I am insecure to the "V". That is as far as the alphabets in my name would allow me. I am, in equal measure, consumed by the self. Like everyone in this world, I would love to think that I am unique in my own special way. It is a very reassuring thought to nurture. However, because of all the ontological ironies associated with human race, I know that the sense of uniqueness of my being, and the nature of insecurity that I almost continually live in, ceased to be unique the very moment they germinated. I can keep going round and round with this thought, until that round becomes an vortex. A maelstrom. The good news is that I am a tad too insecure to do that.
When I was a child, I was curious about a lot of things. Immersion rod in particular, and what would it feel like to "feel the electric current". I tried a sample set of activities to determine that. I used to think feeling the current would mean feeling the heat, because the TV used to heat up, the bulb used to heat up and the iron use to heat up. So I used to touch the buckets with the rod in it. The metal ones were certainly hot, but a different kind of hot. Then we studied electrolysis, and I used to dip my hand in the buckets just to see if something accumulated on my fingertips. In retrospect, I am glad I did not think of producing oxygen. The last set of experiment was pouring water into the bucket with the rod, and trying to gauge the current in mid-air by touching the stream. Every time, I got a shock. A mild one. But I had enough conviction to carry out each of these experiments, despite the elderly wisdom floating around in my house. Were I to substitute the "electric current" with "myself", I am afraid I might not have much to say.
Which makes me wonder whether, if at all, I am encountering a chicken-egg problem. Is it my lack of conviction that prevents me from doing a lot of things, and for the conversation to be coherent, digging deeper inside of me to be at peace with my self, or is it the underlying insecurity that prevents that conviction from building up to a point where it warrants any relevance? All my hitherto-uneventful life (ok, that's a lie), I have always put up a brave face in the events of existential crises. Whatever that means, and I am sure I have gotten the wrong interpretation, if only as a result of an excessively liberal usage of the phrase in the contemporary social narrative, I have plodded past each of those situations and emerged even more brittle from the inside. Mainly because I chose not to tackle the "why?" of those phases. Additionally, because people have opinion of me that I need to live up to. And most significantly, because I have been dispassionate for the better part of my life.
I hate spirals, and like every other ontological irony, they keep pulling me back. This time because I say I have been mostly dispassionate, and then I propose that I have had existential crises.
I am a conformist to the "T". I want to be loved, to be the center of all attention that can possibly be in any ecosystem that I am a part of. That would mostly keep me happy, and embarrassed. I am an iconoclast. I have questioned myself on a lot of things that are as far from the value system we've been brought up in as can be. I hardly care about a lot of things (except attention, and may be some love). And as a result, hardly question a lot of things, which in turn makes me a conformist, again. The difficult part is, I expect to be a part of narratives / conversations I never bothered to be in. This is mostly like, and science geeks correct me, expecting a reaction without any action.
The terribly narrow world that I mostly confined myself to is decidedly expanding at a rapid pace, opening a window for me to experience a lot of things I thought were surplus to my existence. Who, afterall, does not want to be loved?
When I was a child, I was curious about a lot of things. Immersion rod in particular, and what would it feel like to "feel the electric current". I tried a sample set of activities to determine that. I used to think feeling the current would mean feeling the heat, because the TV used to heat up, the bulb used to heat up and the iron use to heat up. So I used to touch the buckets with the rod in it. The metal ones were certainly hot, but a different kind of hot. Then we studied electrolysis, and I used to dip my hand in the buckets just to see if something accumulated on my fingertips. In retrospect, I am glad I did not think of producing oxygen. The last set of experiment was pouring water into the bucket with the rod, and trying to gauge the current in mid-air by touching the stream. Every time, I got a shock. A mild one. But I had enough conviction to carry out each of these experiments, despite the elderly wisdom floating around in my house. Were I to substitute the "electric current" with "myself", I am afraid I might not have much to say.
Which makes me wonder whether, if at all, I am encountering a chicken-egg problem. Is it my lack of conviction that prevents me from doing a lot of things, and for the conversation to be coherent, digging deeper inside of me to be at peace with my self, or is it the underlying insecurity that prevents that conviction from building up to a point where it warrants any relevance? All my hitherto-uneventful life (ok, that's a lie), I have always put up a brave face in the events of existential crises. Whatever that means, and I am sure I have gotten the wrong interpretation, if only as a result of an excessively liberal usage of the phrase in the contemporary social narrative, I have plodded past each of those situations and emerged even more brittle from the inside. Mainly because I chose not to tackle the "why?" of those phases. Additionally, because people have opinion of me that I need to live up to. And most significantly, because I have been dispassionate for the better part of my life.
I hate spirals, and like every other ontological irony, they keep pulling me back. This time because I say I have been mostly dispassionate, and then I propose that I have had existential crises.
I am a conformist to the "T". I want to be loved, to be the center of all attention that can possibly be in any ecosystem that I am a part of. That would mostly keep me happy, and embarrassed. I am an iconoclast. I have questioned myself on a lot of things that are as far from the value system we've been brought up in as can be. I hardly care about a lot of things (except attention, and may be some love). And as a result, hardly question a lot of things, which in turn makes me a conformist, again. The difficult part is, I expect to be a part of narratives / conversations I never bothered to be in. This is mostly like, and science geeks correct me, expecting a reaction without any action.
The terribly narrow world that I mostly confined myself to is decidedly expanding at a rapid pace, opening a window for me to experience a lot of things I thought were surplus to my existence. Who, afterall, does not want to be loved?
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