The yesteryears’ actor Mehmood was really on to something when he sang, “The whole thing is that ke bhaiya sabse bada rupaiyya.” It made us laugh back then because it was easier to laugh at the truth than to accept it. Yet, the older you get the more you realize that it really is all about money. Our survival, our relationships and even love. We can’t have one without the other. Even if it begins with sentiment, it ends with money. Having said that, we must also acknowledge that a billionaire flying in his private jet may be restless with his flute of Krug and a fakir with his begging bowl may be at peace. Ultimately, bliss relies on one’s capacity to be happy. If you deplete your ability to enjoy your journey, then even a luxurious journey lacks joy. Happiness is a construction of the mind, not an acquisition. Acquiring things makes people secure, comfortable and independent but if you’re trying to fill an emotional void with objects, they’ll fall through the abyss.
Life is not simple. It’s really complicated. We don’t have a formula. You have to wing it at every stage. You will make mistakes. You may learn from them. Then you’ll make different mistakes. You’ll try to change, to evolve and to learn but you are who you are because of your DNA. No planet, no mantra, no amount of hocus-pocus can help you overcome your limitations. If you’re introspective, you’ll better yourself. If you’re defensive, you’ll blame the stars. We feel a kinship with the universe and hence we like to think that everything around us is connected. It makes us romanticize our environment. It helps us philosophize, create, love and feel. We hear whispers in the wind, rely on ancient lore and try to understand the world through anomalies. We need to believe that there’s more to life than life itself and we have succeeded as a species to spin stories about it. It works to keep us going. We would be nowhere without magic. We need it to feel important. We need it to explain all the things that go wrong.
Romantic relationships are one of the major causes of happiness. Romantic relationships are also one of the major causes of unhappiness. Sometimes, people who have been together for a long time fall in and out of love. Others discover that they had never been in love at all. Love, like life, is circumstantial. New ideas emerge. Youth fades. Passions ebb. People change. Some relationships last. Some break. Some hang by a thread. We yearn for clarity and structure and permanence. We know it isn’t available in the workings of the world, so we try to do the impossible and seek it through another person. Yet, everyone is looking for new and exciting paths. The journey is long. Some race ahead, some stand still and some lag behind. Not everyone can continue to synchronize their steps.
Despite these disillusions, the quest to find partners and start families goes on. Even though we know that children have their own unique genetic make-up and aren’t always easy to understand. Furthermore, we don’t take into account that they are often equally disappointed in their parents. They in turn do not understand a parent’s unique genetic make-up. It is mutual acceptance of this disparity that defines the strength of a parent-child bond. And I don’t know who needs to hear this, but children can be old and grey and enter your home (if you are fortunate to still be alive) and open your fridge and camp under your roof without notice. You cannot and should not ever expect to do the same.
The up side about having your own personality is that you get to be who you want. You get to decide what success means to you. If life goes according to plan and you meet all your goals then you get to say things like,” Follow your dream,” and “Believe in hard work.” But many find themselves in jobs or situations or relationships that they didn’t visualize or plan. All they did was grapple with circumstances, processing life as it unfolded. Besides, it is difficult to assimilate and contain the vastness of this individual experience. These feelings tend to spill out as moods, anxieties, insecurities and quirks.
We all need help to hold on to a world that is constantly moving and changing. People will always try to give you advice. It’s a social scene we play out. We need not take someone else’s opinion seriously. Their viewpoint is tinted by their own prism. The best part is that you get to choose your anchor. It could be a job you love, an art form you pursue or a child you are raising. And even though you must attempt to focus on this anchor that you have chosen, you can’t always forget all the troubles you’ve had or the ones you anticipate. It is okay to be overwhelmed by both; memories and hopes. The past, the present and the future exist inside our heads as simultaneous thoughts. They really have nowhere else to go. We like to believe that divine intervention will make sense of our lives. A lot has been written about justice in the afterlife. I, for one, can’t believe that heaven and hell are waiting beyond this world. On the contrary, we’ll leave them behind when we pass on.
