the weightier stuff like your destiny to your Lord.

These days have been the height of ludicrousness. There have been plenty of individuals whose unmitigated egotism and/or hedonism make for a splendid study of satire, plenty of happenings that -in the words of the esteemed Aravin Adiga- should be treated nothing more than “a f-king joke”, plenty of internal emotional outbursts that threaten to overwhelm. For all the joy and thanksgiving that you display, I do understand (or at least I think I do) why you succumb to that occasional loneliness and despair. It seems to me that hope is the single-most important factor in driving and inspiring an individual. Now let me attempt to explain your illness. You have been thinking and rationalising too much, leading to your frequent so-this-is-it musings. Can I take the liberty to suggest that you have unresolved issues and frustrations. Did you say yes? You said too that you were disappointed with how these almost-two decades of life had turned out, (I imagine the forlorn look) as you missed opportunities out of a brand of sheer apathy. There was just so much more that could possibly have been done! Next, your current work. I totally understand when you said that it was not so much about what lessons the work you did had to offer but the prospects and its role in the larger picture that mattered. Your current vocation offers you much training and unique experiences that you most certainly gain a degree of utility from. But the point is, as you argued, that you do not see where or how it features in your life. How can menial questions like where your next lesson will be held, or how you will present your next lesson, ever compare to weightier questions like what your career will be in a decade’s time, or even how your spouse will look or be like! Then comes the people, appendages to this conspiracy to run the machinery of hypocrisy and hedonistic intention. Admittedly not all are, but somehow you fail to identify with many of them, leading to relationships that are outwardly warm but superficially so. And thus your loneliness.

I note with interest your response. You have harnessed the groups of people whom you lecture to (day after meaningless day) as experiments of your social ideology. There is some utility to be gained from observing the responses of people reacting spontaneously to your crafted stimuli. Your first thesis, the validity of which you proved very quickly (that people do learn faster under stress), is just a preface to the many more hypotheses to be formulated in time to come. I agree that this will suffice as an indulgence for now.

In any case, I do think you have issues of unresolved conflict eating away at your felicity. You are undecided on many standpoints, a circumstance made worse by your incessant weighing of the merits and pitfalls of each position. Perhaps such things as values should be left to intuition and instinct instead of trying to adopt a position that you have reasoned, but inconsistent with your true nature. The baseline is that everything is at tipping point as you go through a stage of conflict and vagueness. I certainly hope that this will be a phase in passing as it would make for the most untenable long term position to be in. Perhaps looking to the future as a beacon of brighter hope and adopting a stance not of anticipation and enthusiasm (as it most certainly will be met with disappointment of the gravest kind) but one of acceptance will tide you through.

Tell me, what else will do the trick?

About Gaining

Whatever despondency could mean to the teen of not fifteen, it certainly emanated from him, who had, in response to what was likely his mother’s rejection of his proposition, let off a cry – something to the tune of not being able to go without the slightly-more-expensive tidbit he pointed to. What was starkly striking was the mum’s reasoning, that ‘poorer families’ like theirs had to trim such consumption. It was surprising then, that she gave in without much further ado.

Somehow, two levels of insight dawned on me – first, the family in relation to society. A surface analysis proved the mum logical. The poor will want to consume relatively cheaper substitutes because the savings from the price difference will make for a large proportion of the price of another budget good. This is compared to the small proportion the difference will be for a more-expensive good, causing the rich to be indifferent to price and not change consumption habits.

Deeper thought brought me to the next level: our confused aim to seek most satisfaction for ourselves with whatever limited resources we have. The common perception might be that satisfaction is gained through quantity – as with the mum’s hope that the savings would allow for more purchases – as opposed to quality. I felt heartened on knowing the mum’s ultimate choice. It is clear to me that should the mum’s aim of saving from cheaper goods is to make more purchases elsewhere to increase the satisfaction gained, she fulfilled this aim by buying a good that gave the son most satisfaction. That should be the aim of utilizing resources – increase satisfaction, not quantity.

A meaningful life is about fulfilling priorities, which we should set within a clear framework of what we want, and not confuse the means with the end.

Tragedy of It All.

