The end doesn’t always come as a full stop. Especially in the beginning, it comes as specks of realisation.
Those specks hurt progressively.
Letting go of old and long-term habits are incredibly hard. It is harder when it involves a loved one or someone you have grown to treat as family.
Who do you first interact with when you wake up, who do you have dinners with or watch TV with, who do you share a house with, who do you watch movies with, or have long (not-so-pleasant) conversations with ever so often?
On the surface, these are all just habits. But they have a way of sneaking into the deepest parts of your mind and staying anchored there.
In the beginning, the end seems like a whisper. It seems like it is at a distance away.
Going through the daily motions of life hoping for the end to come more quickly will make it seem slow and impossible.
But when the end is near, things change dramatically and it becomes heart wrenching.
It will no longer feel like a fantasy or idea you used to toy with. The concreteness of it will feel heavy and painful.
How do you step out of something you used to be in for so many years? No situation is a hundred percent bad. There have been good moments.
How do you divorce your soul from a life you have built over time and convinced yourself to call home?
And if that involves someone else, how can you break someone else’s heart to mend your own? Would that be selfish?
Are you leaving them in a better state, or can you look the other way, take no responsibility that isn’t yours and leave it to fate?
As you can see, I have too many questions… while the answers seem to elude me.
As the famous saying goes: “Upadhi dukkhassa mūlan’ti” — attachment is the root of suffering.
The past few weeks have gone by in a blur. I’ve had one too many tasks to complete and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t even a little bit overwhelmed.
Being extremely busy is something I’ve gotten used to because I started working full-time in my late teens.
What I find difficult to handle, though, is the challenge of achieving an equilibrium among my unpredictable personal life, intensive career and life goals (broadly).
Right now, my personal life feels like the outer edge of a raging whirlpool.
It has dragged me into several unique and tricky challenges which I find terrifyingly tough to overcome (mainly because I’m new to it).
Sidebar and ending this post on this note: How is it August already?!
Of abandoning my blog for a while… and writing this half asleep.
You have been warned — proceed only if you will not be offended by bad writing.
I wasn’t away. Words seem to have left the chat while pent up emotions were added to it.
I have finally seen the day a re-entry was registered in my life by the front desk receptionist that is my mind.
Words still evade me. So much has happened, my thoughts flood my mind as I try my best to stay afloat.
But, this is a happy problem. On most other days in the past, I allowed myself to wallow and drown. This means I did not even bother attempting to stay afloat.
These days, I want to survive thrive.
That’s all for now. I’ll be back when I have more.
So I did what every Tamil eventually does when language falls short. I turned to Sangam poetry.
Perhaps this can say what I have been trying to.
Translation and my thoughts are at the end.
குறுந்தொகை 40
யாயும் ஞாயும் யாராகியரோ?
எந்தையும் நுந்தையும் எம்முறைக் கேளிர்?
யானும் நீயும் எவ்வழி அறிதும்?
செம்புலப் பெயல் நீர் போல அன்புடை நெஞ்சம் தாம் கலந்தனவே.
Translation:
What are you and I to each other?
What relation is my mother to yours, and your mother to mine?
How did you and I ever come to know one another?
Like rainwater falling upon red earth, our loving hearts have mingled and become one.
My thoughts
There is a reason this poem still finds people after all these years. It understands something I have never quite found the words for.
Sometimes, people just happen to us.
They are not ours. They do not come from where we come from.
There is no reason for them to matter as much as they do. And yet, they do.
Two people, born into different families, living entirely separate lives, somehow meet and feel as though they have known each other for much longer than a lifetime permits.
“Like rain on red earth.”
I think about that line often. Because once the rain falls, can you really ask the earth to give it back?
Maybe that is why some people never quite leave us. Not because we are unwilling to move on, but because somewhere along the way, they became a part of us and we, a part of them.
Kurunthogai 40 isn’t trying to explain love.
It is simply acknowledging that some things were always going to happen.
And perhaps that is the saddest thing of all. That some people are written into our lives in ink, even if they were never meant to stay.
