Tag: ramblings

  • Who do you love?

    I so often hear people giving others advice about how they should overcome negative sentiments about themselves, and I keep wondering if it’s realistic? The advice most often rendered is ‘love yourself’. Isn’t that the same like telling someone that is depressed to be happy?

    I think if we dislike ourselves, it’s not because we simply dislike ourselves, but in fact it’s because there is little that we’re doing or achieving that we find reason to be proud about. Either that, or we’re seeking affirmation from quarters that are uninterested or oblivious to how important they are in our lives. So when someone seems not to like themselves, when they’re self-harming, being reckless with their health or well-being, or just being morbid about life, I somehow doubt that telling them to love themselves is going to change all that.

    I really believe that happiness is not a choice, but is in fact a state that is achieved as a result of other conditions or achievements in our lives. Similarly I would argue that dislike for oneself is a result of inactivity or lack of achievement in things that would bring one joy. I guess, at the risk of over-simplifying it, I think it all comes down to what we use as points of reference in our lives. Those points of reference can sometimes be role models, or at other times it could simply be peer pressure. But identifying what about those role models or peers it is that influences us to want to aspire to fit their expectations is key to realising whether or not the reasons for such self-dislike is in fact warranted to begin with.

    But even that doesn’t quite answer the question, or resolve the issue. I think the low self esteem finds its roots first in trying to please others, which is easy enough to set in during childhood when we least realise the impact of such a disappointment. This later serves as a distraction that leads us to believe that just because we didn’t measure up to our chosen points of reference, we’re incapable of achieving anything meaningful in our lives. I can barely recall the number of times that I assumed the best of someone, immersed myself into the relationship relative to what prestige they enjoyed in my mind, only to meet a rude awakening when they behaved far short of what I believed their true nature to be.

    Sometimes I think we just expect too little from ourselves, and too much from others. Or perhaps that’s just a vicious cycle as well. Our expectations of others are equally as high as their expectations of us, but their expectations of themselves is just as low as our expectations of ourselves. So while we’re beating ourselves up and restraining ourselves from realising our true potential, we’re betraying the expectations of someone else, while they’re doing the same to us. Such is the cycle of stupidity when we measure our self-worth by the veneer of society.

    I guess the point is that if we are going to choose a role model, or an ideal to aspire to, we need to be sure that what we’re setting as an objective is in fact the reality of what we really want.

  • A Brain Dump

    We buried my aunt last night. We weren’t very close, but she was a nice lady. She passed on in the afternoon, and we buried her by 22h00 the same evening in line with Muslim rites and customs. But like every funeral, I embraced the scent of camphor, probably more so than most would. We use camphor as an embalming agent to prepare the corpse for burial. So it’s always been a sobering reminder of the inevitable outcome of everything.

    Sobering! That was the lingering feeling that stayed with me throughout last night, and today. And it lingers still. At times in my life I often visited the cemetery alone on cold nights. Sometimes, if not always, I felt a sense of belonging, probably from the knowledge that that will be the final abode despite our best efforts to prolong our avoidance of it. Last night was different.

    Last night I made a feeble attempt to reflect on the sight of thousands of graves with their flaking lime-washed surrounds and the lives that were distilled into that piece of earth that didn’t care about their riches, their comforts, their legacies or their significance amongst men. It was cold to the touch, and lifeless. And the sense of belonging, or even yearning, escaped me. I felt dejected, not just in my own life any longer, but last night I felt dejected from the after life. Nothing offered me comfort or certainty, let alone peace. I had always felt some morbid sense of belonging to the dwellers of the graves.

    The above unfinished post has been laying in my drafts since August 2011. I never completed it, and I don’t think I can do so now either. But recent events in my life, mostly at the office, serves as a stark reminder of the purpose of my time on this earth. Betrayal is like pain, no matter how it is experienced, how long it persists, or how familiar it may become, it will never be a joy, nor a welcomed guest. I often have to remind myself of the advice I so readily dispense. Live with hope, not expectations.

    It’s been a while since I indulged myself in a brain dump. One is definitely called for, although the audience that I have solicited for my blog makes me hesitant to be as brutally honest about my thoughts as I used to be. The problem with trying to be yourself irrespective of those around you is that a large part of being yourself is in fact shaped by those around you. Thoughts spilt recklessly under the pretence of spilled ink, or freedom of expression, only adds to the already burdensome load of callousness in this world.