You have severely underestimated emotional costs in relation to the social experiments that generate it. In pitting yourself against the inevitability of fate, and in attempting to satisfy a willful curiosity to second-guess the reaction someone’s psyche instinctively produces to your carefully crafted stimulus, you have been utterly misguided in your estimate of your emotional sensitivity — the ramification of which is the current gloom which encroaches on your former felicity. You cannot figure out how, or why, the structural integrity of the link between your state-of-mind and those whom your advances have produced the backlash, suddenly became so strong.

You tell yourself, never again. You personally resolve to be more cautious and exercise a more conservative form of discretion in future. You subconsciously make proactive attempts to downplay the violence of your sentiments by seeking solace in diversity, engaging continuously in affairs which capture your wild imagination. You immerse yourself, in a bid to escape a heavy-heart, in the belief that you do not care, need not care because your intent was all along innocuous, that what is of ultimate importance is your belief and confidence in yourself. I wish to point out to you: the people who claim so are conventionally those who are making desperate attempts to redeem themselves. The people who claim so are conventionally those who are trying to escape some form of responsibility.

What are you trying to redeem yourself from? What responsibility are you trying to abandon?

Upon My Wish

There is some excitement at the prospect of friends finally becoming undergraduates. It suddenly seems, much for long being in a sheltered education system, there is more control over yourself now. And, they start to bite off larger pieces of an ambivalent reality that tastes different on different tongues.

When is my turn?
–
The immensity of the emotional gratification that some have the capacity to evoke in you is marvellous.

Do we not all live for moments like these.

To you, Reverend.

(July 1`08)
Dear Archbishop,

Excepting the confirmation ceremony where I first felt your touch, tonight was the closest I came, and would ever come to you (oh the finality of it all). Somehow, then, during confirmation, the sentiment that coursed through me wasn’t by any measure similar to the ethereal numbness, so to speak, that I felt as my gaze roamed about that ashen body of yours, set against the portrait of you in-front of your resting place, a stark contrast which I thought screamed the surreality of it all. I reckon it was my perception of your moral standing, that many years ago, that widened the emotional distance at a rate inversely proportional to our physical distance.

But tonight, you, livid with lifelessness and effectively becoming an exquisite contemplation of the mortality and fallibility of us all, suddenly seemed so much easier to identify with — your concerns and all.

I pray for those whom you once lent spiritual support to, and for those whose dependence on the memory of you still endures. I pray for the eternity of your legacy, as you more-than-once brought this church into the universal fight against the unorthodox Liberalism you saw as a lamentable floutation of the Canon. However effective in immediacy, perhaps these efforts will prevent us from succumbing to our insatiable appetite for straining the ends of our morality (whatever the word could mean), and justifying this as a necessary modernisation of our ethic, I suspect perhaps as a prelude to our efforts to bear no guilt, if ever we bore.

And I pray that the ideological battles we wage daily, can be won not by coercion, by with the inspiration this world could do more with.

Yours truly.

Impotence of the Self.

There is something disconcerting about the way people in the regimental environment, whose ambit and jurisdiction you now find yourself under, behave. This is tanned by the mild intrigue and awe excited in you when considering both the fallibility and strengths of the system. Awe? Alright, for lack of a better word.

I fully empathise, when you introspect and become aware of the disgust you feel, prompted by the effortless malice and extraordinary sense of self-preservation that characters from a certain hierarchical group within this organisation exhibit. It is owing to name, that they are to be respected; It is this name that legitimises both the degree of authority they hold, and whatever acts they engage in, that add mileage to the advancement of the organisation’s, and ultimately, their interest. Well, respect they do get, but you do not think, in the full sense of the word! It is a respect borne out of a common fear over the malice they are capable of, and the ease with which the intent behind such can be triggered, should this class of characters perceive subversion. In their own terms of course. Against all the better-sensibilities of the higher-ups in the organisation, linguistics that lend themselves to profanity are utilised without reason, without rationale, therein negating whatever legitimacy the usage of such could possibly have. You certainly weren’t unreasonable to denigrate the use of such expressions, if not demonstrated within rational limits, for legitimate purposes. Do they speak like that in front of their wives? In front of their children?, you wonder. You have believed that when a man reaches a certain age, the onus is set upon him to unequivocally demonstrate whatever principles are required to constitute the good man, the man who works for society’s interests. Any man deserving of the title should be the model he wants to groom his children into. Do not their children, spouses and parents feel ashamed of them, with the knowledge that this man gains utility from such self-deprecation? The tell-tale signs are characteristic, aren’t they — maximising the authority and power to which their rank in the organisation alludes, and the detachment with which they play their cards such that they minimise the possibility of any blame being apportioned to them. Any man deserving of the title shouldn’t have to be afraid of his closests feeling ashamed of him.

