Sunday, March 29, 2009

Loneliness


Isn’t it ironical? You search an entire lifetime looking for people whom you can call yours, on whom you can trust and rely on. You create an entire pool of acquaintances and people whom you call as friends and family. But at times when you need them the most, you realize it’s all a farce truth and you realize that you are actually alone, standing in the dark in the middle of nowhere, groping and gasping for a breath of air that you can call as yours. Alas! You can’t even call that as yours. You are just all alone, gasping for one true breath of hope and existence.

It’s a cruel world where you have to realize that no one is yours and you might perhaps be the only breath of reality for the people who depend on you and when they need you, and you can’t be there, then there is no one whom you thought you could trust upon. That is when you feel so helpless and insecure. Perhaps this is life and this is the true reality.

All my life, ever since I took control of myself and my family, I have dawned upon the realization through the hard way. So, am I debating on people and their attitudes? Not really. People don’t change. They are always the way they have been and would be. It’s just the disappointment you go through when all this happens. The disappointment when expectations break. Disappointment when you lead down an empty staircase hoping that there would be some at the end, but it ends up like a mirage in the desert.

Too abstract? Who am I really talking about? Is it friends or is it that some one special whom you want to be standing behind your back all the time. Is it family and relatives? Well, I guess all I can say is that it is a hot soup with all the ingredients brewed delicately over a period of time. Yes, it is about friends, ex-girlfriends and family and relatives.

It happens all the time. So many a times when you pick up your cell phone and browse through you entire phone book looking for a person to talk and you find none. When you are euphoric about something but it is meaningless because you cant share it. When you are sad and low and you just need someone but everyone is just too busy. When you have so many entries in your phonebook but they all become meaningless. You become dyslexic. All the letters jump and become incorrigible. And of course there is always the other side and people have their own priorities but then at one point of time you get fucking tired. Tired of excuses. Tired of being understanding and accommodating. Tired of listening to why people aren’t there for you.

At first it starts with just being understanding and convincing yourself that perhaps there is a genuine reason why the person you want is not around. Why the friend you want to talk to is not available. And then you dial another number and see that the next person is not around as well. And you say perhaps this a bad day.

Eventually, you dawn upon the realization that at times when you need people to talk to, they are just not around. That leads you to question whether all the social networking that made you think that you were popular, was it just a mirage or a façade. Is it like the Italian blinds hanging on the wall, which when opens makes you look at the entire world as a magical place? And the next moment it is closed and you are totally shut off from the world.

Wonder what is essentially the cause of the whole situation. Is it expectations being greater than the reality? Or is it a case of distorted perception that is interfering with the subsequent of acceptance of reality.

With times, lot of people come and go. Nothing is permanent in life. One that stays you yourself. The environment and the people in it are only secondary in nature. It is a basic tendency of the human mind to avoid change. You grow into a comfort zone and then you just live with it. But then if life were to be so static in nature, it would surely lead to lack of contentment.

So then what is that you are looking for? Contentment? Or is it merely something that you think would lead you to contentment? Just because you have never had those conversations with your self to understand what exactly is it that you are looking for? The conversation with your self that leads you to the definitive answer of how you define contentment.

At times, you are just involved in the grind that you just borrow the perceptions of others and make it your own. Just because you think you don’t have time. Later when you achieve that you seek, you realize this is not something that you were actually looking for.

At times, when you reach the peak of the mountain that you so desperately were seeking to climb, you fail to realize the euphoria that you truly anticipated at such a moment. Do you feel a sour taste in your mouth? Like you thought you were going to have a chocolate cake that seemed so tempting, but it turned out to be less than you anticipated.

At times in my life, I’ve reached the horizon and achieved things that I really wanted to but when I did, I failed to feel that what I wanted to. Success seemed empty because there was no one to share it with. And yet there have been times when you had people praising you profusely on achievements that perhaps didn’t mean any thing to you. And you grow confused if these accolades are genuine or perhaps a mockery of your own self because people underestimate you.


Gradually, it boils down to mere reduction of your personal expectation levels, and accepting that it is you and only you that make a difference. The greatest love is love for thyself… and if you can learn to live with yourself, then you stand as a rock. Unperturbed by the silent seas or the raging hurricane. Monumental influx of societal façade or continued pangs of loneliness, irrespective, you learn to live on. And in the process if you happen to find people whom you can count on your finger tips, who would always be there for you when you need them, I’d say I would have derived a contentment of a lifetime.


Cheers!!!