Vincent van Gogh · Wheat-Field-with-Cypresses-(1889)-Vincent-van-Gogh-Met.jpg · Wikimedia Commons

Dec 2021

Notes from 2021

This year has been a year of intense personal battles. I've had my share of suffering, my share of smiles, and I, for sure, made some beautiful memories too.

I wouldn't have imagined I'd have been this way two, or three years ago, even if I did imagine, I'd always wished for a better outcome. But an "outcome" is always preceeded by a process, maybe, it has been the process that I've dreaded all along.

I wrote poetry, made some songs, wrote a few decent pieces, hoping it would cure the constant itch that I feel right beneath my ribs, on the surface of my heart. An itch that moves as I breathe, eases as I sleep, becomes monstrous when I think, and hurts when I feel. It has become the marker to my being, to the point where the itch and my heartbeat are indistinguishable.

You might imply that I'm trying to cure my heartbeat, maybe, I really am.

Despite the suicidal undertones of that statement, I'd rather say, I'm trying to find a cure for this existence, and sometimes, to cure a disease, you just have to manage the symptoms till they disappear. Ring a bell?

So what makes this existence sick?

pain? betrayal? poverty? pretense? political conspiracies? systems? regimes? greed? hunger? what if existence itself is evil?

maybe all of it, maybe, none of it.

To me, it is apathy, Insincerity, and ego.

A sincere apology for a mistake, without empathy, an empathetic conversation with someone grieving, without sincerity, and an empathetic, and sincere effort towards "making it all better" , which only serves your ego, go nowhere.

In an Ideal world, everyone would have been capable of balancing all three, and I still believe we are, but before these ideals could take a central position in our psyche, we become victims to the illnesses of this world, and like a good immune system, these deeper responsibilities give you an itch. I'm still itching.

You could either fight the disease, or become it. In strict Freudian terms, my ego and superego are conflicted.

I dread the process of its resolution.

Because, somewhere deep down, I know faith in human goodness isn't my superego dominating me, my instincts tell me otherwise, deep down, I want to have hope.