What is Pain?

Lights out Alice!

For context, I am going through another set of withdrawal pang. M.S. also decided not to continue, which makes her the sixth person on the trot to make that choice. That number keeps playing on me. Plus the fact that I am now settled down in a new city, work is not that great, missing home, missing my parents and most importantly missing a sense of purpose in life and to make it worse, procrastinating on working towards finding my purpose as well.

The situation has compounded itself to the point where I am in a pretty shite place. I am overwhelmed and in a dark corner of my head again, slowly and surely losing interest in the things that I could do to occupy and distract myself previously. It wasn't that my life wasn't boring previously and it wasn't that I was full of vigour and purpose all the time, but it was that slowly through time and the support of good people around me, I had worked myself back to a happy medium where I could get by without breaking down more than once every few days. 

What makes me feel even worse in the constant internal debate that rages non-stop in my head these days is that I should not be allowed to feel this way and call myself sad. This is the conundrum with mental health troubles. You are trying to diagnose yourself using the same tool that is causing the issue. It is similar to an internal investigation of corrupt practices led by an internally appointed team. There is no trust. There is always that doubt. Somebody out there is in physical pain. Somebody out there has LOST a loved one. How can I be out here hurting over missing a relationship or bond that never materialized? How dare I be in pain over being lonely? Why would I expect someone else to come and fix the things I need to for myself? Even if they do, is that even right? Is that even sustainable in the long term? The world has so much REAL pain and sorrow out there, what is even my plight? Do I even have the right to be unhappy or sad?

Matthew Perry took his life yesterday and he was pretty successful. Mike Shinoda is the other example that immediately jumps at me. These are the utter posters of what success in their field looks like. Yet they had awful existence, suffering from diseases that originate because of a shit head and persist because of the inability of the rest of the world to understand how shitty a shit head can be.

I lie here, welling up, just wanting to shout, cry, wail, anything to make this feeling go away. To make my shit head feel better. To reduce the impact that this feeling of loneliness is making me feel. Feeling of loneliness because this isn't the first time I have been alone, but this sure feels like how I am going to end up in life, which makes it unnerving.

I still miss her, but I know that she deserved better and that I need to first fix myself and find my purpose rather than get stuck in this rut.

But I currently also have very little life force in me to keep going. I have very little that is driving me and for a hyper active person like me, it is a pretty bad state of affairs to be in. 

I just want this bad feeling in my head, this constant aching to end. I just want something to give me any motivation, any driving force that gives me HOPE, hope to hold on to, because everything else seems to be slipping away. I no longer have the energy to do the little things that I used to enjoy, I am not pushing myself enough, which is just adding to the misery bit time.

It's going to be okay...

Lights out Alice!

It is hard to be broken. To be told a million times by people that you have a million flaws. To be told that you will never fit in. To be rejected time and time again for being yourself and not putting up a mask for the world. To not be perfect. To not be good enough...actually for never being good enough.

But what they don't know is that your head is a worse place. You see the million and ten flaws that you have and not just the million that is visible to others. You see the things you did to go above and beyond, while keeping your needs to the side to ensure that the other person has everything that might possibly need and then you see those preparations getting trampled and taken for granted. It's okay you reassure yourself, because these were not done with recognition in mind, just the fact that you would do it for people you care about. 

You bring down your walls, against the better judgement of your head, justifying that it will never know until it tries. You tell that you have put safeguards in place, that this time it will be different. This time they will be better, but even if they are not, this time you will not go all in or beg them to stay or get attached. This time you will be one of the cool guys and approach it with an air of indifference. This time you will be one of the bad ones and ignore the subtle hints or not do everything possible to make that other person comfortable. This time you will not make them feel like you are a safe place. This time you will not show them what peace is like. You will not show them what unfettered affection is like, you will not give them a taste of that tranquility that has been ever so elusive in your life.

You smile. Just a little as you walk towards another lie. No, not at the person, no. But at the lies you tell yourself on how it will all be different  this time and yet you go ahead and repeat the same pattern all over again. 

They leave again. 

You are broken again. 

