WHY Me?

life is filled with trying times, all too often we get caught up with certain vicissitudes. Every
now and then we are thrown into battle grounds by the very life we wake up everyday to look
forward, rejoice, cherish or even dwell and yet we don’t even bother to acknowledge the fact that
it is the nature of life itself. Sometimes, or very often, it becomes cumbersome to even stand up
on our feet, sometimes doing nothing becomes the toughest task to carry out, sometimes things
are actually easier said than done however, as human beings it is quite natural for things to go
south and for us to suffer. Especially, when we associate with so many people in our everyday
lives and give them the power to snatch our euphoria. So then arises the question, if these
intricacies of life can be countered by going solo or living in solitude. Apparently, living in
solitude does not fall under everyone’s circle of competence and that essentially means it is not
everyone’s cup of tea. Our silent battles may go above and beyond our reach to control or to
fight against, this phenomenon may cause our minds to get cluttered, defining us as a product
of flesh and blood with happy faces and sad souls. Whenever we indulge in times like this, we
forget all the positivity that surrounds us and give weight to all the negative aspects which
haunt us. This is when all the self-talk kicks in, we ask questions to ourselves and try figuring
out, “why do I have to suffer while everyone around me gets to enjoy life to the fullest?”. Just
like the palm of our hands, although they look quite similar from a distance but once you take
a closer look, the difference is day and night and similarly our lives are significantly different
from every other person in this world and yet we seem to overlook the reality and jump in to
comparison. In a nutshell, happiness is equal to reality minus expectations. Lightning can
strike at any age and at any time may it be death, success, marriage or any situation that
reality indicates for us to encounter in the process of living. What keeps us holding back is our
expectations, for instance,
George fell in love, had prosperous academic life and wanted to ask out Jane in the near future
to settle down. However, he got caught in an inevitable mid-life crisis, Jane lost interest in him
because she didn’t want to surround herself with George’s problems and moved on with another
man. George couldn’t bear the pain of losing her let alone seeing her with another man, went
through severe depression and attempted to take his own life! He overdosed himself with
sleeping pills however, he survived and had been sent for counselling. A few months went by, he
was recovering spontaneously and was resilient enough to stand back on his own feet. After a
few years, he had moved on from all the sorrows which were holding him back, he was happy
until he fell in love again with Dakota. His past relationship had left him with an
overwhelmingly low self-esteem. He couldn’t build up the courage to let Dakota know of his
feelings. Soon enough, Dakota settled down with her colleague. George was relentlessly
devastated, started going to the local pubs to let out his frustration with a few drinks every
night and on one Saturday night, while returning home he stood up in front of a speeding car
in the highway and said goodbye to this biased world. His mind was cluttered, he felt
unworthy and he hated his life more than anything. He is one example of infinite cases where
we are proven how unworthy we are in reality. Although it’s a lot to ask for however, we just
have to remove our expectations and accept the label of viability which life stamps us with. The
importance of decluttering the mind cannot be justified in words alone. We are so profusely
inclined to instant gratification that we can’t hold ourselves amidst any shortcomings, we
want things to happen in the moment only to realize that recovering takes time. “The root of
suffering is attachment”, quoted by Buddha is a short, yet a very powerful message for all of
us who are going through the obstacles that life puts in our journey to death. Yes, journey to
death! The people who lived a hundred years back for instance, have evaporated from this
overwhelmingly biased world and it is only a matter of time until we follow their path. Life in
this world is temporary let alone all of the hardship we go through, stress, anxiety and
depression. “Every man has a breaking point”, quoted in the iconic movie, “The Shawshank
Redemption”. Our capacity to handle tough situations varies from one another however, one
thing is for certain, it is that everyone has a breaking point. We don’t even realize that we are
going through a mental trauma until we dig deep in it or get out of it. Once we go in that
phase, our whole lives turn around, the things which used to excite us don’t feel exciting
anymore, we basically feel mundane, we procrastinate to everything apart from staying idle,
we become forgetful and cluster to the things which keep on distorting our subconscious mind,
we become intensively careless, we sabotage our hippieness and everything in between. The
feeling is horrible, it is as if you have become numb. However, in reality, we try our best to hide
what is going on inside of us to the exogenous world. This is why we assume that we are
exceptional and everyone else is lucky. The reality is that we don’t know what any other
human being we see walking down the street is going through because just like us, they too, try
their best to hide their emotions or at least give their best shot at doing so and therefore we are
just quick enough to make an assumption. You are not alone; everyone is in some way or
another in the same boat. You would find relevance to this scenario only if you are stuck with
this catastrophe of having a cluttered mind or had been in the past.
 LET THE TRAIN LEAVE THE STATION

Letting go of certain things and certain people might be difficult however, some things are just
outside of our limit to control and hold on to. That is just how life is and when we put all of
our efforts and more into clinging on to those certain things which we want so badly, we lose
ourselves in the process causing wreaking havoc and putting a dent to our hippieness. Holding
on to that untied rope falling from up above the sky is not ideal, once we fall down and shatter
into infinite fragments, it leads us to the dark abyss. We fall victim to the delusion of life,
attachments and the belief that those things which are slowly slipping away from us belong to
us and therefore we should keep on holding to them even if it breaks our heart. When it comes
to being rational, we come to this world alone, nothing belongs to us in the first place and
nothing eventually will when we evaporate into the mist, nothing is yours to claim in this
world. Letting go is a spontaneous yet tedious act of life, we seem to let go of things throughout
our lives, it is the only true constant and it personifies itself as a cyclical process.
 GET A PUNCHING BAG!

Apparently, keeping stress inside is counterintuitive. Some of us don’t possess the ability to
keep things inside and live candidly. All too often, we are unable to carry the burden in our
chest and it eventually leaves us decimated. So, what do we do? We throw out our frustration
on others, specifically the people that are close to our hearts. This usually happens when we
don’t get validated from someone we seek to please. We feel inferior and to overcome that feeling
we take it out on the people with whom we candidly spend most of our time. This course of
action is not easy to counter until or unless we get ego out of the way. When ego gets in the
 way, our propensity to seek validation and pleasing everyone we meet rewards us in a
surprising yet unprecedented way. How do we let our frustration out without hurting our
loved ones? Get a punching bag! Whenever you get frustrated, pull out a few punches on the
punching bag, smack it as hard as you can! This physical exercise is both mentally and
physically beneficial especially when dealing with stress, giving us the best of both worlds. But
what about ego? In order to minimize or completely mitigate ego from our mind, we need to
switch our form of salvation from pleasing everyone to something else which isn’t so harmful
and by accepting the fact that we can try but we can’t change the opinion of people towards us,
it is basically futile.