    Despite the incessant betrayals that I experience in my life, which incidentally becomes much easier to rack up if you’re naive like I choose to be, I still find it impossible, or at the least distasteful to treat others with suspicion simply because I was betrayed under similar circumstances before. I believe betrayal is the root to all evil, not money. We first have to betray ourselves, our deepest held convictions, before we can muster up the cowardice to betray others. Money is simply a distraction, like almost everything else that we surround ourselves with in life. Reflection is called for if we hope to know what it is that we stand for. With all the distractions there is little time for reflection, so it stands to reason that we’re more inclined towards acting in a way that contradicts our dreams and aspirations without realising it, while speaking wistfully of missed opportunities and bad decisions, because each time those opportunities visited us, or those decisions were made, we could barely discern the bullshit from the burden of reality.

  • Happy Damned Birthday

    Birthdays have always been an ominous occasion for me. I can never find a reason to celebrate because of the stark reminders carried by such a milestone. I’m certainly a glass-half-empty kind of person when it comes to this, probably because my glass full of life just got emptier at the passing of yet another year.

    I’ve been obsessed with this image of a long curve or arc that symbolises time stretching inversely across the horizon with only the very tip of its apex brushing the soil. And that single moment of its brushing represents my entire lifetime in the context of the universe, making me realise exactly how insignificant my existence really is.

    And this is not even close to my birthday, which incidentally has ceased to hold any significance for me, be it joyous or otherwise. It really has faded into just another day, because it has never changed the condition of my life in any way except to serve as a reminder that I’m supposed to take a moment to benchmark my life against others that have grovelled for as long as I have.

    We’re all beggars. Some just more dignified than others. Who is not begging for happiness or contentment, wealth or comfort, companionship and fame? At our weaker moments we morbidly acknowledge this, but when the memory of pain subsides, such realisations are discarded in favour of feelings of false elation. Forgetfulness is probably our greatest gift and mercy. Imagine the pain of a life that bore the intensity of the memories of every moment of distress or destitution?

    Oh yes, birthdays…I hate those. It’s supposed to signify the passing of another year, when in fact it’s just the passing of yet another day. Just another day, with more significance attached to it than anyone could ever justify. How I despise the feeble-minded that define themselves by such whimsical milestones!

    (This is something I wrote a year ago, and remains true today as well…)

  • Finding My Way

    I have a lot that I want to pursue, explore, or share in my efforts to unravel or unpack the unanswered questions around me. I think sometimes that I should in fact write that book that many friends, colleagues, and some professional acquaintances often nagged me about, but then I wonder if there is anything new that I can add to the already burgeoning stores of narratives that someone thought was special enough to share. One of the problems with this ease of accessibility to sharing your thoughts is that everything fast becomes clichéd because everyone has a pearl of wisdom to drop all over the place. I wonder then if the new challenge is not to string together meaningful fresh insights, but rather to collate the clichés in a way that brings sanity to the noise, or beauty to the jagged edges of everyone’s desire to be noticed?

    My life is less than ordinary. It always has been. I always imagined ordinary to be a normal home, with a normal family, normal parents, with general growing pains and the usual social circles to round it all up. Children that have a healthy dose of sibling rivalry, but a healthier dose of family unity. Parents that each play their own parts equitably so that a vague sense of order and balance resonates through the home. Overall, there’s a general sense of wholesomeness accompanied by an unashamed sense of mediocrity in celebrating the little life stages that each of the kids make it through, while the parents grow content with having put their kids through school, and then maybe college or university, followed by marrying them off into good families to start that entire cycle again.

    That’s not my life. Never has been. Improving on that would be extraordinary, but less than that must then be less than ordinary. That would be my life. Less ordinary, and somewhat weird. Part of the weirdness was instilled at an early age when I realised that I was not like my siblings, so seeking affirmation from them for what interested me was never an option. My parents had their own distractions, so seeking out fatherly guidance was not an option either. And so started the troubled journey of finding my own way in life.