You are reminded that you are broken and will never fit in. You are reminded of your million flaws. You smile because deep down you know the count is a million and ten and not the million that they know. Somehow it gives you some sense of satisfaction to see them being wrong by proving that you are far more broken than they will ever realize yet you have survived all this while.

You smile again, but this time nervously like a scared child who has broken the vase while playing in the living room even though your mom told you repeatedly otherwise. Your mom, which in this case is your brain walks in, looks at the shattered vase, which in this case is your heart and then turns to look at you. You tremble and nearly start sobbing. You know this look. You are expecting a  "I told you to not play with your heart" statement. You are expecting a lambasting. The anticipation hurts you more than any scolding ever would. Brain walks slowly towards you. You tremble in fear. But all it does it pat your hair and then walks out of the room. It knows, like every mother, that now is not the right time to scold. It is the time to support you. It returns to the room with a broom and silently starts collecting the broken pieces of your heart from the floor. All this silence scares you even more. You start wailing hoping to get some sort of reaction but the silence hurts more than any scolding ever could. You start giving justifications. The bawling becomes louder. Sorries fly galore and before anyone can get another word in, you start chanting all the ways in which you will be better the next time around and never repeat the same mistake. Still no response. Your sobs intensifies. You are standing at the same place, frozen in fear but searching desperately with your eyes for any emotion that would indicate how brain will respond next. But by this time, head has collected all the pieces of your broken heart from the floor into the dust-pan and turns to face you. It walks slowly towards you in the same quietness that unsettled you in the first place. 

The slow gait suddenly strikes something in you. Is your head quiet or is the pain so loud that you cannot hear anything? Like the temporary deafness that occurs when a flashbang goes off near you, was it that you couldn't hear anything in the pursuit of another person, swept so far deep into the pond that no visible light of rationality or audible sounds of pragmaticism could ever reach you? You try to turn around and frantically focus on any other sound, to prove that you could hear it all along. Nothing. No wise words, no long term focus, no listening to people that care about you, nothing was audible. Suddenly you see a silhouette. Your head has reached you and is standing in a towering presence over you. Was it always that your head towered over you, you question yourself. In an immediate snap, you realize that the presence of the person is growing. No, you realize in the very next moment that it is not them but in fact it is you who seems to be exponentially shrinking in their presence. You are so consumed by these thoughts that you barely register the soft and gentle touch that is repeatedly operating on your body. By the time your emotions are able to register the feeling and you turn to look towards the source of the touch, it strikes you. There was a void, an emptiness where your heart once used to be. Broken though it may be, your head tries to slowly place the pieces of your heart back in its place. You are unable to move. You are trembling and shaking inside but your body lies deathly still from the fear that any movement might hamper this delicate operation. 

There is a realization that strikes you. You look up and find that your head looking directly in your eyes. It was waiting all along for you to come to this conclusion. The pieces of your heart don't fit. It will never go back the way it was...

Oh deary me, not again!

Lights out Alice!

I look at the pattern and the words I have spoken each time I have gotten my heart broken and it makes me feel like a fraud. I repeat the same things, feel in similar ways and all I end up doing is begging them to stay. Is that bad? Is it my fault? Do I make it that suffocating?

I was looking back at the chats I had written to myself, which I generally do when I am deliberating what I need to write to a person, and it made me feel like I have a set pattern and behavioral traits. What scared me was how they all ended the same, with me begging them to give me a chance to show how I could be the right fit. This scares me because it begs the question whether I even know what I want out of a relationship or a partner or am I that desperate that I would go for anything, which would then turn out to be unsustainable in the long run or a bad situation for the other person because they might take it that they are not getting the treatment they deserve.

Going back to the SB days, I remember writing this after coming out of a long CAIML analytics weekend session. I remember being busy, enjoying drowning myself in work because it would give my overactive brain a useful outlet.

Smile, because you have made those same mistakes before.

Smile, at the pieces that lie broken on the crimson floor.

Smile, as they walk out through the broken door.

Smile, because you have seen it all before.

Smile, as it all ends and it goes back to the way it was before.

Smile, because nothing is ever going to be the same anymore.

Thank you Alice and my board of directors for being there for me!

Why can't I choose to focus on the good?

Lights out Alice!

