In the next 24 days, I will turn 45.
In the next 24 hours, a new year will rise up again.
While I turn back, I look at the opportunities, I
missed.
While I look ahead, I think of the possibilities I
can create.
The space that exists between the past and the future
largely accommodates a vortex of indistinguishable emotions, laced with a tiny amount
of despair and a heavy dose of hope. Learning to deal with this space is known
as ‘maturity’ – which is nothing but a
wisdom arising out of all the stupid responses towards past incidents of our
life. It gives us a count of all the events that shaped our life and a chance
to correct ourselves. Every time we fix ourselves, we raise a count of laughs.
With each passing year, the space shrinks as the
events and thoughts in this space almost turn into déjà vu experiences. This is the biggest benefit of growing up. People
hinging on this space, generally do and say things with great audacity and courage.
They don’t always romanticize life. Dealing with deaths, disasters, diseases,
declines, depressions, distress, deprivations.. literally any delta from the status quo start appearing easy. Maturity takes over the
modesty. Radicalism replaces romanticism. People almost treat their own life as
an art cinema appreciating the darker scenes of it.
As I turn 45, I would probably show more courage in
making distinctions between right and wrong.
After all, who determines what is right and what is wrong?
God the almighty,
or Satan the devil?
Actually, none.
Standards for right
and wrong are mere popular opinions, mostly
founded by scholastic rhetorical tricks played as per the convenience of
majority. One of the Sophists (bunch of
Greek teachers) said “whatever things
seem just and fine to each city, are just and fine for that city, so long as it
thinks them so.”
Honestly?
You see, right or wrong represents nothing but the
vested interests of the mighty scholars.
Let me illustrate this, seriously.
Read the word ‘gay’.
What’s on your mind, now?
A mysterious contempt? Sulk in disapproval?
Well, the literal meaning of gay is bright and happy - which was adopted by uninhibited
people who were attracted to members of the same sex.
What makes us angry – the word gay or homosexuals?
Well, now that I have justified the literal meaning
of gay, you scorn is reduced towards the word gay, but you continue to frown on the word ‘homosexuals’, don’t you?
What if you reason out the phenomenon behind homosexuals and get literal reasons
behind their behaviors? Won’t you become more liberal about them? Should you
not?
I have a friend who is a gay but he is a great man –
perhaps a nicest human being I can ever think of. We never miss an occasion to
greet each other on special occasions. He wrote to me before the Christmas Eve.
Take a look at a part of his mail which
holds a brightest mirror to the darkest truth.
"I and Collins split up after being together
for 1 year. The first 6 months were life transforming and the remaining were
running on flat tires, but I don't regret it and I have grown from it, and I
don't miss him, but I miss his cat. Quickly after that I met San, a young Brazilian
man who speaks little English. We are both learning each other’s language and
in that heady atmosphere of love, life appears good and refreshing."
Two things are evident from my friend’s mail. One, he
is very happy in a heady atmosphere of love and two, he is very happy in being
whoever he is. Who are we to tell him what life should he lead? I don’t think
my friend intentionally disregarded conventional sexual norms. Who knows why he
has an enduring pattern of emotional and/or sexual attractions to men? It is a debate
that American Psychological Association should better be benefitting from. But
I don’t see a reason why the world should bother about my friend and other
myriad men and women who have curious inclinations.
As I turn 45, I will neither view this as a clinical disarray
or social delinquency. Until proven otherwise, I would respect this man, as I
always did. He is not straight, that’s OK. But he is a gem of a guy, better
than thousand perverts that I am aware of.
Wow … I wrote about conventional sexual norms; what..sss an oxymoron?
***
As I read my friend’s mail, I dug deep into cache of
my memory and pulled out 2 more statements that otherwise were, derisive.
Here’s one artist on ‘marriage’ –
“It’s not natural; you cannot be compelled to
live with someone legally. Marriage is born out of our insecurity. It hasn’t
helped humanity, it has just created hell. People delude themselves that
marriage is a sign of stability, but what it forces you to do is to lead a
compromised life. And your children watch these two people who constantly
impose views and preach what they don’t practice. So you end up living with
someone for every reason apart from actually wanting to live with them.”
Here’s another on screenplay that he wrote –
“It’s written by me and I have no other person
to whom, I care to dedicate, so I am dedicating it to myself. As simple as
that.”
Within the prevailing societal framework, these reactions
from people can be classified as contentious comments. Literally, these are cocky,
cold and perhaps cruel statements. Such is the acidity of truth. Mencken has an answer for this conduct -
who says “It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you
know that you would lie if you were in his place”.
Limitation of life is that it is not a fiction.
And when we treat life as an event, it hinges on two
variables. Courage with which we live it, and sincerity with which we express
it. Hundred things about life we say are always going to be inconvenient to
others. But our life’s experiences influence what we say and do. If we fail to take
a note of people’s courage in these stances, then we have strong inclinations
to contribute to the huge community of idiots that lives outside of mental asylums.
Appreciating life’s crudest manifestation is nothing but accepting life in its natural
form. When we do so, we have more expressions, less limitations. When we become
real and say no sweet things about life, the awkwardness of life disappears bit
by bit, bringing us closer to the life that we always wanted to live. We become
less vulnerable. It appears to me that we are almost used to living life on a
slogan called Horn OK Please. No one
knows the origin or the meaning. But it is cool thing to live life like it. It
is a fad to be in a crowd that keeps nodding head to many theories of life that
are unfounded. Wisdom is not in challenging the social fabric to create anarchy
or in clinging to it to create slavery. Wisdom is letting things go in order to
authorize a self right to grow. Wisdom is resisting force-fed theories.
It is this ripeness that I am staring at, while I am
readying to move into my 45. It is this courage that I am trying to adopt as I
add one more year to my life.
I may not indulge into acts that are of fiercely
radical but I won’t be a mute participant in a universal procession of lies. I
may not bare myself and say what’s on my mind every time, I will at least be tolerant
about others’ controversial views. I may not cut down the color of life but
I will be keen to appreciate human life in its silhouette,too.
Here I come, New Year with a resolve to make life, not just a wasted chance.