    There’s a boon that accompanies such a journey, and that is the ability to forge new paths and take the less travelled roads (oh, those damned clichés ). The opportunity to make your own mistakes without having someone around to tell you ‘I told you so’, nor having someone around to constrain your thinking or creativity in line with their fears, or failures. But there’s a burden that accompanies every boon. That burden is the anguish you feel when you’re embarking on something really important, or at least want to, and there’s a room full of no one that you’re able to use as a sounding board. No one that you feel comfortable enough to share that passion with because you know that your reality is very different from theirs. Your frame of reference is different from theirs. Your self-imposed limitations, your fears, your desires, your perspective, is all different. So seeking sanity in their reflections is a futile exercise.

    At points like these I wonder if this is what it may feel like, in some small way, to be an orphan. To be without guides, or mentors, or pillars of strength. To instead find yourself to be that pillar of strength, that guide, and that mentor for others, with the means to guide you being not much more than a quirky ability to reflect while indulging, or to observe while acting, coupled with a resilience that can’t be explained. There’s a stubborn obstinacy within me that refuses to give way to convention. When I do fight that stubbornness in an attempt to ‘get along’, I find my health suffering because of the unnatural tension that it causes within me.

    The likely delusion in all this is that I seem to think that my circumstance is special. This world appears to be more dysfunctional than wholesome. Our drive for individual instant gratification has already eroded the sense of community that we all long for, but towards which most are not willing to contribute. This is sounding more like a brain dump than a post. Perhaps in that lies the secret of finding my way. Rather than internalising, perhaps there is much to be gained from verbalising my clutter, because once it’s out there in plain language, the sense or stupidity of it all becomes blatantly obvious, making it possible to sift through the muck so that I can find the gems that would lead me on to the next leg of my journey.

  • Quotes I live by, but can’t remember who said them…

    There are a few quotes that often ring in my mind as I go through various experiences in life, but more often than not, I can never recall where I read or heard them. Some of my favourites include:

    “If you knew me the way I know myself, you’d throw sand in my face” ~ some or other Muslim scholar, but I can’t recall who it was.

    “There is no limit to what a man can do if he doesn’t care who gets the credit for it” ~ I don’t have a clue where this one comes from.

    “Why acquire more knowledge if you’re not practising on the knowledge you already have” ~ I think this was said by Al-Ghazali, but I could be mistaken.

    “Repeating the same behaviour and expecting a different outcome is the definition of insanity” ~ I suspect that this is just a really bad paraphrase of what Einstein may have said.

    “If you compare a sane man to an insane society, he will appear insane” ~ I think this was some guy with a French name, but I’m too lazy to Google it right now.

    “Pervasive ignorance must not be mistaken for collective wisdom” ~ Yours Truly.

    “If you don’t take control of your own life, someone else will” ~ I just made that one up.

    And obviously when I sit down to share some of these quotes my mind will go blank…

  • I Hate Skinny Jeans

    It’s been a while since I felt an inclination to post any reflective thoughts about my current state. I’m 100% primed for a mid-life crisis right now, but it seems like the only crisis I’m managing to acquire quite successfully is a mid-drift one. My chest is still pretty much where it used to be for the most of my life, so I’m quite comfortable that this is not a case of having a drop-chest. I’ve accepted that I am firmly part of the horizontally challenged brigade that still struggle to squeeze into their jeans of yesteryear. However, the situation is not as dire, nor as disgusting as it may sound.

    I have a very simple philosophy when it comes to maintaining my weight over the years. I’ve reached a point where my pants’ size is as big as I would ever want it to go, and I’ve been convinced of this for many years now. So each time when I feel it getting really uncomfortably tight around my waist, I know that’s a sure sign that I need to shed some baby fat. Incidentally, it turns out that baby fat is not as cute on a grown man. So the simple philosophy really just says that when my pants get too tight, instead of buying a bigger size and giving in to the bulge, I make a concerted effort to lose weight instead. My tolerance level to put up with that discomfort has obviously grown, and I’m starting to wonder if I’m only maintaining my pants size because of my anatomy extending over the belt line, rather than being constrained by it?