It ended. It was always going to. The writing on the wall, the inevitability was there right from the very beginning, more so for me since I have been broken far too many times and have deeper issues.

I have been brooding and reeling for a while now. It hurts, not just because of MS, but of my overall situation in general. Also, because brooding and neglecting other parts of my life is the easy way out. My brain is lapping up the opportunity to just blame every one of my problems on this situation even though in reality they are separate disjointed things.

I keep forgetting that my restlessness, my inability to focus at the task at hand and my inability to finish what I start has always been there with me, my one true companion, the real issues that I need to constant deal with but I always neglect.

Amidst all the pathless walks that I keep undertaking to distract myself, 95% of my time is filled with negative thoughts and finding ways to blame myself and try to fit scenarios on how I could have behaved differently to get a better outcome. 

But right now, for a change, I think I will force myself to think of the good things. The moments I shared, were beautiful, etched forever in my mind for the peace that I felt in them while knowing through every passing second that I might never feel like that again.

Driving for hours with her, the slight panic but putting up a brave face search for our hotel at 2 am, might just have been mundane moments, but with her by my side, it was a different and a new feeling for me. Having company is not a common occurrence for me, unlike going on driving trips, having undertaken multiple solo trips to places out of curiosity or boredom. This company was special for the simple fact that I liked her, but I also couldn't bring myself around to confess the same. My internal debate told me it would not be wise to mar the trip with this topic and hence decided to enjoy the trip without any added pressure or expectation.

I enjoy driving. I enjoy being on the road. This trip was a notch above though. The Chennai Pondi route was a road in exemplary state coupled with being pretty safe and scenic. To add to the mesmerizing beauty of the sea on one side and rolling green landscape on the other, the company inside the car had already taken my breath away. Not just by her sheer beauty, but also through how disarming she could be. She could just make me want to put down my barriers and want to talk to her. Tell her everything. Hold her tight. Fight against anything that might ail her. Become her safe space. But since I couldn't enunciate any of this, I settled for enjoying the road while stealing glimpses of her smile and her face, hoping to permanently tattoo it in my memory.

I woke up early, hoping to watch the waves crash as the sun rose from ostel the next morning, for we both could barely sleep even though we only reached the hotel at around 3 am. What was surprising was that she could not sleep a wink as well. It was only later that she confessed that thoughts about us were keeping her awake as well. She had the utterly tough job of walking away from what she thought was good for her. No, I am not trying to say I was good. NO. On the contrary, she deserved way better and I still think I was way below what she deserved. But what I meant that it is never easy to have the ability to think rationally in every situation and it takes nerves of steel to stand firm in every situation, which she did, gracefully at that. She could embrace being in the moment, while never letting the moment sway her. Well, shit, because even though I received the raw side of the deal because of this, this ability to hold steady and stay rational just elevated her in my books. 

Another moment that just will stay with me forever was the experience of bunk beds, something that I have only seen in the movies. Ostel had pretty well maintained bunk beds and the experience was pretty awesome. Other than having to share it with strangers obviously. 

The heartfelt discussion we had while lying in our bunk beds like kids was a moment of carefree bliss that I don't think anyone ever gets to share. Past, future, the good, bad, relevant, pointless, it didn't matter, because we were sharing a bit of ourselves with each other. The conversation had elevated beyond the point of discussion, and it was as close to old couples winding down after a long day of work than as one could get. I guess that was the point of it, from both our ends. We were subtly trying to judge each other on what it would be like when the exuberance fades away. When the veil has subsided, when there is no excitement to learn about a person, when it is just you and them, and when it is no longer new and exciting. This is where it starts to hurt. Sitting here, a few weeks post the event, I can't remember what we were discussing. Which is why it hurts. It didn't matter. I wasn't trying to stay in the conversation. I was just enjoying the conversation, without any need to pretend or sub-consciously trying to keep the flow going. We worked. The conversation clicked. There was no need for any dressing or extra effort on my end to make it work, a thing that I generally have to do with others. I don't know how it was for her on her end, but this is why it still hurts. I connected with another human. Maybe it is normal for people to connect with other humans and not lead to anything, but for an introverted socially awkward person like me, it is extremely difficult to reach this and be able to walk away like nothing happened.

