A Quest for Human Triumph

The human spirit or that nondescript but distinct force inside every man, the one that drives us and sometimes prods us to conquer the odds, is often called upon to lift the morale of societies in trying times. There is no society untouched by the need to take recourse in such exhortations of the soul. Often, lead by the right people and not overwhelmingly hindered by the wrong ones, societies are able to self correct in order to rise and move. Such societies are truly called "great" and in today's world some nation states have achieved the kind of evolution which helps them to maintain such a status. However, there are still very delicate balances in every setup, however evolved it may be, which when disturbed too unfavorably in an adverse direction may upset too many pies at a time for it to be any longer reversible. What we are seeing today in the global economic crisis is a case in point. Today's vicious cycle of the bad begetting the worse is the result of one such big fiasco which sent the world's well established and highly evolved economy into a spin and tizzy. In the United States it first led to a self correction in the form of electing a smart, visionary leader during the presidential election, who won an election based on the promise and hope he generated during his campaign. However, recovery was slow and the right wing jumped on the impatient American's mood to start berating everything the President thought, said or did from day he took office. An unprecedented opposition to oust the threat of a progressive take over of the nation from an African-American started, and therein started the vicious circle of America having lost its core values and therefore becoming victim of a self inflicted crisis of policy, direction and hope. The crisis worsened with the people in their impatience, desperation or wisdom (whatever you choose to call it, depending on how incorrigible a believer you are in the collective ability of masses), electing an uncompromising and ideologically misguided group of representatives into the legislature, who have stonewalled every move by an otherwise sane majority to undertake any policy measures while hijacking the morale and reputation of this great country for fulfillment of their own mistimed whims. As the country faces one hit after another and the President and his blue caucus figure out how to extricate the nation from a path of downward spiral, tea has become a symbol of the crazy and the cause of America's inability to move away from the everlasting doldrums. In this day of doom and hopelessness, only a magic moment seems to have any promise for a better future. The quest for human triumph will continue till that time here in the greatest nation on earth.

Breathe

I have been on a vacation for the last two weeks now. Everyday I wake up at about nine or ten in the morning, take some breakfast and then sit down to take care of the pending stuff. There is always pending stuff. It consumes an entire day and then another and then another. It never ends. It keeps coming. In fact, this has been the story since I started out- years ago, a decade ago and even more. I can count the days since then when I had just...paused and lived.

I do not feel like pondering or intellectualizing over what life is or is meant to be. All I want to do is take a break from the mundane, just so that I can be healed. Time has not wounded me, but it has scraped at my soul slowly.

Contentment is a great virtue, and it is an attribute I lack. I desire a simple life but I am always ambitious. I chase dreams because I like the challenge of pursuing and then conquering the most difficult of them and yet, that in itself ensures drudgery and banality, a surrender to the rules of the world. There is no freedom or at least a dearth of it in this. It is frustrating and infuriating and yet it is an addiction more difficult than being on drugs.

It is also fascinating how despite having piled on thirty one years of life behind me, I am still unable to address my follies. Anger, hate, and frustration are still able to take away my peace from time to time and I pretend as if something else but my own lack of control let me be gripped by these.

In a movie theater today, several compatriots (I live in a foreign land) had chosen to bring their infants and kids along with them; the kids raised a hell with their din and spoiled the movie almost completely. I was irritated and cursing as I walked out of the cinema hall. I had the venom fill me up and brimming over when suddenly I walked out of the theater and saw the sky above me. I looked up and paused, then took in a long breath and let it go: I was happy, immediately.

I cannot really say at what times I am in control of my life and when I am a slave of my own flesh and blood, but I reminded myself today that whenever I am overcome by fear, anger or hatred I can just close my eyes and breathe, and it will all go away. I feel happy that I am powerful after all.

Pyscho Me

Writing this from within the American Airlines flight to India. It is a fourteen hour trip and although the thought of being stuck in a place is daunting, I think it will go all well. So many ideas racing through my mind, so many memories of the most immediate and far off resounding in my system- I am conscious of each of them and of how restless they make me; and yet all thoughts merge and give me a sense of being one with my own self. All the sweetness and bitterness of life is getting churned into a single orchestrated tune. The effect is mesmerizing. There is a sudden manifest euphoria and the next moment a sense of loss. I am frowning now, and now my fists tighten and now I smile to myself. Is this how I will feel when I am dying ? Will the recollection of life be so overpowering and mysterious at that time or would I have discovered what it was all along which in these times I am unable to lay a finger on? Perhaps I am just stoned from cabin pressure, but I have had these thoughts before. The daze is not a novelty. I remember having stared into space before once when I was standing in my balcony on the eight floor, then in a night club with loud music blazing away and most recently when I was just sitting around with friends. And yet this schizophrenia is essential to me. I wonder why it is so. There is something I have not discovered about myself that makes me takes refuge in these thoughts. Why do I have to go into a daze to experience an intense emotion such as this? It is like walking into an ocean by the beach and waiting with knees folded for the wave to approach and engulf you. It is that exactly - letting myself get swept by a whirlwind filled with thoughts of beautiful moments that quietly brushed me, those that had the promise of eternity. I gripped myself in these times as I do even now and resisted being carried away. I stood stiff and closed my eyes and captured the beauty instead and then moved onto something new and as beautiful. The sight of an ocean, the lights from a line of skyscrapers, the gleam in someone's wondrous eyes and the warmth of the cold green mountain grass removed from the earth. I stayed with none of these and yet moved to something even better. These brief movies and their scores are alive in my brain and they fill up my being. At times when I am distressed from the "everyday" things I walk into this theater and let one of these movies play; and every time the movie is a bit longer and harder to resist.