    Ok, enough of the disturbing mental imagery and on to the real point of this post. Going shopping for new jeans (of the same size I might add), has turned into quite a frustrating chore because of the insistence by retailers to shove all men (including us real ones) into that girlish designs that suggest that skinny jeans look good on real men. It doesn’t. It never did, and it never will. A man that wears a skinny jeans is probably a man that is either still living with his mother (for her to take care of him and not the other way around), or a man that gets his nails polished and has facial products to keep his skin looking soft and youthful. I hate skinny jeans. Especially for men. And I hate men that pamper themselves as if they’re women. We have more women than men in this world, literally and figuratively, so give it a rest already. Try being a man for a change. You’ll be surprised at how refreshing that can be. And no, being a slob doesn’t mean you’re a man, it just means you’re a slob. Usually a blob of a slob, now that I think of it.

    Shopping at several local retailers has proven that there is a pervasive assumption that men want to wear what women wear. I’m old school and proud of it. I yearn for a time when men were men and women were women, and each had equitable roles, and chivalry was still admired. But the feminists and the apologists will not allow such wholesomeness to survive, so they decided to force men into bootlegged jeans, skinny fit everything, straight leg jeans, low rise jeans, and everything but REGULAR FIT jeans! What happened to the good old regular fit? I don’t want some fanboy designer look. I simply want a comfortable pair of jeans that will allow me to do the chores around the house without having to shift my jewels back in place after each movement because of the feminine crotch that someone thought would be a good idea on a man’s jeans. It disgusts me to say the least, and physically pains me at best.

    No wonder we have such a dysfunctional society. Men are trying to prove that they’re as sassy and polished as women, and women are trying to prove that they’re equal to men. Neither are comfortable being their natural selves any longer except when they’re alone in their homes without any social stigmas to comply with or judging eyes to appease. All this is blatantly reflected in our children when they develop that vacuous mentality that allows only for self-promotion and a desperation for affirmation, while believing that any challenge is a reason to be diagnosed with a mental illness because the support structure that should be there to guide them through the insanity of adolescence is suddenly replaced with self-centred adults trying to compete with their children in appearance and social status resulting in social ills that leave even anarchists cringing with fear.

    Seriously. Can someone simply point me to a retailer that stocks men’s clothes for men in the men’s section, so that I don’t have to constantly look around me to reassure myself that I am actually shopping in the men’s section of the store?

  • Born Restless

    The only constant emotion that I can recall in my life is restlessness. Perhaps it’s a state more than it is an emotion. I don’t care. The net effect remains the same. There is little that I can leave untouched. I have an incessant need to unravel issues that plague myself or others. I can’t let sleeping dogs lie (all puns intended). There are too many dogs that pretend to be asleep and in so doing they lie through their fangs in their efforts to garner social acceptance or admiration. They’re dogs, regardless of their pretenses.

    The heart of mental illnesses lies in society, and not in the brain. There is no chemical imbalance that can be righted in order for it to right the betrayals of society at large, and significant others at the least. So instead of contending with the elephant in the room, we’d much rather pretend that we have a mental illness to deal with. At times like this I feel mentally ill. The same restlessness creeps into every thought pattern and disrupts my focus leading to angsty drivel that aspires to become a meaningful post. But I know that this restlessness is not an illness. It’s simply the reality of my attempts to live consciously.

    We’re all alone. No matter how big our social circles may appear, deep down inside only we understand the gravity of being who we are, and what we fear. The social circles are just a distraction from this reality, but in no way erases that loneliness. It’s all just a distraction, but it’s a very effective distraction which is why we’re amusing ourselves to death, only to realise too late that we were in fact distracting ourselves from life. It’s therefore no surprise that avenues like social networking and technical gadgetry are increasingly popular to all generations and not just the young ‘uns any longer. We all need the distractions equally.

    The problem is not in the distractions, or how they’re being abused. Those are just symptoms. The true problem is in a society that sees the need for escape as being a mental illness. The problem lies in academics that lack any real life experiences but feel accomplished enough because of a piece of paper to pronounce their judgement on the mental state of others without even considering the reality of life. That’s why we have the ridiculously high levels of bipolar disorder that is diagnosed in all spectrums of society, let alone depression and so many other abused terms of mental illness.

