A Blue Moment

These days I have been feeling too low. It isn't winters yet so I am a bit worried as to what brings these blues into my life which otherwise come only in the cold times due to SAD. I have been pondering every night if ‘this too shall pass’ applies to this dull phase of my life. Apparently, a thought also crossed my mind few days back that this moment of blue was not self-invited, rather it was created by certain events, or you could say, certain ways that our lives today go on.

I would in fact say that too much ‘ambition’ could be a reason why we feel low so often. Or is it our lifestyle that most shrimps claim to be the reason behind the ‘unusual depressing times’? In relatable terms, is it about that almost perfect girl who fits into 26 inch denims, and walks in with all that panache wearing Mango, Mac and Mary Kay? Or that boy, who with his uncanny ability to score a 100 almost all the time, is the one whom your parents talk about always? Or that group of yours where your mobile phone looks like the one from the Stone Age? Or those from the family, who, you don’t know how, always know when your result is coming?

My god! The world is a brutal place! At least if we put it that way. I just don’t get why there is an extreme pressure on all of us; a pressure not only to fair well, but to be perfect- with perfect bodies, perfect jobs, perfect paychecks, and in fact with perfect partners. I suppose we are in a generation where we want to create robots, and not better human beings.

Acceptance the word is. Beyond the long spelling, there is a long context I wish to draw your attention to. Acceptance to what, you might ask. I would say, acceptance to everything, tall or short, ugly or pretty, classic or mediocre, good or bad and most importantly acceptance of our own self, which in fact is the most difficult kind. The only thing that stops us from accepting things, living or non-living, is that we judge.

The girl in the short skirt? What a slut. The guy with that female accent? So gay! The lady who negotiates at the neighbourhood grocer? A cheapskate! The man, who complimented you in front of his wife? Such a flirt.

Everyday, as people go places, and meet other people, they tend to form an opinion. We tend to frame people into specific images in our mind, that aren't motivated by any logic. The reason why we do it, is because the reality appears to be like that.

Short and simple, we perceive and believe, not wanting to know the truth. Most say, “don’t worry about what people think. “ I have personally found it impossible. What college I get into, what man I marry, what company I work for, what car I drive, would matter to my aunt as much as it does to my dad.

So our lives are not our own, and henceforth, the pressure, the pressure to be acceptable, to be laudable. No one likes it that way; at least most of us would not. But then why do we struggle every day, to make ourselves more perfect? Or why do we look in the mirror, and wish we looked more like Diaz or Cruise? Most of us are walking on the path of life in a direction taken by majority. We are scared to experiment, scared to not be accepted, scared of the outcome, and scared of what people will think.

I am not excluding myself from the ‘WE’. I found the reason behind my troubled times. Sometimes making too much effort is fatal. You tire yourself, and you still aren't enough. You would never be. There is always a scope of improvement, they say, but to what extent? To what extent do you have to drive yourself, and what makes you ask for more? The fact that ‘more is better’ or the fact that ‘success is all about growth, all about improvement’ ?

This makes me dream of a different world; where no one was ‘obliged’ to be somebody, where imperfections were good, where I did not have to write such pessimistic stuff.  I wish for a life, where your loved ones were happy in your happiness (no, this does not happen in real life).  By the way, I just figured out how to get out of grey- omega 3 fatty acids, dark chocolates (yum), sunlight, cod liver oil supplements and the most important thing of all-connect and create!

I just connected and created something as I wrote this piece (Feeling so much better). You might try it as well as I fetch dark chocolates and flax seeds from the market! :-)