To Be or Not To Be

A little kingdom I possess,
Where thoughts and feelings dwell;
And very hard the task I find
Of governing it well.
~ Louisa May Alcott

...that more or less describes my situation!

~A Wise Man Said~

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
~ Aristotle
Tuesday, March 31, 2020
 
There are many ways to manage this crisis
Many ways to soothe the roar in my heart
Many ways to invite calm
Many ways to shelter from the storm
But through my vague irrational fears and tears
I can’t see the way
To the shadowy port in the distance
Where dreams beckon
Hopes glisten
All I have is faith


~Me

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 3:03 am 0 comments
Sunday, March 29, 2020
 
Normal. I crave for the normal life these days as much as anyone else. I crave to live in a world before the pandemic and for someone to change the direction of events. I wish there was a way to rewind and go back to how we were…

What worries me, especially for the kind of change resistant person that I am, are the predictions of how the post-pandemic world or the post-pandemic us will not be what we were before. There are different ideas about what will change or how it will change but there seems to be no doubt that change it will. In spite of my intense wish that things remain the same, for no other reason than that I fear change, I have to agree. I feel that things will change…

I never really understood how historical events such as world wars changed the world or the people of the world. Even though one read about the war and the descriptions of war that brought about those changes, I don’t think I ever understood at a deeper level. Now when I think about how this pandemic is playing out, I can’t help have an insight into how these changes occur…

I was reading this article which talked about some of the changes that we may expect. One of them was that this pandemic will keep rearing its head through the year, simmering below the surface and erupting in the winter perhaps, so people will need to be on their guard. People will continue to work from home, and work from home instead of being a temporary solution will become the new normal. The fact is that I have been pretty much working from home the past three years, going to the university only when needed to conduct face to face activities like teaching. So, inherently the idea of working from home is neither new nor particularly unattractive to me. But thinking about it as a new normal disturbs me. I can’t quite like the idea that in a post-pandemic world everyone will be working from home, studying from home, attending conferences from home, conducting meetings from home… I can’t quite take to this new normal if it is indeed going to be a new normal. I can’t deny that in some ways this arrangement might be helpful to people but seeing this as some sort of a normal means that the connection with human beings that is anyway being lost by the day would be lost even more. I’m not sure if this would mean more engagement with people at home or less engagement with humans in general. I personally can’t look forward to a prospect where home and work become one world… one could say this would make me more bonded to the home but I think it would be more like being bounded or make home a rather business-like space.

This is just one example of the new normal but I think one can think of many others and whether they are for the good or the bad, time will tell… also perhaps the time that it takes for us to get back to a semblance of normal which at this stage doesn’t seem anytime soon. The one change I expect to see in myself in the new normal is the appreciation of the normal. I have always enjoyed my solitude so what is a forced solitude for many at this time has not really affected me… and nor has it made me more reflective than usual because it was always my normal. But I believe I have not appreciated how precious this normal is… I have never experienced it being taken away suddenly to be doomed to some sort of uncertain condition of life for weeks, months, years… I guess this sudden snatching of normality encourages me to value the normal more … when I look back to this time where doing some of my tame leisure activities like pottering about in the shops is also not possible, I will perhaps breathe a sigh of relief… simply being able to exist without confronting mortality on a daily basis, my own, my family’s, people in the world would make my new normal beautiful…

Though I don’t agree with the prediction that we will all start doing everything online in the new normal world… my sense from what I myself feel is that we will all sorely miss the human connection that we took for granted all this while… that we will want to have more of it and not less…and that our new normal will be about the things that we crave the most now...which is the real and not the virtual…
 

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 4:55 am 0 comments
Thursday, March 26, 2020
 
I am bristling a bit right now. Something happened to make me think about how I found it difficult to voice my opinions or to have deeper conversations back in India.