    In a dysfunctional society it’s next to impossible to find a healthy support structure to avoid the temptation of labelling our mental states. Support structures are not synonymous with support groups, but are in fact the family structures and community networks that talk to the village raising a kid, rather than the village raising an idiot. The collective responsibility of society has long been abandoned in favour of individual appeasement and selfish goals.

    The restlessness I feel is born out of this same dysfunction. But according to many, I could successfully be diagnosed with a mental illness because I have an insatiable desire to see wholesome values and communal living that is morally grounded realised in my lifetime. Perhaps I am mad. Perhaps my restlessness is in fact insanity. Perhaps my desire for old school values is merely my distraction from a society that has evolved beyond such wholesomeness. Perhaps I am that sane man that is compared to an insane society, and because the mirror with which I reflect on my life is that insane society, it is entirely possible that I may appear insane. Worse than this is the innocent soul that lacks such a realisation and still seeks affirmation from that same insane society.

  • Cyclic Sanity

    I’ve often contemplated, like many others, the reasons for time going so much faster as I get older. Many of my conclusions are no different to those considered by most others as well, yet I feel compelled to write them down after a few weeks of being particularly preoccupied with these thoughts. The obvious conclusion is that I have more that I’m responsible for doing now than I did when I was younger, so it stands to reason that I have less time available in between all the things I have to do. But that seems to only answer part of the question.

    It seems that life has become a ritual that operates in cycles. I often find myself fixated on observing, measuring, reminiscing, contemplating and doing everything within the context of new years, another month, the next week, or tomorrow to the point where I find that I convince myself that the cycles of these years, let alone the days, or even the hours, is what determines the activities that I should be planning for. Most of us, well at least the 99%, work from pay cheque to pay cheque. If we have disposable income after redistribution day, we consider ourselves fortunate, if not entirely blessed. The more disposable income we have, the more blessed we feel, the more we indulge, the more we need to focus on getting that next pay cheque to feel blessed again. This might sound like a cynic’s view of life, but there’s much truth in it.

    I forget so easily how to fill the gaps in between all the responsibilities that I have. Worse yet, I forget that many of those responsibilities can be fulfilling and rewarding rather than a duty, but the ever present demon of expectations dissuades me from raising too many expectations beyond what my duty is. And so the cycles of sanity are spawned and nurtured all at once. There is much merit in being spontaneous as opposed to measured and deliberate. I used to embrace spontaneity, but due to the prejudices of society, I feel like I’m sub-consciously suppressing my spontaneity from fear of being seen as one having a mid-life crisis.

    The staid, predictable, frightfully responsible, and entirely dependable family man is what is expected of me. It’s what a dysfunctional and disillusioned society expects of me. It’s what I demand of myself, despite it going against my own nature. I embrace responsibility willingly, because there is too much recklessness around me. But the cycles drive me insane. The painful predictability of life, of each month, of each day. It all stifles me. It smothers me. So I rebel. I say the things that are improper, and I challenge those views held sacred, not because I want to, but because I feel extremely restless and uncomfortable when I see others behave out of ritual or habit without appreciating the gaps they have at their disposal.

    I would rather have responsibilities between the gaps, rather than gaps between the responsibilities. The proverbial glass is half empty for me not because I don’t see it as half full, but simply because I know I’ve drunk more than most from it. I don’t want my glass to be half full. In fact, I don’t want a glass. I don’t want convention. Nor do I want routine or safe choices. I want to know that I am living and not just going through the motions pretending that doing something better today than I did it yesterday, which was better than I did it the day before, is sufficient fulfilment for my life. I need more than that. I need to look in someone’s eyes and see it confused and restless because I challenged them to think. Because I challenged them to work those gaps and move beyond the routine.

    Those gaps. They’re so damn elusive because when I get them, I’m usually taking a breather to recover from the demands of the routine. I must break the cycle. This cycle of seeming sanity has robbed me of the essence of what it pretends to be. Sanity is not the prevalence of order, nor is it the prevalence of function. It’s simply, by society’s standards, the presence of conformance. Conformance has killed many a creative soul, and destroyed many a great idea. More than this, conformance has destroyed the me I used to smile at. It’s time to break the cycle of sanity. For verily, as has been said already, a sane man, when compared to an insane society, must appear insane. But I think JG Ballard said it best when he said, “In a totally sane society, madness is the only freedom.”