Baby Steps

They've blocked blogger at work, which is rather unfortunate given that most of those gems of insight that make consciousness worthwhile come to me when I'm staring at my computer screen for the tenth hour on end, or when I'm having a glass of 'special cutting' chai with a very patient colleague and regaling him with my philosophical explorations of work and life.

Why is it that most people I meet have such a vast understanding of society, and virtually no understanding of the individual? Is it that hard to understand what to say so that you don't disturb another person's peace of mind? It doesn't matter that no harm was meant, nor that it was a momentary flutter of unease or hurt that it caused - we owe it to ourselves, as intelligent beings, to think, feel and act in ways that will cause least unease to others, while ensuring that we are being true to ourselves and our needs.

This should read more like a journal complete with date and time - oh how I miss that lost art of starting and finishing a post on the same day.

Gah. Nothing to write. Blank slate. Nothing to think. Nothing new, at least. How I miss those days when I use to wallow in quasi-melancholic intensity! There were more coherent thoughts then... irrelevant though they may have been to the shape and sound of life, they had distinct identities of their own, each one. That's more than I can say for the fuzz that try to pass themselves off as thoughts in my mind these days. They're so fuzzy they don't even deserve a plural. They're an it. A big, fuzzy 'it'.

Tiredness. A numbing, all-pervading tiredness of the body, mind and soul. A friend told me recently - sometimes when everything seems wrong, and rightness seems like it's another universe altogether, the trick is to remember that everything is not really one thing. Everything is never the problem, so its important to know which things are really to blame for the aches and pains. Uniting them all into a troublesome 'everything' causes them to take on a frighteningly ominous character.

It is evident though, that just as problems might seem bigger than they really are because of giving them a common character, breaking down an overwhelming feeling of despair into a bunch of little problems is likely to have the opposite, and equally unhealthy side-effect of self-deception. That feeling is quite possibly the symptom of one or two big problems that need immediate tackling - trying to find smaller issues that could add up to the big ones is like trying to convince oneself that the ones that need fixing the most are less significant than they really are. It is like trivialize them into something that the mind, in its battle-weary state, can take on.

It is a good thing that there's always that last bastion - 'talking to someone'. Talking to a kindred spirit helps translate those fuzzy thoughts and feelings into words, allowing me to really read my own thoughts. Often, because I almost always think in images - vivid and images - and hilarious as it is that I need to be a vigilante interpreter for my own mind at all times, I find myself having to go back and forth several times before I find the exact words to translate my thoughts and their fellow feelings into something I can work with. The words used the first time may inadvertently colour the thought a slightly different shade than its true one when it was taking shape. Then, I have to work my way around the words to make the listener understand, and in the process, understand myself. A twisty-turny process it is - knowing one's mind. I'm glad I have people to navigate it with.

I like to think along the road to embracing this process, I am growing in knowing other people's minds - at least the ones that have at least some little bit in common with mine in the way they work. It helps me know motivations and subconscious possibilities almost in tandem with the words spoken, the gestures made, the rise and fall in the language of the face and the body. In trying to every once in a while wipe clear the windows to my own mind and heart, and maybe even finding those rare new ones, I can feel my ability to know the pulse of different kinds of people growing. I may be too self-involved at this time for this to be of much benefit to these other people at this time, but I think that's all right. I do give what is mine to give, when I can - and I go so far as to hope it helps.

I take, too. Without guilt, and without much thought to repayment. I take the inspiration that some people give me to remember the ideals that sustained me earlier in life, and I feel grateful someone lets me talk without interrupting, without questioning or judging, sometimes without even talking very much. I'm grateful for the times that I can break off mid-sentence on the telephone to gather my thoughts, then switch over to other thoughts, and then back - returning to the conversation with wherever I left off in my mind and after a fair while of silence - and feel no need to fill my listener in. Nothing was missed. I am accompanied without protest on whichever path my mind decides to break away on, on all its twists and turns.

Despite the twists and turn though, I've noticed that the strongest thought that strikes me while talking to someone, whenever it does happen during a conversation, stays till the end, and defines the conversation. There are a million distractions along the way, all adding to the joy of sharing, but disconnected, with the only unifying thread being that one defining thought. That, to me, is a good conversation. Not one during which you touch upon, sometimes discuss in detail, a multitude of ideas and happenings, and in the end are left with nothing to take home.

Good conversations make me smile. I laugh a lot these days - as do so many people I see around me. It is a good thing - it lightens the heart and reminds one of the importance of ease and cheer. And then there is the smile that I don't see as often - one that draws from the intensity of the heart, that is accompanied by a catch in the throat, and ironically, a lightness of being. It is the essence of happiness. Good conversations make me want to write. They almost always catch me berating myself for not having a notebook and a pencil, and at times that I feel that adventurous, even running to get them and record in short hand some of thoughts that I think deserve to persist (with due credit to the original thinker, of course). Then I'll say - I'm done recording for today, and be told how it wouldn't be surprising if those were to be my last words (Thank you!). My epitaph - I'm done writing. A morbid idea, but decidedly tempting! Good conversations help me regain peace, stay connected to myself, and among other things, finish incredibly discontinuous posts.