About life

These two lines manifest a pseudo-scientific, metaphysical reality:

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I’ve seen life with such proximity
that every face appears strange and grotesque now

As you go on experiencing life, two things begin to happen; everything becomes so lucid and perceivable that you love life just for being alive. There are no doubts, there are no confusions and hence there are no emotional and physical catastrophes. Life becomes a mixture of tranquility and enjoyable adventure. Take for instance the martial arts experts. They can maintain sangfroid even during most trying combat situations because they completely understand what’s going on and thus know in advance what their opponent’s next move is going to be. There is sometimes so much understanding of life that we become either saints or spiritual gurus.

The other thing that can happen is, every new experience, every new insight leaves us clueless, frustrated and angry. The more we understand life, the less we find it livable. We begin to resent the mere existence of it. We suffer from the “Big deal! I already know this so lay off” syndrome. So much understanding makes us cynical. It seems everybody is out to betray us. Even small objects create giant shadows on our walls of agnosticism.

Understanding life should obviously culminate into a deeper respect of its perplexities and the solutions it decants into the simmering pots of our dilemmas. The learning experience is sometimes very painful and can prove fatal if not handled with caution, but we can always use the overall result to our advantage. First of all, when we observe life closely, we know why things happen — there happening is an amalgamation of many factors. Once we know why they happen, there is less of anger and frustration, and more of analysis. Let’s revert to this song for instance.

Haven’t seen the movie, and I haven’t even seen the video of the song, but most sad songs in Hindi movies deal with the interminable saga of heartbreak. So the character who sang this song must have realized this overwhelming truth (the life seeming grotesque, etc.) after he is ditched by the heroin (of course it is a misconception, as it is proven in the end). As long as he sings the song it is well and good — he is being creative after all. But it would be alarming if he turned destructive towards himself, or towards the heroin, or towards that unassuming street dog that just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. A session of analysis is what this guy needs.

Every betrayal, to be frank, leaves you wiser. In close proximity if life seems distorted to this guy then there is a great chance he suffers from myopia. Proximity to life gives you a sense of clarity. If a person betrays you and leaves you for another, no matter how much it hurts, if at that time you understand life, if your grasp of the dealings of the world is stronger, you know you are better off without this person. You should be thankful that this person left you. Agreed that so much has been invested — emotionally, and these days financially — but still, why suffer more loss? At a later stage this person could have cost more. Your dreams are shattered, it is understandable, but then, if you know life, you know that dreams can be infinite in this world and in this life. Life is so unpredictable that you don’t even know what can happen tomorrow. Unless you’re totally a gone case — fatewise — then every bad person that goes from your life leaves the space vacant for a nicer person; it’s been my personal experience. The same holds true for situations? Every adversity renders muscle power to your intellect and diligence. The old adage that fire purifies gold is so true.

So I firmly believe the first point I mentioned: that your understanding of the world shouldn’t make you cynical; it should make you wiser; it should make you emotionally strong. This is not something that you can learn in a day, a week, or even in a month. It may take years and years of conscious effort. But once you understand the world, you become invincible.