A Genre Called Life.

Remembering to reconstruct each day with audacity.

“Worry less,” I tell myself, as I empty the second sachet of Monsoon Malabar coffee into my mug of boiled water, fingers reaching for a few granules of brown sugar, only to put them back in the jar.
It’s been two months since our last encounter - and I’ve made my peace with that figure - it’s long enough for us both to have collected some space and anecdotes, but short enough for you to not have forgotten about me.

Hello, reader.

On this humid, dripping August night - the old, familiar, and long-lost feeling of wanting to “bleed at the typewriter” (circa Hemingway) has paid me a visit. I’m trying to befriend discipline too, for it seems more loyal. But for now we must salvage what we can.
Tonight’s urge to write hit me like a lightning bolt while watching the second season of The Bear (what a brilliant smack on the face that show is, by the way).

I have been sitting in bed, tiredly acknowledging, that like stagnant water for mosquitoes, my mind too is the perfect breeding ground for something to grow and multiply - and that’s ‘worry.’ How did we arrive here? I’ll let my therapist unravel that, but I will scratch the surface tonight.

I have been fixated for ages, on the idea that life is defined by the lens we adopt for it - how we perceive our days IS how we live them, and eventually remember them. Actual reality, no matter how painful or wonderful, is rendered meaningless before our own emotional hyperfixations and cognitive distortions. This little nugget of enlightenment seems more and more true with each conversation I have with the people who surround me. There isn’t too wide a gap between how my friends and I envision life. But this gap becomes a chasm each time I listen to my parents, and grandparents, and understand what populates the landscape of their thoughts. Our lenses for life are so fundamentally different, much like film genres that don’t intersect, and understandably so.

Perhaps parents tend to think of their children’s lives as true crime documentaries - a setting where their child (and their child alone) will find themselves in a dark, dingy laneway at night, ominous music playing in the background, terror lurking in the air. Every single choice matters here. One wrong decision and everything goes south. Perhaps, for most parents, caution IS care. To an extent, this is completely understandable, given the shocking and gruesome times we live in (cue crime statistics from your local daily).
The problem emerges when this caution morphs into our whole being, and becomes the sole colour with which we choose to paint our days. Surely somewhere out there, is an anthropologist pulling their own hair out, trying to comprehend how we went from being a species that once hunted for food, to a species that is now afraid to attend a phone call. We inherently fear everything now, don’t we?
For the longest time, I mistook this worrying and avoidance as life itself. It took me a considerable number of years (and I still have a mighty long way to go), to separate myself from the notion that life is a thing to be feared. I have been trying for some years now to live daringly, speak audaciously, and on most occasions I may have even succeeded. But underneath my carefully nurtured courage is constant concern that eats and gnaws at me, until I am aware of it and nurse it away.

This isn’t a rare, remotely occurring phenomenon. This fear, for several generations alike, is also related to where one stands on the socioeconomic ladder - from China to the USA. Middle class living inherently entails having enough to lose, but not enough to spare. And perhaps, this fear of the loss of hard-earned material comfort combined with the pressing ambition to accumulate more, in order to be “at ease,” is what suspends us into this perpetual state of unease. Having said this, it is far too reductive to claim that the middle class has a monopoly over stress. At the same time, money-matters and how they percolate into nearly all facets of our daily lives certainly have some load-sharing to do, in our inability to relax.

It seems I spend so many of my days, weeks, and months, waiting to start living. All steps, big and small, seem to follow the template of, “When x happens, I will do y.” Cumulatively, and in retrospect, what we have is a life spent largely in limbo, interspersed with occasional thwarts of ‘putting myself out there’ whenever I have the good sense.
This is not to discount the value that fear and stress bring to my life. They help me plan ahead and for all the ‘what ifs’, they keep me on my toes and propel me to bring my best to the table, and safeguard me against real threats. My fear of falling sick is what makes me regularly drink water, my fear of creeps keeps me from trusting people early on, my fear of being stranded under a remote flyover at a late hour is what reminds me to always carry my phone charger before I leave the house (YES, extreme, but a full battery keeps me calm even when that first Uber cancels - getting home safe at night is something a lot of people do not take for granted, I needn’t say more).

However, what about the moments when I really, truly, don’t need my fear - when I simply need it to quiet down, switch off, and let me be functional. What about times when I need to take a risk, and be my bravest? Or even moments when I simply need to be curious and observant? Then, fear acts as an obstruction. It clouds my vision and concept of the world around me. Usually, I worry relentlessly. I ruminate to the point of being worn out, until I am left with too little strength to entertain thoughts about worst-case scenarios. I believe this is my (very public) declaration of this exhaustion.
Life, is meant for living. It is not a thing to be feared.

While I certainly don’t see my life as a true crime show, I am working on seeing it as a sitcom instead, trying to mark off the essential checklist:

1. There is hope at the narrative’s core.

2. There are no wrong decisions or difficulties, only plot twists.

3. There is humour to be found in mess-ups.

4. There are friends I can rely on (at the cost of being roasted perhaps?).

5. There is always, always a peppy background score (and theme song).

There isn’t much logic to this grand phenomenon called life, so it wouldn’t be entirely unwise to welcome some randomness in the lens we adopt to live it.
I hope I remember this, I hope I remember to live daringly, curiously, and comically.

Maybe I’ll add some sugar to my coffee once in a while.

Till next time,
-Samreen