Sitting on the attic and discussing start up ideas, her laughing at my lame jokes and then posing for a impromptu photoshoot. The smile on her face, the radiant glow...

An indelible mark, a scarry reminder

Lights out Alice!

For some people, it is never about how long they stay in your life, you know they are going to leave a scar once they leave. More often than not, they leave sooner than you would like them to. But the inevitability of their exit from your life seems like a constant, like the setting of a sun, even when it is hiding behind the clouds and you cannot see it, you know it is going to get dark soon.

With people like these, who touch you so deeply, you know, as soon as they enter into your life, in the famous words of Taylor Swift, "I knew you were trouble when you walked in...". Add to this the fact that I would like to believe that I am perceptive on some level and can call out how things are going to play out while they are unfolding and things go from zero to hell pretty quickly. No, I am not delusional or overestimating my abilities. I am just another overthinker with a shit brain who thinks of all the potentially bad scenarios in every situation, cannot take any positive and prepares for anything going right by sabotaging it in the different ways he hypothesizes in his head they are going to go wrong.

Not all scars are bad though. Some you want to go back and see again, just to remind yourself of what you went through. 

The smile. The gentle brush back of hair locks. The blushing that was accompanied by a forward head tilt. The genuine laugh at the lamest of my jokes. The caressing touch of her hands as she would endearingly shoo me away for pulling my usual shenanigans. The peace of being in the moment with her. Obviously I do not have any part of my future figured out whatsoever. But in that moment I tell you, I would fight tooth and nail, to my last breath to make it work, to make her stay.

It wasn't to be. She had to go away. I sit here welling up at the thought of what I lost. Not the friendship, no. I knew I liked her too much to ever be able to be just friends and I would have withdrawn regardless. I lost what could have been. O, how I could see for a moment in her eyes, her caring, loving dreamy, but also humongous (no, I am not that lost in my thought, I can still crack PJs) eyes, that she felt the same.

At first, or actually, throughout, I always questioned what she saw in a shitter like me. She was better than me in every respect and could have guys lining up across the alley who would be head and shoulders above me, both literally and in terms of acumen. In my head, I have always been used to having unrequited feelings for people, most of which I keep to myself because I see the other person doesn't see it on the same level and then let it pass. What was different about this was that I could see the signs, I could see how there was some form of liking for me. It baffled me, still does, that someone would actually like me on any level, and I all ended up doing was trying to find situations that would prove to my head that it was all in my head and I was imagining it. 

My usual SOP post things ending, because they all end, sooner rather than later, is to figure out if it was just a in-the-middle-of-the-moment-thing (infatuation) or was it ever true. Did I just get caught up in the emotion of it all, or did I have sustainable lasting reasons for the same?  

Was I just searching for anyone to be with and not able to see the flags or the long term part of it, or was it that I was able to take a look at the rational facts and understand the practicality of it all. To that end, the facts were simple. We were poles apart in terms of both beliefs and lifestyle preferences. But I always put up the counter, which I still believe in (which also makes me question whether I am still able to objectively able to assess it or not), that it was a gap that could be bridged over time. No, it would not be easy, but it wouldn't be particularly hard if the core equation, which is whether two people like each other or not, is aligned. Again, I don't have the future figured out and I cannot guarantee a tomorrow, but it was exactly this very understanding that gave me the confidence to turn around and say, if nothing is a given anyways, why can't I place my bet on this? Why can't I fight for what I believe in and give it a try and as long as you are there by my side, all I can promise is trying to make it better? It might not be a bed of roses everyday, but I will try to keep you isolated from as much as I can. Isn't that what grown-ups in real life do? Isn't figuring it out and working on it the very essence of what growing up is about? My engineering education always taught me that equations only work in a controlled setting and in real life there will always be parameters beyond our control. All that means is that there is no point trying to make anything fit a mould. Look at a situation ad-hoc, examine its merits, take into account the variables you can see, adjust for those you cannot and them for some that might show up later.

You make it work. It is not about the perfect person. It is about finding the one you would want to go through the everyday mundane with and making it work.

You know what sucks Alice? This wasn't enough to make her stay...she went away too...

