Life is strange, but I miss poring my heart all over this place. The poor thing is usually kept hidden and sequestered up in a closet, and it gets all too lonely and hidden at times. It reminds me of Iqbal's line
یہ میری خود نگہداری مرا ساحل نہ بن جائے
These days, I am reminded very frequently of this.
The bad news is that I am, once again, in the middle of an existential crisis. The good news is that I know perfectly well what I am going to do about it; I just want to remain in the throes of this crisis a little longer.
Being a sample that lies pretty much outside the spectrum of normalcy, I have no idea whether other people my age get drawn into similar storms, how they feel about it and what they do to get over it. I have always been my own person, the most own person I have ever met, and I always run into my own problems and find my own solutions. At 26.75 years of age, I am finally extremely proud of it after embracing it completely as the only mode of life. I don't know about anyone else, but this is the only way I want to live.
And live I am going to.
So this crisis was, as usual, catalysed by a large number of things over time, some of them bitter and some of them sweet. I don't know of any other person in whose life sweet things can trigger this sort of crisis, but transience and entropy are huge themes in my life and whenever I encounter something sweet, I always end up asking myself, how long is it going to be sweet? How long is it going to be? With the maturity of an adult, I finally tell myself that I don't need every good thing in my life to be permanent and I am totally able to handle losses at this point in my life, after a long struggle with the fear of loss. However, the question of sweet turning to bittersweet always lingers at the back of every situation. Mostly I am utterly fine with it. Rarely, but with a probability definitely above zero, it triggers crisis like the current one. Normal people usually can't contemplate the bittersweet taste something sweet is going to leave in their mouth; I perfectly can, and this heightened perception and vision, much like the beauty of a poor girl, almost always works against me.
The answer to the question of bittersweetness is that I don't care. I truly, honestly, really don't care. I am going to leave my greediness, my horror of change, my fear of heartbreak for once in my life. I am perfectly capable of doing this.
Let us turn to the truly bitter things now.
Lack of recognition, rather acknowledgment, is another recurring theme in my life. I thought I had left it in Pittsburgh, but boy, was I wrong! I think I am always going to carry it around with me. However, I have recognized the problem as fundamentally that of having let the world in way too much and way too frequently these past 7 or 8 years. The reality has been gradually dawning on me, and finally the sun is up. I need to stop looking outwards and start looking inwards. Inwards is the only place that has ever made me truly happy and truly content. Happiness is elusive and transient and fragile; a thing for fools to pursue, in short, but contentment and peace of heart are the things that I need to pursue for my mental peace if for nothing else. I have never asked anything of the world, and I hope I never have to. The only thing I have to ask of it is that it leave me alone.
As compared to the 17 year old scared little under-confident me who used to write pretty but pointless things here, I am much more mature, confident and independent. I know how to take care of myself. I know what I want, and I am familiar with the means to pursue it. I have the material means to do what I want, as I want, whenever I want it.
I know that my philosophy smells suspiciously of epicureanism, and I don't think that is a misleading smell. It is just that much like the original epicureans, what I really want to do is sit under a tree and study maths and write literature.
Read and write I am going to do. I am sick of the world, and I am retreating back into my shell. Life is just too short not to spend it on things that would otherwise represent themselves as regrets to you on your deathbed.
Fortunately, this time around, I have learned how to identify people who matter from the mass and mess that is the world. I know how to identify people who matter, and what to do with them. I wish I could go back and advise my younger self to stop treating everyone as The World, because individuals are individuals and there are individuals who understand me, contrary to the universal laws I believed in at that time. I just need to identify them and treat them appropriately.
And treat them appropriately I am going to, with the finesse of a poet and the precision of a scientist.
This brings us to hidden treasures. One stumbles unexpectedly upon them, in far flung places, and is reminded of Tolkien: All that is gold does not glitter. I am not sure how one should handle them: with care reserved for delicate things, reverence for something that is far above one's station, or a fear of being deprived of them all of a sudden? I don't trust my fate to bring me sweet things, or to let them remain in my life for long, or to even let them be as sweet as upon the first taste, but I guess that with my newfound optimism, we'll just wait and see how things go.
That is something no one would ever have caught my 17-year old self saying, but I have learned the need to switch my long-term and high precision vision off at times and accept life with all its perfections and imperfections.
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