What is this enormous responsibility of picking yourself up, over and over again?
Of making a good life for yourself.
Of wiping your own tears, gathering whatever is left of you, and then stepping out into the world with a smile, as if nothing ever happened.
Tell me, who exactly am I answerable to?
We question a man's conduct, his choices, his lifestyle, his clothes, his loves, his silences, even the manner in which he grieves. We draw invisible boundaries around almost every corner of existence, and then, with remarkable confidence, call this a free world.
Who decided that this is freedom?
And what, really, is the meaning of this entire civilisation we have so painstakingly constructed?
We spend our lives building things we never wanted
and destroying, somewhere along the way, the very things we loved. We learn to suppress the words that matter, to measure affection before expressing it, to hesitate before holding the hand we want to hold.
We ask for peace and then scream for it from the verandas of our carefully constructed identities.
Who are we?
What are we becoming?
Was this the grand destination all along, a decent paycheck, a little social respect, and the approval of people who may not even notice when we disappear?
Is that what we were promised when we were told to grow up?
And what difference are we really making, to anyone's life,
or even to our own?
Perhaps the strangest tragedy of being human is that we are constantly trying to escape the cages we ourselves have built, only to construct newer, more sophisticated cages in the name of freedom. And yet, thinking about all this has its own absurdity. Because somewhere between questioning the meaning of existence and trying to understand civilisation, we lose the tiny piece of peace we had somehow managed to earn.
So we return to where we began.
A big, big, big loop.
Perhaps that is the human condition: searching for meaning while simultaneously needing
a little silence from the search.
Where are the black holes
when you need them?
Can someone please call a few aliens? We could use some outside intervention.
Maybe I stopped making sense somewhere around the middle of this write-up. But if you have somehow made it this far, kudos. 🙌🏻
Perhaps you and I are both equally lost. And perhaps,
for tonight, that is enough.
Disha ♡
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