Month: January 2016

War

/ tvs21292 / 2 Comments

He was a man of few words and often of silence – seeking to overcome mountains of doubt.

mountain-climber-silhouette-climbing-mountain

Climbing that mountain was a tedious task, one he saw as too much of an ask.

“I am no trekker”, he thought, imagining himself crumbling with the boulders.

“Besides, I would rather go for something suited to amateurs.”

“Someday, I’ll conquer this too. Someday.. ”, he said glancing at the tallest of them all.

“Until then, a good amount of practice on the smaller ones will help.”

Classifying his doubts as the minors and the majors, he cut out a strategy to bring them down one at a time. The minors looked easy with their innocent profiles – profiles that hid all their defiance. Five battles down the line, he realised that underestimating the minors was a mistake. And with that piece of wisdom, came more doubt. The antagonist’s army gained strength with every battle it won. More territory, more weaponry – the stakes were high.

The man’s weapons weren’t made to last –swords of pretense soon gave way. The shields his ego had so carefully built started to crack. He was fighting a losing battle.

He knew he wouldn’t win the war, so an alternative suggestion was accepted –there would be a treaty. Neither the doubt, nor the man would bother the other. That way, they wouldn’t have an opportunity to clash and there’d be no battle in sight.

The treaty went through and the man lived in peace for an entire month. That was until all the chaos in his mind came back to haunt him. He had been betrayed, the treaty violated. Peace, yet again, was a distant dream.

He consulted his cabinet of wisdom in an attempt to find a permanent solution. The ministers had an array of suggestions, but none appealed to him. The parliament lacked a sense of purpose.

So he picked up a pen and set it to paper, attacking his doubts word by word. Some perished, some stayed and a few others absconded – victory increasingly imminent with every letter he wrote.

And on the spur of the moment, a writer was born – fueled by his obsessions, relentless with a passion. This was victory, or so he thought. Doubt’s days were long gone.

Tired of the conflicts his mind so diligently conjured, he took to writing for it would set him free. Instead, it held him down with an inescapable addiction.

He was now a soul that was willingly imprisoned, yet inexplicably free.

 

 

Oh so practical!

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CH

As someone who tends to be overly formal or courteous at times, I would’ve loved to start this post with a few words placed consecutively to form greetings for the beginning of a new calendar year. I would have.. But Cyanide and Happiness have taught me otherwise. After a few seconds of pondering, I had to admit that I agreed to this comic, albeit a tad reluctantly (the optimist in me refuses to die).

Since the start of the new year yesterday, I’ve also come across folks on all forms of social media giving away a ton of flak to other folks who harbor a sense of optimism with regard to a whole new set of months to look forward to. And I can’t help but cringe at this bunch of whiny cynics that are going out of their way to dictate how the optimists and the hopefuls should think.

We all have our ways – particularly our own patterns of thinking. And in this case I am often compelled to say, ‘To each their own.’ This is strictly in line with the revered principle of considering each person to be unique. Revered, or as the preceding paragraph seems to suggest, probably not. The real problem here is that it’s revered or dismissed at will – as per our own whimsical conveniences. We suit ourselves without ever sparing a thought for the positivity brigade – an unofficial clan responsible for everything that’s sprightly, bright and ever-so-vibrant about the world. Why pull the others down when they’ve done no wrong? Why shatter their beliefs instead of aiming to build up our own?

The answer to both of those questions is simple. It’s the burning desire to be seen as die-hard pragmatics. Because apart from making sure that you appear sane, a pragmatic approach ensures that upsets are few and far between. It ensures you always know what’s coming your way and how. There’s no guessing and consequently, there’s a truckload of security. But there’s something the pragmatics fail to realise. Or more appropriately, there’s something they’re missing out on.

It’s the power of faith. Of being okay with looking like an idiot at times. Of hope.

To try and awaken people to the fact that a change of calendar won’t significantly alter their lives, is to desperately try and deprive them of hope – which by all means is more evil than pragmatic. People might think they’ve outsmarted the world by doing so, but they haven’t helped anybody here – not the least bit themselves or their own lives.

To put it simply, I think hope should qualify as a fundamental right. We all have a right to hope, a right to look forward to new beginnings, a right to a momentary escape from despair from time to time. And no one can or should take that away from us. NO ONE.

I can’t resist quoting Andy Dufresne from The Shawshank Redemption here:

‘Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.’ 

Here’s to hope – to another year that’s full of promises and has plenty to look forward to.