The sum of time
I recently read two really good authors. One old, one new. And both of them had the same effect on me. Their writing reminded me of the fullness of life. That I am here to live, and express as I live. That life is precious, and meant to be lived. That life has to be a catalogue of experiences and not merely the sum of time.
Some Recommendations
The first piece is titled ‘The unlived life’ by my dear friend Nirmal Bhansali. The piece is situated beautifully at the intersection of a myriad mixture of emotions and subjects such as friendship, death, grief, loss, remembrance etc. It is one of those pieces which put you at ease, like a warm blanket around you. And when you are done reading it, you instantly long to go back to the first time you read it.
The second piece of writing is Paperbag, which is Esha Tirodkar’s blog. I happened to stumble across the blog via twitter and have thoroughly enjoyed her writing. Her writing reminds me the real reason why millions, including myself write. It is to make sense of life by sharing your life with others and yourself. Raw, fresh and aptly expressive - her writing is refreshing to read.
To live a life
My parents recently asked me how hot is is in Delhi, to which I responded I don’t know. And i realised, I have forgotten how hot it can get in Delhi. I am taken back to the summers of my DU days, where I would walk the lanes of Satyaniketan in 45 degrees to hop back to my class after a quick lunch at my flat. Or, when I would travel to other colleges to practice debating with my friends in these colleges. We used to travel on foot, by autos and metro. It was inconvenient. I did not have a lot of money back then. But in hindsight, I am glad I did that. I am glad I lived an unprotected life. I am glad I lived a life.
Now a days I am inside buildings for most of my time. Concrete, wood, and steel. Sunlight peering through the glass panes. I spend most of my time working. It is surreal how fundamentally your life changes when you start working, and I do believe nothing can prepare one for it. It must be lived. Most importantly, it makes you realise the importance of trade offs. When you have a limited time to yourself, you filter out the unnecessary stuff pretty quickly. It forces you to realise your own priorities.
Whenever I have spare time, I spend it at a cafe near my house. So much so that it can become a pavlovian mechanism to find myself walking towards the cafe as soon as I catch myself with a bit of free time. When I was a child, I would imagine situations just like these. Where I would (with much suave) speak to random people who caught my interest and make new friends. But the reality is quite different. Much to young Divyanshu’s disappointment. I wear my noise cancelling earphones for the most part, and on the rare occasions when i do find someone interesting, I cannot get myself to speak to them. I don’t know what it is. Social anxiety, or fear of uncertainty. And i am wise to know that this fear or hesitation is purely imaginary. But I just cannot. So i sit there, not speaking to a single soul. Such is life i suppose.
The other times I think about how much things have changed, and how I have still not adjusted to this new life. At least healthily. A friend’s recent medical emergency due to similar hectic lifestyle was a wake up call for me. To take care of myself, in all means possible. And god, is it difficult. We now must carefully measure and decide about all the things we never thought twice about - what to eat, how much sugar to consume, how much to sleep, how much to work etc. etc. I am still trying to look for the manual on adulting. Somebody must have written it I am sure. The funny part is that I exactly know what to do. I know how to solve my problems. I just lack the resolve to execute them. Which is sadder I suppose. To know that you have the answer, but not the courage to face it.
I think a lot. But none of that thinking is productive. All of my thinking revolves around the same topics - career, health, quality of life etc. It is a never ending whirlpool of thoughts which have different beginnings and different ends, but in the end all are copies of each other. They are the same anxieties packaged in various sentences, heuristics, and mental models. It feels like I am trapped in the construct of my own mind. Mind palace, but i am the prisoner. This reminds me of what Sam Altman once said:
It is very easy to have a lot of movement, but not move anywhere.
It is very much like the concept of distance and displacement. If you travel the world and come back to the same point, your displacement will be zero. Irrespective of how much you’ve travelled. This is how it feels like to have meditated on something for so long, only to fail to execute it. But i remind myself that every day is learning. Maybe I am learning slower (much slower) than others, but learning I am. And all of these days spent engrossed in cross dimensional cost benefit analysis, consultation and meditation on the life I want to lead will lead me somewhere. Tomorrow, if not today.