I try to warn you that, in your riot against the characters of such men, you might have unwittingly committed a logical fallacy. Unwittingly, you might have slipped into a mode of some New-Age Relativism, where there is desperate want, for objective criteria in judgement. Think about it. Do not the people of commerce also exhibit the same symptoms? Looking behind their backs and attempting to maximise their economic utility! But you say what sets these people apart, from the example of the people of commerce, is the ease with which they gain their authority, which thus neither qualifies their abilities nor their real power — that is, the power to inspire. It only, and simply, qualifies their outward allegiance to the organisation and its cause.

You looked at the mechanisms of this organisation and came to the conclusion that, for all the idiosyncrasies, these people are still integral for the organisation’s success. This particular organisation is a peculiar one. Its success depends largely on what this group of people can provide, out of the necessity of their personal finances, and hence their willingness to align themselves to the cause of the organisation, whatever their true inclinations are. It is thus no wonder they are quick and exceedingly stringent in their enforcement of whatever standards the organisation imposes. They do forget — or perhaps are not aware — that standards are meant to be guides, just like laws, amenable to change or modified application to suit the circumstances. Ironically, this makes them part of the backbone of the organisation’s image.

You are done talking about this, because the value of any discourse will just lie in prompting within you an insatiable desire to attempt the impossible — implement change. You are right, unfortunately; the peculiarity of this organisation renders the attempts of individuals towards change absolutely ineffectual, impotent. This is unlike the community projects you undertake. I too am done listening. I have listened, along with you, to your friends, acquaintances as they become vociferous in their similarly aligned views.

With such a consideration, what are the hallmarks of the good man?

Reaction. As a Part of Your Rejection.

Having been spending some time drafting an appeal to the institution you applied – but was rejected – to, you are suddenly acutely aware of the indignance, profound sadness that was by-product of the reflection. In the first place, why do you have to spend time on it? You are indignant at your failure because you are immersed in the genuine belief that should this system, whose whims you had to subject yourself to, been genuinely meritocratic, had this system lent itself to more of what you’d label fair-play, you wouldn’t have to be in this current position, experiencing the current sentiment. The profound regret courses through your veins as you contemplate the possible path that you could take, or have taken, should you choose to embark on the journey whose start-point is that institution — I correct; if you have had the ability to choose. You know that there are greener pastures elsewhere, options that currently avail themselves to you, options that you can’t help believing – and you want to believe – are meritocratic and fair-play, I reckon because such suggestions are affirmations of yourself. You have much time to go before having to make a decision, of course by then, informed by considerations of the opportunities that you can access at the different start-points and similarly, informed by considerations of the lost opportunities that might open up room for regret as you embark on whatever path you choose. But that dilemma wasn’t what fascinated me; after all, everyone has, in the course of life, to draw conclusions from his/her observations and finally make life-changing decisions. And after a while, you’d realise that a lot of people have the same methods of drawing those conclusions and making the decisions they later try hard to convince themselves were in their best interests, oh certainly so, considering the information available at that point of time. Your tabloids call it a crisis in mid-life, don’t they? What do they know?

What I found fascinating was your fervent attempts to avoid being a function of your failure. You have done it before, the egotism in you demanding some personal detachment from your previous failures and your imbued cultural ethic demanding a modesty for your successes. The failures — at least some of them –, with the sweet love of God, you’d later come to call blessings in disguise. Indeed they were. And it is these incidences that lend some degree of legitimacy to the notion that you occasionally entertain, that this particular instance is just another blessing in disguise. How can it be, you think. The implications of such a failure are profound. They affect those whose sentiments are a function of you, for example, your family, your closest friends. For example, those whom you care about and those you affectionately want to care about. You have, since young, held this path as an epitome of what you’d want to achieve, not until recently, where your increased exposure to other pastures caused you to question the legitimacy of that mentality. This is why deep down, a great part of you so wants to be affirmed, be recognised as eligible for entry into that institution, be admitted. This is also why you now experience what you currently feel.

