How to rekindle my spirit
I got the following as a response to my previous letter -
Hey love.
"I knew writing it out was out of the question, like breathing underwater."
I shall be quoting you for a long time now!
I wonder sometimes when you write, you think about the lives you touch with your words. As for this letter, I felt as if you wrote it for me. So I want to try to spill a little more of myself to you.
I have never heard the songs you mentioned, but I saw the same Sun that you watched going down that you did. I'm glad that you could fix yourself. At least someone could. What I wanted to ask you is, was it a reverie or enigma that you experienced? Do you ever get attached to places because that's where you discovered yourself?
I have everything that I could ask for right now but it isn't cathartic. So, is this not what I have really wanted for years?
You know I want this and I want it all but it's not cathartic. And I can think no further.
How to rekindle my spirit?
- Bewildered Love.
7.47 pm
Sunday
July 4, 2021
Dear Love,
Thank you for your kind words! I spent pretty much all of this week mulling over all that you’ve said, because those are some really interesting questions. Reverie or enigma. A day dream or something hard to encapsulate in words.
A few days back, I came across these words by Walter Isaacson in Leonardo Da Vinci:
“… But I did learn from Leonardo how a desire to marvel about the world that we encounter each day can make each moment of our lives richer.”
Why I brought this up is because, what I experienced on the terrace was neither a reverie, or an enigma. Nor was it made possible by distractions, or was a distraction in itself. It was an episode of mindfulness, of being fully immersed in the present, of soaking in the simple delights of life.
But is there an attachment to places which bore witness to such experiences? No. Because everyday, like the sunset, is different. The person who had a good time on the terrace lives within me, but is not the me that is typing this. So right now if I were to go to the terrace, and stare at the grey colorless skies, mimicking the present state of my mind, with no wind to interrupt the stillness, I’d probably come back down to my flat feeling more suffocated than I did before.
Which makes me wonder: how much of our experience of this world is a projection of our own inner worlds. Is suffocation in the air, or is it within me? Is it because the last two years feel like an eternity, where jokes of “still being in 2019” or in “February 2021” carry an edge of sincerity? The distress of “repetitive everyday” is real. I am bored. I am so fucking bored. How much can I stimulate my mind without any external help? At least there was the distraction of getting dressed and going out somewhere, feeling purposeful as we whipped out clothes and adorned ourselves, and went to work, classes, movies, or hung out with friends. Now, it’s just indoors, while the outdoors gets further and further away from our grasp.
Meanwhile, all this stay indoors is forcing us to go indoors, within ourselves, to look into our own emotional well being, under our psychic beds, to clean out the nooks and crannies, and be confronted with previously unseen and unnoticed cobwebs, cracks, dirt, dust, and neglected bits and pieces of our self that happened to slip away. And frankly, this self confrontation is boring, because we are not as interesting as we think because all we occupy and know is ourselves, and it’s boring being ourselves, and hence, we crave escapist content: devouring art, TV shows, movies, outings, anything to momentarily escape the accident of our beings and this personality we’ve been saddled with, and become someone else.
But in this lockdown, or lockdowns, how much distraction can you snort? How much longer until the high fades? How much more when even distraction fails at being distractions and becomes part of the fabric of the boring everyday, where each day is like the day before?
The high died a long time back. No amount of scrolling through reels, and twitter timelines is helping. If I watch B99 another time, I’ll physically throw up. Instead, I am being forced to confront what I have been running away from for all these years rather than smothering every discomfort with distractions or work as is my wont. I can no longer rely on any of my methods. Workaholism is not the answer. Devouring book after book is not the answer. Numbing my mind with the bullshit on Twitter and Instagram is not the answer. Like tablets, they are a momentary salve; but not the solution. Understanding? The tablets don’t work any more because your body got used to it; yet the issues still persist.
You say, “I have everything that I could ask for right now at this moment but it isn't cathartic. So, is this not what I have really wanted for years?” Basically, you are finally being confronted by what you’ve been running away from all this while. The rolling boulder has caught up with you. Now Sisyphus, what is it that you really want? Where’s the discontent coming from? Why the discontent? What’s missing?
Or is it that you are unable to be content with what you have? So used to rolling the boulder up and up, that you don’t know who you are outside of your labour. Who are you when you are not numbing yourself with distractions? Who are you when you are not labouring? Who are you outside of your work? Who are you, love? Don’t worry; I have been asking these exact questions of myself for the last couple of years. I am used to defining myself as a writer; but who am I when I am not writing? All this while I was a student. Who am I when I am not slogging away on assignments and deadlines? Who am I outside of it? What am I outside of everything? Why can’t I endure the discomfort of not knowing? Rilke spoke of loving the questions; but what about living with and within oneself, living in the one space from which you cannot escape? Because wherever you go, you’ll always carry your mind, yourself.
And hence, when you ask, “How to rekindle my spirit?”, you need to take a closer look at the home you’ve built within yourself. All this while we’ve been creating identities and labels for ourselves. Workaholic. Writer. Girlfriend. Etc etc. But now, none of these identities are serving their purpose. Maybe the dress doesn't fit, because I have outgrown it. Maybe I don’t have a taste for these clothes. Maybe now I am into stockings and stilettos instead of my usual and familiar pants and socks. All this while we’ve been creating narratives around ourselves, building our self identity with memories, stories, wounds - narratives that helped piece together a sense of self. But these narratives are slowly cluttering your window, blocking all light, suffocating you indoors. Because while they helped formulate your identity, you’ve held onto them for so long and so hard that you are not letting any other narrative materialise and take its place. What I am saying is: examining each and every piece of your self identity, and then keeping what rings true, rejecting what doesn’t.
Who are you now?
Sometimes, when writing, you rework the present piece; sometimes you drop it all together, and work on something else, and return to the rejects so you can take the better sentences and ideas and use it elsewhere. Do you see what I am driving at? You are the writer and the written word, and you are now being asked to go over, edit, and work through all the rejects, drafts, versions, ideas, concepts that you’ve piled on your desk because your story is stuck; the plot won’t move further, the characters make no sense, and the sentences seem off. So you start over to let a fresh perspective in.
Art by Tomoko Hara
That you are being confronted by this discontent is Life asking you to take a closer look at yourself. You are being asked to unravel your own identity that you believe is now set in stone, and let something else, something newer and better take its place.
Of course, this is an incredibly uncomfortable process. Believe me, I know. This period is painful, excruciatingly so, and it's tempting to reach out to the familiar and continue to remain there. But butterflies emerge from the discomfort of cocoons. Yeah?
I hope all of this made sense. Usually, I try to be in the realm of the concrete and the practical and the logical. I love things to be step by step, but I am learning to soak in every emotion, rather than impatiently wait for it to pass. That would mean letting go of this urge to reason with everything inexplicable, and just sit with it, for all the answers emerge when you are no longer fighting yourself.
With love,
Shivani