Curtains. On some rare afternoons that I am free, I sit in my room and look at my beige curtains and the warm hues of sunlight on it. My curtains are translucent and let the sun in. I did not intend to buy such curtains but once they came in, I was too lazy to get them changed. And now I’ve gotten around to liking them - everyday when I wake up, the room is already lit up with sunlight. I always intended to decorate my room. But I never found the time or the willingness to. So my room is a vast space which is occupied by a bed, a table cum shelf, a closet and me. I recently added a chair to my impressive furniture collection (which I stole from the living room). And now there is one more place for people to sit. But not to my surprise, it lies there unused.
Friends. The older you grow, the more you realise how important friends are. Over the last year, I’ve been flying to Mumbai consistently just so that I can meet my friends. And every penny spent on travel is money spent well. I come back happier, and more full of life. And I cannot begin to write all the proses and poems I would for my friends. One of my closest friends (my flatmate) has just moved out of Delhi. I used to talk to him most days, after work. We used to exchange stories, share frustrations, laugh on our misery and so on. And now that he is gone, it feels like I have not much left in this city. It forced me to realise how important friends are. It is funny. I used to go around telling people that the fact that he is single and has time for me is immensely important for my mental health. He is still single (for the ladies, I can patch you to him - love this guy to death, you’ll be lucky to be with him hehe) but not here anymore. Friends are important. Take time out for them whenever you can. Trust me. It is worth it.
To be an adult. To be an adult is to take decisions. And to incur the consequences of those decisions. To be an adult is also to go to doctors by yourself, remember to take your medicines. To be an adult is to remember to check in with your relatives, to go to friend’s birthday parties, to buy groceries and tell the house help what to cook. To be an adult is to think about income tax, to think about salary increment, and leave policies. To be an adult is to compartmentalise your personal and professional life, to take time out for your hobbies despite people chasing you for multiple things. To be an adult is to be comfortable with people disliking you, to prioritise yourself and your goals over others convenience. To be an adult is to check in with your parents from time to time, to send them gifts to remind them you (still, and will always) love them. To be an adult is to reminisce your youth, and still carry on. Every day. To be an adult is to keep on keeping on.
Fear
I think what scares me the most is I am becoming a normative human being. A copy of the most dull, conventional average Indian male with the same incentives, same motivations and same fears. I don’t want to be boring. And I am that, a lot of that already. Inertia has set in. I find myself reacting to rotten incentives, and caring about the most absurd normative norms. I do believe that there is a path where you can be contrarian and still function in a normative system. Albeit there will be some foundational constraints that you will not be able to break. But more or less, you can resist the slow demise of your personality. But over a longer horizon, I find such a bargain to be incredibly boring. To be not around similar people who are motivated by very similar forces in life is very boring. And I may be wholly wrong here. Maybe there is nothing which can excite me, or all that I think is better in the world is a mirage. But I do believe it is always worth trying and finding out for yourself! Mistakes are not wrong. They are a proof that we have courage. That we care enough to try things. As Tom Scott once said, ‘Most things fail’. But one must try. To try is to be human.
A lot of my writing is different versions of the same idea. And I am starting to get irritated by my own prose. It screams the same thing. It is ironic that I scream at myself through these lines which are read by others, but somehow never reach back to me. I do feel that I am losing the inner shine I have. The part of me which makes me record podcasts, write blogs, meet new people, and be curious. The part of me which makes me feel alive (new podcast on constitutions and constitutionalism with Amal Sethi coming out soon!). The only thing that makes me feel alive is my curiosity. And perhaps this is the cycle of life, and I will rediscover it in some shape or form in some time. Or even perhaps regular people who lead regular life don’t get to be curious. I don’t know. I must get back to my regular life now.
The fleetingness of being boring or being inspired is not lost on us surprisingly as we get older. I agree, there is that inner voice omnipresent one would say because of which you know that there is something more than just wake up go to work and come back to life. There has to be more and yet for the most part we are stuck in the endless loop of the same old mundane daily life. Reminds me of how even the littlest of escapes say a vacation, a day out, a coffee with a friend re-inspires one to do what we really want to, to follow creative pursuits so to say and yet the minute you are back in the mundane, the resolve to wake up at 5 am to lets say write that book just goes down the drain. If you know what i mean.Growing up is a slippery slope. (I write all this from my work desk, imagining that i anywhere but at my work desk, bit sad though.)
I've found your blogs quite relatable. It feels as though one is doomed to mediocrity. I wonder whether successful people (the outliers) ever thought they were going to be mediocre in life. Would like your thoughts on the same.
Thank you for writing!