In the end, they all left...

I wish you would have stayed, I would have fought...for us

Sit Rep: 22.10.23 edition

Lights out Alice!

I had the weekend free, which meant that I had too much time on my hands. I have been pretty vocal in my mental board meetings these past few weeks, nay months, about how I was not getting enough time to work on the things that I wanted to and hence attributed that to my increased restlessness and feeling lost and without a purpose in life. Turns out, it wasn't about the amount of time (actually I knew that deep down as well). It was just about DOING IT. 

I wasn't executing to the level I needed to. I was slipping because I was focusing more on the talk than the action. Action requires one to shut up and do, I was focused more on the PR than the actual work, the dirty, mucky, grinding hard work.

I have forgotten how to just sit and concentrate for any duration. One might think that implies several hours or so. NO. It is so bad that I can't even concentrate for 15 minutes. I always had poor ability to sit and focus. Even on my best days, I could barely do 30 minutes in one sitting and only on rare occasions could I touch 1 hour. 

I get stuck in a rut. A rut of wanting to execute so badly that I put off other things, but I am also too restless to actually sit down and do the work because of the habit that has been built on procrastination. All this does is achieve absolutely nothing all day, not even resting properly or working one bit. To top it all off, my headspace goes to shit as well. 

Additional factors that seem to be contributing to increased restlessness and procrastination:

• M.S and how the overall effect of that beyond her is playing in my head.
• Being alone in a new city and more importantly being away from home during Durga Puja
• Having gotten used to slacking off for the past six months. My head has gotten used to talking about the work more than doing it and feels like just complaining is enough and not taking action to change anything about the situation.
• Increased procrastination because I have been getting by with little to no effort in the past six months
• SERIOUS LACK OF DIRECTION AND PURPOSE in life. Probably a case of post college blues. Life has changed from directed, focused, filled-to-the-brim-with-work to barely enough work, boredom, loneliness and no immediate goal. I don't have anything specific that I need to reach in the next two years...no major growth, just survival. I don't think that's the right approach and it is the surest way to decay, but right now I have lost my path and purpose. 

I am not that motivated by traditional factors that most others would be, but that is an excuse because I haven't dived deep enough to figure out what I actually want out of life. Not just that, I am also procrastinating on figuring it out. In my head, I can procrastinate because I am thinking about it hence I can log it under making an effort, but since I am not actually sitting down and figuring it out, I don't have a goal to work on, I don't work on anything which means that I can officially slack off while thinking I am always slogging. I AM NOT. I haven't put in the right amount of work in a LONG TIME now.

I really need to get my shit together. I really need to start rebuilding, because I don't see it but I am below zero and have crossed over to the negative side. The fog of daily routine has taken over and I am not able to see how close to the precipice of the mountain of complacency I am.

Lights out Alice!

P.S: This blog was effectively me procrastinating against the actual work by first jotting down my headspace. Oh how deep the tumour of complacency and laziness has spread in me!

A look back at the past: SB Edition; 29th Dec, 2022

Lights out Alice!

Given the recent turn of events with M.S and me reeling over the pain of another failed attempt, this time due to real life constraints (although I still believe they are parameters and not constraints), I was looking back at my notes to see when I have recorded my innumerable lines of thoughts that I have every passing second.

This is an excerpt from 29th Dec, 2022 when I was reeling over SB and it was probably my first steps in understanding how this works. With the benefit of hindsight, obviously there were a lot of things wrong with me and my understanding and especially not really knowing what I wanted out of this other than companionship. Fast forward to today and M.S, I can safely say that I have not really learned as much as I should have and committed made the same mistake of doing too much too soon and scaring the other person away. Although, this one gave it a much deeper thought and was more considerate. I would be stupid if I would compare and ever say one person was better or worse than another. It were different points in time, different people, different circumstances. SB never had anything. M.S did but knew her realities. MS was the bigger person. The only constant in these equations was me and to that effect, I should have grown and been more mature and not push the agenda more than once (I only pushed it twice), which I think I failed on.

Anyhoo, the thought note from 29th Dec:

Shit. There is no hope left I guess.

Sometimes it is not reciprocated and there is only that much you can do when someone does not feel the same way about you.

