A look back in time

There are so many ways that you would take a look back into your life and and feel absorbed in it. The good — the ones that would send signals prompting an unexpected smile on your face, sometimes silly in public which renders you picking up a phone to avert the weird looks from the strangers around you. The bad — of course, like in popular culture or modern fiction, the past comes to haunt us in ways we try to stifle it ; often from our own mistakes and misdeeds. Well, we have our own coping mechanisms. And following, as cliche as it seems, the ugly — the fact that we totally abhor such memories which is why we try to bury the hatchet as much as possible. In some absurd way, the ugly memories were what makes life, life in its own beautiful way. We had often forgotten something.

Of crass superficiality

Redeeming this blog at the fringe of its demise…. =/

Well, how do i put it? For once in a very long time, I am reconnected and immersed with the vagaries and realities of human experiences, perceptions (and not to mention, emotions) in all forms during the mindless lull of exams. Literature has a part to play in this principally (while not solely). At a point of time (some few weeks ago) I was have a huge perceptional change on things, sometimes in an ‘about-turn’ trajectory’, I was thinking, where do I go from here? In that very period, I was evaluating my life for once in a very long time. Its an identity-crisis – not one that pushes me to a point of lament and stuck into some superficial emotional enclave, but one that forces me to accept the true reality of things. Funny eh? A  ’identity crisis’  that was at its core, enlightening. At least for once, I was pondering whether am I regressing in my attitudes or actually feeling more developed.

It all started when a particular friend commented on one particular day that I seem (or acted) “different”. Which is much sad in reality. I didn’t really change. Rather, you have only seen a side that hasn’t surface for a long time. At least before he actually knows me well enough. I’m not commenting about shallowness of human perception, much rather the expectations of human behavior. People expected me to appear in the positive side, for well, a lot of times actually. Sadly most of them are my friends, who appear psychologically frail and apprehensive when I do not act accordingly to what they think I should be. It just so happens that one fine day I happen to be quite reserved. Most people absurdly misconstrue it to be quite ‘emo’. Which I think in this light, is quite ludicrous. I could still remember my lit teacher saying, “Right, for 3 years of learning literature, we have regressed to saying..’sad’”.  Quite apt in fact, or rather, sad. We have been a human for almost 2 decades and we polarise everything into dichotomies of  ’happy’ and sad’, ‘positive’ or ‘negative’. Or sometimes labeling it as ‘Oh exam stress’ -.- Especially when we are so rash in labeling other’s disposition/emotions when there is a flux of experience he is going through (or maybe, in fact is not experience any emotions of all). But the point of me saying this is not to mock how others are thinking, rather just to highlight the reality of things. In fact, for me, it is to prepare myself on how people psychologically respond in times when I act in accordance in my own identity, which others are not willing to or readily embrace in that instance.

And speaking about this…

I want to take the opportunity to say something for the public eyes. Many of you are guilty of repressing others as well (and I do feel guilt to some degree). In the manner that you rush to ‘cheer’ others up in his moments of ‘sadness’ just for the sake of seeing him/her on a positive side. You think its laudable on your own accord. In essence, you are unknowingly repressing. The intention may be noble but I don’t think you are in the right to push others in a positive mood when he or she is  trying to grapple with his own emotions. I am, in many situations, a victim of it. Just because many people are accustomed to see me in a positive light does not render me less rights to feel what I am going through. Just because people expects someone to be happy, does not accord you the right to cheer people up in the very instance. Its sheer repression. Of both emotions and identity. In fact, for most of the time  outside the sphere of public eyes, I am usually prosaic — not happy nor sad. And if I don’t feel that what you are telling me is funny or hilarious, I am really not obliged to smile, right?  But in anyway, I’d like to say that there is no significant event that pushed me to say this. I just like to make such a statement in case this lapse out from my mind.

 

But more importantly on a serious note.

I do feel that it is alarming that I am gradually losing my sense of identity. Or perhaps moving away from the values that I have faithfully guarded once and served me well.  And I don’t mean that I am going to regress to a perceived ‘old self’ but more importantly for the past few months, I am in the cross-roads of evaluating my views of others, myself, of whom I really cherish, of whom I ought to cherish, my beliefs, my aspirations, my future, my life. But you may ask, “Why now?” My answer to it is: not that it will affect my exam performance in the first place. And  perhaps, the preceding months before all of this, my life has revolved around the inane and the superficial. And perhaps a lack of engagement and acknowledgement with my ‘self’ for a long time.  (Was that why I don’t really face so much of emotional whims the past… 1 year?) Well, like the adage goes, “Mastery is the knowledge of self”.