The Waiting Game

Expectation, they say, is the root of suffering…

And if you ask me, they’re not wrong! But then, am I the right person to decide? My opinion could be biased because my expectations have almost always led me to pain. But then, there are those in the world too, who know the recipe to make Happiness, with just the correct amount of Expectation and the accurate amount of Commitment. (If you happen to be one of them, please do share the recipe for the benefit of those who are hopelessly starved)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Before M painted my world red, I had actually never expected anything like that to happen in my life. I never thought it was possible, given my circumstances. And yet, when he came, I surprised myself with the realization that I had waited for it all along. There he was – an impossible dream that became my reality; but even before I could get a hang of the new wings my life had given me, he had turned back into a dream, more impossible than ever before. I had expected too much, asked for too much, and life had shown me where I belonged.

Night after day after night after day, I used to wait to treasure each syllable uttered by him for me, wait to capture each glance he would be kind enough to throw my way, wait to cherish every little touch of his on my skin. Yes, I was hopeless, I was helpless. I had completely lost myself in that waiting game, so much so, that I didn’t even realize that soon, I was the only one playing the game. The waits had slowly become longer, and eventually, turned endless.

A little part of me, perhaps, still plays that game, and I wish I could, but I just don’t have the heart to kill that part. I heard this somewhere… and I know how true it is:

“The most difficult to do in the world is not killing a man, but killing your dream”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

VS was not a dream. Nothing after M was. Whether anything or anybody could ever be, remains to be seen.

VS was a fantasy though. A passionate fantasy. When I look back at it today, I can remember almost nothing. It has all turned smoky, almost as if it had happened in a faraway place to somebody I don’t know. In fact, I might even be able to make myself believe that it had never happened at all, were it not for the potholes it has left for me on the road to Trust. I do often find myself analyzing those potholes and waiting for answers to pop out of them, even though I know that those answers will change nothing.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Waiting is a game. It comes packed with excitement, frustration, anticipation, joy, sorrow – every damn thing you look forward to in a sport. And hence, there have to be rules for the Waiting Game.

But I don’t know what they are, or whatever I do know are the wrong ones, for I have certainly always found myself at the losing end of the game… I seem to always start as the one who is waited for, and end as the one who waits. It makes me edgy if I know that someone I care for is WAITING for me. I almost look at it as a punishment to them, and can’t relax until I have ended it for them. And yet, season after season, I find myself serving the very punishment I hate.

There is something certainly wrong somewhere. Is it that I expect too much? Can you be happy if you don’t expect? Can you be human if you don’t expect? If expectation is the root of pain, is it not the source of happiness too? Must I know the rules of this game, to stop losing?

I want to stop Waiting… I’m tired of this game… And there are two ways for my being able to STOP the game… One of them is not in my hands, though… And the one that is, might be just as painful as the game. Yet… I’m sick and tired of this game.

The Circle of... Sorrow

[I had started writing the previous post with the intention of writing what I’m going to write here now. The two streams of thoughts, albeit interconnected, would feel more justified in being discussed separately]

“There are burdens in this world… And they have to fall somewhere. If they fall on you, Know that You were chosen because You have been given the ability to carry them”

I may not have been able to reproduce verbatim these words from a very moving film ‘Parzania’, but the beautiful thought in them never leaves me. It’s not like I don’t have the moments of – “Why me?”, not like my mind doesn’t get restless in trying to find Someone to Blame, but sooner or later, some voice (from within or without) in some way always reminds me that I have the Choice to Be Happy, Choice to Feel Content, Choice to Forgive, Choice to Be at Peace, Choice to Choose… With so many choices at hand, need I fret over being helpless and hopeless?

Let’s face it. There’s no Fun without the Boring. No Smile without the Tears. And there’s no Joy without the Sorrows. The flip side will always exist, because that’s what gives the sunny side its existence. But which side should stay up depends on the hand that tosses the coin… Our hand!

There are many ways in which one deals with Sorrow, a few of which are these:

~ Sulk! {Which only leads to more… sulking, but may I add, that Sulking can be quite a lot of fun! Especially when you have audience!}

~ Try to forget by means of self-indulgence! {Momentary relief, to be generally followed by a torrent of emotions again}

~ Try to forget by helping out others. {A much evolved and seemingly successful method}

~ Seek professional help. {Works for some people}

~ Seek revenge!! {The bruise always remains fresh and tender, because it is never allowed to heal}

~ Subconsciously nurture the Pain and Sorrow...

