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Mar 25, 2017

Melancholy Sets In


Melancholy. I’m sitting down to write after more than a year. I am nervous and I am uncertain what I shall reproduce. I’ve experienced so much in the past year; fallen and gotten up, beaten myself down over the smallest things, read about as diverse topics as I could lay my hands on but most important of all, I’ve understood myself much more deeply than ever before. This is perhaps what causes me the most anxiety, fear and melancholy.
We all see our lives as a journey towards a goal, anything that gives our lives meaning. I’ve always had a tendency of judging people based on where this meaning lies for them. So the world is always divided into the good and the evil for me. I’ve begun to question this. This scares me!
Buddha said that we all create our own realities. This means we see the world solely based on our opinions and assumptions, hence the perceived world is an artificial creation with a million million versions of it, ever changing and ever evolving only in our heads.  Which version of the world am I carrying? And what makes me right?
Throughout history there have been people who have devoted themselves to their families, tribes, kingdoms, philosophies or nations. I was watching a documentary, before I sat down to materialise this melancholy, of a nation built on the devotion and sacrifice of people such as those. After decades of service all that they were left with were old and faded pictures of young, enthusiastic and committed versions of themselves, people who saw great meaning in what they were doing years ago. But pictures and memories is all they had now.
The ideas I find meaning in are certainly different from theirs, almost polar opposites. They were wrong and I am obviously right! A year ago, I would have been naïve enough to think that that was enough to guarantee a much more contented and celebrated conclusion to my life, but I am older now. I understand that we all find meaning in something or the other and divide the world into the worthy and the unworthy.  In our heads we are all right! We are all right!

Then who is to guarantee that when I am old and withered, I will not be staring at my wall of old pictures of when I was young, enthusiastic and committed and watch myself fade away just as my pictures? I am afraid there is no one who can answer this question for me. I am older now, yet I am not closer to my answer. And perhaps this is what I was afraid of facing when the thought of sitting down and writing crossed my head, that I have found meaning in my life, but am completely unsure whether I am wrong or right. And I shall only know when I am old and withered and look back at my life in retrospect. Wouldn’t it be too late then? Melancholy sets in…