You are a master of facades. You’re right, I feel, in thinking that only via placing hope and interest — or for that matter, appearing to do so — in supposedly greener pastures will those coming within the circle of your influence feel less disconcerted. It makes sense. They will think: Because you feel that your interests are best serviced by your attendance elsewhere, your current rejection will not count for much to you; Accordingly, you will not be as negatively affected, and because you are content, they too are. But you forget that the trajectory of reality often doesn’t coincide with the trajectory of the extrapolations you calculate within the confines of your head. People have their expectations of you. I think they do gain a certain utility from having you choose a certain path, but you do realise don’t you, that you and them are one. Their disappointment melds into yours, and slowly brings out whatever disappointment and sadness you had hastily buried. I suggest you stay rational, as you have much of the time been, and consider your pieces with equal gravity. If anything, this episode has moved you closer to realising that this option is indeed very real, very possible. I will not be surprised if you wonder whether this is God’s way of making you treat this option with greater gravity and equanimity, instead of the casual neglect you once doused it with. In other words, your failure this round has made this option elusive, thus enhancing its attractiveness to you. Conventional wisdom holds true here: Loss makes the heart fonder. This is why you are now doing the appeal.

For them. And yourself.

Misalignment.

It hasn’t escaped my notice that you’re growing increasingly accustomed to another kind of life, the kind that you had actively and conscientiously tried to avoid not too long ago. The kind that detracted from the work-ethic you wanted to raise on your pedestal, but wasn’t really quite sure whether the rationale was adequately well-reasoned. If anything, your partial and gradual capitulation towards it perhaps demonstrates the uncertainty you harbour over the purpose, or even the need, to align yourself with that idealised ethic of yours.

I suspect the reasons for your recent change run deeper.

Firstly, notice, your mood-variations increasingly lend themselves to the emotional vicissitudes and sentiments of others, especially those to whom your heart acknowledges a certain degree of intimacy. I guess you once could fathom the occasional or casual occurrence of such, but never could you imagine that the construction of your goals would one day yield to these elements. Then again, be realistic. We are all a function of each other, if you haven’t till now noticed. I have a hypothesis: perhaps we are all constructed in such a way where we gain most utility from engaging with those around us, instead of mindlessly chasing goals fabricated on loose fundamentals and time-unproved assumptions that we, with exuberant faith in our analytical abilities, hold to be true. But how can it be, you wonder. It is obvious that you tire due to your attempts to reach out — recently your zest to meeting new acquaintances has taken a backward step — to which the only conclusion I reach is, paradox. This world tires you, yet you are an active agent of its constructs. Look at your high-falutin goals! The question of who prompted you to formulate these goals is as relevant as the question of why you are pursuing them.

And yes, why are you? I have two plausible explanations. One, you are inflexible. Or at least to the extent where you require copious amounts of time to rationalise and reason, more so than the others who live their lives like a passive chess player. They can never think of manipulating, trussing their opponent, and move their pieces only as a response. You move antagonistically, think too hard about the outcome and how to get there. It is logical — Since you place huge importance on your end-goal, you think hard when the time calls for a revision of your values, the effect of which is a reluctance to change. Two, these goals can function as an alternative to those that are a function of other people, be it their happiness, their successes etcetera. It is your escape route should you one day decide that you no longer possess the emotional energy necessary for the realisation of that kind of goals. Do you really think you can switch modes that easily? You do have an innate self that screams itself blue with indignance whenever you attempt to switch. Perhaps your meeting of her has awakened some dormant force within you. You changed from there, but I can’t be sure, yet.

You now promise yourself that you will always bear in mind who you are. That is good. But only to the extent that it allows you to preserve whatever positive qualities you have, not to detach you from reality and social necessity. Yes. Use your outward confidence to thrash that occasional inward insecurity.

And remain right on track.

De Novo.

Moved once again. Historical revision. Sentimental visitations. You can find greener pastures elsewhere.

As always.