Can you really make anyone love you? Make them feel the same way about you the way you look at them? Make them see the same future that you see in your eyes when your eyes spot their smile. Yes, the real one and not the one that they plaster on their face for the world.

Shit, I really thought she would come round to my view point.

But that look that I saw in their eyes when they talked about the one they feel about left me with very little hope. I basically heard the same emotions that I had, just that she had those emotions for a third person, not me.

Damn dude. It hurts. Sucks because she was a great listener and people reader. But I guess my simplistic world view doesn't fit her requirements.

I wanna cry, but cannot. I wanna run away but cannot. I have to be strong. To be her friend of sorts because she needs one right now. Which hurts so bad.

The pattern repeats itself: M.S Edition

Lights out Alice!

Well, here we are. Again. Writing about the same thing. Again. I did too much, too soon and scared the other person away. This is the seventh time overall and fourth really hurtful one. On the trot. Never been able to get the other person to stay. They all seem to run away. Obviously, if it is the seventh time, I am doing something wrong. Oddly enough, but consistent with who I am, I haven't changed my approach and what's more, I wear my approach even more loud with each pass. 

What went wrong with this one? Before we begin with that, let's lay some groundwork to establish why this one would hurt the most till date.

M.S SHARED THE FEELING! Holy crap yo! Till date, the others had to be goaded into seeing my worth and then they would run away seeing my brand and how much effort I would put in (too much too soon). SB never had anything for me and I was so desperate and naive that I would still put in massive time and effort behind her while knowing it would never be reciprocated, at all.

SRao never intended to continue, but for some reason engaged for long enough for me to get attached and then broke it off suddenly, which did hurt for a bit. HArora actually started off on a different scale, with different headspaces and approaches which meant that we were on different pages and the writing was apparent on the wall by the second meeting. Regardless, I did listen and HArora did share for a while before deciding to move on. Another instance of being used and thrown away like Linc Ocean gel.

M.S actually had feelings before me but realized that our circumstances and environment will never allow for us to be together and in which case it was better for her for kill those feelings than let it grow. However, what she did not account for is me having the same and actually going up and confessing the same. We were working on a project at the time and hence I did wait for the project to be over so that there would be no muddling of work. However, by that time, she had cleared her stance and was sure that there was no point of going into anything with me since there would be no future together.

My timeline of failures till now:

{Duration-Codename-Situation}

• 3 years P My end, my imagination
• Not significant  ST, NN  My end, my imagination
• 5 years NOTHING AT ALL, LIKE ZILCH
• 2 months KP My end, me being exploited
• 4 months SB My end, tough time on her end
• 2 weeks VT Not interested
• 3 weeks SR Not interested, chatted, ended abruptly
• 3 weeks HA Different tangent, chatter, ended
• 2 weeks RS Interested, I wasn't
• Not significant IT, Doc, ISH They were looking for something else
• 1 week MS SHE WAS! I was! Circumstances weren't

10 years of this. 10 long years and nothing till now. Nobody stayed. Nobody gave me a shot.

To conclude, I am pretty old now and haven't been in any kind of long or short or any-for-that-matter relationship. I don't think that's a good thing. Further, it will always beg the question going forward whether I would be just desperately seeking company or checking against compatibility and other long term sustainable criterias. At this point, I am questioning if I even have any criteria other than just wanting the other person to stay and hear me out.

Am I that bad? Do I suck that much? Am I that weird?

Lights out Alice!

A walk back in time: Vizag edition

On most days and most occasions, when I do not have the time or the opportunity, I will be overflowing with topics and ideas I want to write about and just like every other procrastinator out there, when the time is there, there is abundance of excuses and dearth of concrete action. Sometimes, however, there is a way around this. It is usually around the time when I have procrastinated for far too long and pent-up frustration over large periods of inaction leads to a burst of hyper-activity, in which a lot of things are taken up simultaneously, lot of creative ideas flow through at once and rarely do but a few things get completed. 

