There was a time
when a seductive, blood-red
Facebook notification
would trigger in me
waves of dopamine
which flooded my bloodstream
like amiodarone, lidocaine
and a handful other
difficult-to-spell drugs
which i hope
you never learn to spell,
as they enter my papa
through an IV cannula
while he lies sedated
amidst beeping, blinking screens
and a flock of apathetic doctors
desensitized by
too much disease
too less equipment
and too often death.
For too long
I have been addicted
to that dopamine
while aching for interactions
meaningful enough
for a homosapien
to carry on
the futility, monotony
called modern life.
But now I ask
if that really is “enough”.
If, in my ten days of inactivity,
43 notifications
of a virtual book club’s activities,
of the memes I have been tagged in
made by sullen,
self loathing, suicidal teens
that are ironically intent
on making their viewers laugh,
of unreferenced, unverifiable anecdotes
no better than oldwives tales,
of pandemic-related quackery
both religious and secular,
of birthdays of people
I haven’t seen in years,
of friend requests by
people I don’t recognize,
really mean anything.
It’s silly how important
we think we are,
when we are nothing
more than
43 notifications.
Tag: meaning
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43 Notifications
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The Grey World
The concept of the grey world was first explained to me by a doctor of philosophy I came across rather coincidentally, when I was a morbid radical undergrad who had just begun to look for alternative paths to The Meaning. I remember what a pain it was to listen to him the first time. He was surrounded by his disciples who I would later come to describe as ‘cultists’ which held true for every definition of the term except that they would conveniently leave if they deemed it better, and the cult, given its fundamental principle of intellectual freedom, would make no tantrum or effort to hold them back (quite a thing for a radical associated with a highly possessive, volatile organization). I carefully listened to him, disagreed with him strongly and finally gave in to his eloquence, authority, reason but far more importantly, his history. It ‘felt’ like he traveled the same road as I did, only twenty years ahead of me. As i look back, it feels to be the greatest irony of my life that I chose the path of ‘reason’ because an ‘intuition’ told me so. Perhaps it was the first grey of my life, the grey between the black and white of reason and intuition, that eventually opened up the grey universe for me.
It took me quite long to embrace the ideal of greyness that suggests that there exists murkiness between black and white which isn’t necessarily a wrong as opposed to right/sin as opposed to virtue/falseness as opposed to truth/ or zero as opposed to one. In a way, it made the job trickier because it directly implied that if there is such a thing as a ‘golden rule’ in this mayhem of a universe – a rule that would streamline all its contradictions and bring them into harmony, then there is a possibility that such a rule may exist NOT in the light of its whites but the murkiness of its greys.
The grey world, I’m beginning to realise, is more like a black hole – As vast as a universe in itself yet invisible to the external eye. Those who enter it, never come out. And somewhere along the way, they lose regard for what’s white/ one/ light/ virtue because it holds no proprietary right on the Golden Rule which is quite fair; only too far from what’s conventional and orthodox.
The black-hole similitude for the grey world leaves much to say. Signing off for now. Cheers.
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Purpose
While doing a quick round up of the eminent theorists from some major schools of thought in Psychology, Dr. X told me why he thought Viktor E. Frankl’s psychoanalytical system left a “working” space for religion, not just a symbolic, sympathetic one, as you might find with his more popular counterpart, Carl Jung, and his brethren. I was familiar with the growing fascination among boys over Frankl but wasn’t able to read him before. Dr. X’s eloquent synopsis was something that came in handy.
He said that Frankl’s system was unique in a way that it would begin to treat a patient by stressing him more instead of trying to relieve him of it. And it worked as miraculously as the tenth century Chinese inoculation where they injected the patient with the same virus they wanted to protect him from to immunize him from future viral attacks of the sort. However, the way in which Viktor E. Frankl stressed his patients was surprising. His psychotherapeutic method began with insisting the patient to find a meaning in life, hence his best-seller book, Man’s Search For Meaning (Have you read this book yet? Please do. It’s enlightening!).
That brings me to my topic. At some point in our lives, we all wonder if there is any purpose to this meticulously elaborate drama of life. We ask ourselves, for example, where do we fit in the grand scheme of universe? What does it mean if we lie on top of major ecological chains as ultimate beneficiaries of all that universe has to offer – why exactly does this universe seem to be at our service? These questions have substance and they demand answers just as substantial. Everything that matters hangs delicately on these questions.
We, as human beings, have an innate tendency to find our answers – to know the reason of our creation, to shake sense of all that is out there in relation to our own self and its connection with the universe. We are sometimes referred to by the evolutionary scientists as the only intelligent design that inhabits the universe. Of several hundred million different species of Earth and counting, it’s really flattering to know this but it has its downside: we can’t just wake up in the morning and leave to make a living unless we have figured out what is it that we want to live for. Even a jackass is smarter than us in that it just grazes away when it has to and doesn’t really need to grapple with this conundrum.
During my discussions with people, i have discovered that the very term “purpose” induces great anxiety in most of them and they don’t want to pursue the discussion any further. While they might have their own reasons to do that, the reason I’ve been frankly cited at times is that purpose, in its own cold, calculative and mechanistic manner, tends to kill freedom. And its totally understandable. If you wake up in the dead of the night hungry as a wolf and aim for the fridge with a clear purpose in your head to eat something, you definitely won’t be much amused with a Santa Claus, should you find one, standing in his chariot blocking your way. In fact, you might as well walk right through him! That’s the case with purposes. They block a significant number of exciting possibilities from entering your life. But then, you have to ask yourself what’s more important after all? Finding your destiny or living ‘one hell of a life.’
The decision, ultimately, rests with you.