The last one is perhaps the most dangerous. It happens when the scar is much deeper than it seems. So much so, that it might have even been removed from the most frequently-visited pages of memory. The surface heals, yet deep down, it never stops bleeding and affects one in the most unfathomable ways. It creates a Sense of Sorrow which is difficult to justify and to come to terms with. Because the wound is so deep that you have no touch with it anymore. And without air and care, it only cuts deeper and deeper within.

~0~0~0~0~

PR is a man from the upper middle class, comfortable living, good wife, lovely children, a pretty satisfactory life… PR beats up his wife or children at least once in a week. He begs of them for forgiveness for days after that, and yet, he can’t stop himself from doing it again in moments of confrontation. His wife has learnt to live with it. “When he was a kid, his father used to beat him black and blue everyday. He is trying to improve. I want to give him time…”

The Circle of Sorrow. PR is caught up in it, and I fear his children would too. The bruises his father gave him decades ago still breathe in his subconscious. In his conscious mind, then, he would have vowed to be a man just the opposite of his own father. And yet, he finds himself incapable of doing that today, inflicting the same bruises on his children’s bodies and hearts.

Why? Because the place he should have been able to call Home, became a Haunt. The man he expected to be protected by, became his tormentor. Quite obviously, the ground which is the basis for bringing up a stable human being… That ground, itself, was unstable, shaky… and so, that is the kind of man it produced as well.

PR has nurtured his Sorrow. And now, he is carrying forward the tradition, the Circle of Sorrow. Unknowingly. Not that he wants to. Given a chance, his conscious mind would try to discard all the wounded parts of him and feel free. But his subconscious wouldn’t let him. Because somewhere along the way, that Sorrow has become a part of his very existence. His identity even. He would feel hollow without it. Incomplete. Maybe handicapped.

~0~0~0~0~

And that’s why the Circle of Sorrow is an unusual circle. It builds on every negative emotion a person harbors within himself – fear, pain, insecurity, hatred, and it keeps growing bigger and bigger in circumference and area, as each hurt person emanates his Sorrow to the ones linked to him.

The only way to cut this Circle away is for one person to free themselves… That one person who can realize that whatever happened to them made them a stronger and better human being, whoever made that happen to them was human too and they made a mistake and that mistakes are forgivable [Yes! Toughest! Highly Debatable! And yet, the only way to Redemption], and that they, today, take the Choice to Let Go – of their Pain, their Grudge, their Loss, their Wound, their Circle of Sorrow.

I came across one such exceptional person recently. And if you’ve read Me until here, I urge you to go ahead and read Her.

The Circle of... Pain

[‘Man’, ‘He’, ‘Him’ words in this piece should not be looked at, as gender-specific]

"Nobody has had it easy in life."

I’ve come to believe that, over the years. Yes, some people have to ride against the tide much more often than the others. And some of the rival tides carry the might of a cyclone behind them… It feels from the look of it that life has perhaps been the most unfair on these few. Perhaps, it has too. But then, were it not for the adversity, the Heroes would never have been called so.

Heroes have special powers. And the most important of those powers are their own oppositions, their own hardships. Not everybody is a Hero, because well, not everybody gets to be conditioned by mammoth problems.

This, however, does not mean that the so-called (and believed to be) ordinary man doesn’t have a taste of real problems. For most people, their ‘ordinary’ problems are extraordinary, because whatever said and done, at any given point in time, one man’s problem is unique to him, and he’s the only one fighting it, even if millions before him have seen, faced and dealt with exactly the same crisis.

Heartbreak may seem an extremely mundane and passé reason for swollen eyes to some people, while these very people would probably shut themselves into darkness over the loss of a pet. Actually, other things being constant, pain is as small or as big as the lack of familiarity with it. It works like antibodies – like one of those immunization injections – which build a protective wall inside you, a wall against any afflictions by similar sources of pain attacking yet again. But well, if the source of pain is a new one… Boom! There goes the Wall! And then, starts the process of the buildup of a new defense mechanism. A new thing or two are learnt, and the Wall is repaired to face the storms yet again.

Every storm is unique, which is why every wall is unique. Resilience is built up as and when new storms loom large on the skies. But to say that a certain Wall, as it exists today, has not been through the worst possible or hasn’t endured as much as its ability is, would be a little unfair.

Nobody can get into another person’s shoes. Yet, in every way, one must have a heart big enough to accommodate those dealing with seemingly trivial problems. Looking down upon them as trite is tad insensitive.

After all, Pain and the Ability to Bear It – come in a circle. You may never know which came before the other, but they must always coexist. If the Ability exists but Pain doesn’t, then there’s no way to prove the existence of the former at all. If the Pain exists and the Ability doesn’t, well, it becomes a question of existence then. And the choice one makes in that one moment is actually the only choice available to them. To create the Ability, to complete… the Circle of Pain.