I am currently in Vizag, a city which brings back a mixed bag of emotions for me. It might have been one of the very few occasions that my entire paternal side of the family was there together. However, in my family's context, it has a ominous meaning more often than not that there is a serious illness or death in the family. I lost my grandfather here, around eleven years ago. I still remember the day vividly. I still remember him being declared brain dead and looking at his comatose body breathing through the help of ventilators. I still remember looking at the heart rate monitor and other vitals and seeing them drop. I remember being explained about oxygen saturation percentage and how it could be directly correlated to the functioning of the brain.

I remember us waiting for the hospital to release the body. All of us in the waiting room, some crying, some wailing, us kids stunned but largely aloof. I remember looking into my dad's eyes and seeing the pain. Pain that he was trying hard to keep behind the tower of responsibilities that he had to undertake to ensure that the entire family and the support structure did not come crumbling down. I look back at this moment specifically because I then scoff at my non-issues issues that I fret over in my current state. I am disgusted at myself these days because I have very little real world responsibilities. I can hear my parents and their pain or their loneliness on most days through the phone, but can do very little about it. I am such a coward that I do not even engage properly when I get the slightest hint of them having a tough time, because I am not sure I can stay strong. The part that I am worried about is not that I will break down but that I generally try to force rationality in times like these, which is exactly the wrong thing to do. People want solace and comfort, not rationale and logic, which even though I know inside, I will try to shove and then get impatient and lose my cool. All this does is escalate the situation from what would have been a 4/10 to a 8/10 just because I could not handle myself.

I remember sitting in the hearse, by his side, towards his feet, towards the back end of the vehicle, looking outside throughout the journey from the hospital to the burning ghat. I was sad, but I wasn't as well. It was a new feeling for me and all that I was thinking throughout was how I would miss him, what would my father have to go through, the hell that my grandmother would have to face from now onwards and how things will never be the same again. 

Flash of the lights from passing traffic. Sun had set beyond the mountains but there was another half an hour of fading light left. Suddenly I am transported back to our home in Kolkata. I am back reliving one of the many almost ritualistic afternoons when my grandfather would come over from the hall to sit with us and have a cup of tea. What I vividly remember was how he sat. Always at the corner of the bed, always just taking the minimum amount of space that a human of his size would need as well as his age and the inflexibility that comes with it. He was wise, no doubt and had a habit of exacting perfection from everything that went around him. More than perfection, there was a certain way things were supposed to be done and he ensured that people around him knew what the way was. Yes, it felt a bit dictatorial and imposing at the time, but the best way to soften feelings about anything is to let a lot of time pass. Today, I just look at it as a pecularity and can just gloss over the pain and suffering that it let to, especially for my mom. Although, he really cared and was always on the lookout for my mom's best interest. He was a simple person and he knew what he wanted in life. I respected the hell out of him and his oddities made him endearing in retrospect and frustrating in the moment.

Patience or lack of thereof

Lights out Alice!

Something that I have mentioned time and again that I need to cultivate and that I deeply lack is patience. I have seen it time and again that Patience is miraculous but requires a lot of, well, patience. Regret is mostly there in my life to throw the same phrase again and again, "If only I had held on/ been a bit more patient/ tried a little bit harder..."

Not just in anything I do, but in my approach as well. I am impatient in that I make plans but do not put in the effort that is required to execute the plans. Get impatient. Start thinking that I am not doing enough. Forget about the original plan. Start from scratch. Spend too much time making plans again. Realize mid-way that I had made the same plans before. Lose steam and repeat cycle.

The few times that I see things were the times in which I did get what I was planning to achieve, if not more. Not saying that my expectations have to be met every time and that I need to win all the time, because that's exactly the impatient approach. I can take my time, I can wait to see how it unfolds and I NEED to put in the effort. 

Takeaways (aka to myself: listen here, you shit):

• Execute
• You can't do everything
• Give it time
• Put in the effort
• Define your own metrics
• Set in stone your goals and what is driving you, not related to anybody else
• What do you want out of life?

The last one is very important. I can run, I can run faster or burn myself out anytime...but for what? What's the cause? Why is it important to me? Why am I pursuing this? Do I like the process or just want the outcome because I need to be okay with the process as well

WHAT'S MY WHY?

WHAT'S DRIVING ME?

WHAT ARE MY GOALS?

WHAT ARE MY METRICS?