Escape.

I was having an extended conversation with my best friend, yesterday night. Now, she’s one person who has, perhaps, understood me the most,  ’cause we share a lot of similar traits. She also has this uncanny ability to lift me up from all the waves of desperation that I’ve been through – one conversation with her, and bang, I’d be back to normalcy again! 🙂

The tables turned yesterday night though.

Her voice lacked the usual vibrancy and gusto that usually cheers me up. She was all down, like an orchid withered by sun. On further conversation, reasons behind her depression dawned upon me, and I couldn’t help but smile at the startling similarities – turns out that I was going through a worse variant of her problem. Escapism. Yes, both of us shut out our eyes and ears to the world and to quote her: “went numb, totally.” The classic ‘ignorance-is-bliss’ situation. A long conversation and a heady employment of pep-talk later, I cheered her up (to some extent) and bade her a good night’s sleep. As I flopped onto my bed, my grin widened. It was a smile of self-realization and deep irony. I was a bloody hypocrite – the biggest one Planet Earth has seen yet! I was consoling her even when there was a worse situation pinning me to the ground and I had no clue, whatsoever to tackle it!

CC Credits: Felipe Morin

Things weren’t this bad in the early days of my life. I must’ve been a non-conformist, but certainly not an escapist! Even though I used to have this tummy-back-flipping problem from the very beginning, I used to face adverse situations (albeit with immature response). But then, at some point in time, the problems just moved on from bad to worse. And I panicked – I couldn’t help it. Outward, I’d still be the same ol’ cheerful guy, but a storm would start raging in my mind. Yet, I’d face the situations as they are. Somewhere along the line, the dam of self-restraint broke lose. All of a sudden, I couldn’t face adversities – and to top it all, my world collapsed to such extent that abruptly, there was a blitzkrieg of inter-related adversities – each one devolving to another. To keep my mind sane, I practiced the well-oiled ‘ignorance machine’ of my mind, and scraped out of it. But the problems persisted and multiplied in magnitude.

Right now, my situations are at a crescendo – and I’ve fully mastered the ignorance art. But sadly, the time has come to act – and my mind has stretched itself to such extent that any more non-action from my part would see the (already-battered) wall of my life tumbling down! Having woven carefully crafted aspirations for myself in obnoxious optimism, that’s the last thing I’d want to happen – to see myself engulfed in a cesspool of disaster.

Hope, it is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of your greatest strength, and your greatest weakness.

– Architect, The Matrix Reloaded

Hope remains to be my greatest strength. It’s high time I stopped my non-actions and get down to some serious re-work of my life. Else, as the architect rightly puts it, (and as things are, right now), It would remain as my greatest weakness. I take full responsibility for my non-actions – and I admit that they’ve affected many loved ones – including my parents. But I need my redemption. I need to quit the process of escape and revert to the reality of life. And fight for it – it’d be a dreary battle I’m sure, and I might have to sacrifice a lot as part of it. Adversities tower overwhelmingly before me, and it’s high time I employed the canon balls of my intellect to blast them off. I have to stop lying to myself – the technique I employ the most to escape from reality; and I have to pit myself against the myriad odds that face me.

I’m always optimistic.