Even as a child I was made to feel that arguing is “bad”. I could never understand why arguing was bad or why I had to keep my disagreements to myself instead of bringing them out. Parents in India have this thing they say to kids to the effect that, oh, now that you’re more educated than me you can argue with me! As if arguing with them is disrespectful and amounts to questioning their authority. Basically, arguers are seen as a negative bunch of people, a bit similar to “complainers” who ironically are never victims or ones who may have valid things to complain about but rather merely those making a big mountain out of a molehill instead of shutting up and sucking it up. The upshot was that I always felt guilty about having this tendency to “argue” or “contest” or “debate” or “question” rather than “agree” or “accept” or “comply” or “go with the flow”. I couldn’t really be the other way so I mostly clammed up. Said nothing. Kept my thoughts to myself or shared them in my diary/blog. If I met people with whom I realised I could be myself, I let myself out gingerly at first and then more freely. But otherwise I was this rather silent, non-talkative, reticent person…
I finally feel like I don’t need to be apologetic about simply stating my views honestly, be they controversial or unpopular. I can be myself, I can argue till the cows come home, I can share the most outlandish theories, I can contest even my seniors… it is not only accepted, it is actually encouraged. I guess it’s not just about being in a different cultural environment but also the academic environment where one’s ability to challenge, critique, question, debate is highly valued; in fact it is core to your identity. I have said this before, I feel like a fish who has been united with water. All my natural tendencies of thought and expression that were stifled heretofore have found a fertile ground…and I see them blooming!
Today, I just happened to see some forward in an Indian WhatsApp group and shared my honest critical opinion. The response I got was to the effect of “Don’t want debate”! It suddenly transported me back to a time I had almost forgotten where debate and argument were seen as something bad and to be avoided in good company. It reminded me of my internalised guilt for daring to think critically and showing it… as if I was doing something immoral or wrong or unhealthy!
But it also reminded me how lucky I am… to have found a haven where I no longer need to pretend to be a diminished version of myself… I can let my mind soar freely in the realm of ideas…and give free rein to my voice…

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 6:32 am 0 comments
Wednesday, March 18, 2020
 
It seems like a time for emotions running high. Mine don’t need too much of a trigger to run high so…I am in a fix. I feel like at such a time one must let go of minor disappointments but then everything is minor compared to what’s going on so what one means is to let go of disappointments in general. I have had a disappointment brewing up for the past one week and today it was sealed. It is of the class of minor but does not feel that way to me maybe because, as I said, emotions are also running high because of everything else or maybe because I have so few things that I really look forward to that even a small disappointment seems like a big one.

This disappointment for some strange reason makes me reflect on my own foolish propensity to jump to the conclusion that people care…far more than they really do. I have this habit of either liking people too much or disliking them too much…so when it’s the former I will make all sorts of excuses for them in spite of evidence to the contrary and if it’s the latter I will give them very little leeway even when there is a slight benefit of doubt. The latter doesn’t make too much of a difference because if I don’t like them much there is usually a fundamental reason so not giving them leeway doesn’t really hurt me or them. The former is where I generally stumble and fall a lot. They keep letting me down, keep falling short of my expectations, keep taking me for granted, keep not returning gestures, keep not taking my feelings into account… and I keep making excuses for them. I guess at some point I realise how stupid I am for viewing what people perhaps see as transactional relationships for trust-based ones; for placing my loyalty where there is no warmth or appreciation or care but only contractual obligation. I wish sometimes I could be transactional or contractual in my dealings too but it just doesn’t come naturally to me…maybe it is something I must learn… if I am to avoid disappointments.

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 8:16 pm 0 comments
Tuesday, March 17, 2020
 
Have you watched Black Mirror on Netflix? It’s one of those “dark” genres, every episode is standalone, and each one leaves you with a sense of the surreal, as of some alternate reality where things are topsy turvy, upside down, illogical, irrational, unexplainable, absurd in a mindbogglingly scary way though… and you have no control over what’s going on or what is coming at you. I feel like I am trapped in an episode of Black Mirror these days.

Had the same events that we are now witnessing, the stories coming out of Italy, people dying with no one to attend their funerals, nurses crying about how they have to choose who will live and who will die, everyday counts of how many died and how many more infected with the virus, the social distancing measures we have taken upon ourselves even when the government is yet to enforce anything, the fear of going on public transport, the almost comic importance of washing our hands, the panic buying of loo roll, the overnight movement of all universities including mine to the online mode, the strangeness of talking to someone on the other side of the world and feeling like everywhere it’s the same, entire countries, that too developed ones, going on lockdown or border closures, working out of home as if nothing’s wrong with the world… I could go on and on but what hits me is that had this been one of the episodes of Black Mirror I might have found it to be one of the darkest, scariest and perhaps the most unbelievable….I would have laughed if someone had said this is what is actually going to happen not in the future but next month.

I would never have believed that we as a world having come so far from where we started would be brought to our knees overnight. That we would be reduced to prayer…in Hindi there is a saying oft repeated in Bollywood movies, almost a cliché, that when someone is seriously ill the doctor usually tells the loved ones that, “isse dawa ki nahin dua ki zaroorat hai”, which means “this person is not in need of medicine now, he needs prayer”. I feel like our world as we know it is tethering on the brink of a precipice (many seem to think this is a short-term inconvenience but I don’t share their optimism) and it needs a miracle…unfortunately I feel this even more because when I look around I see no leader, no one to look up to, no one who gives me confidence that things will be alright, we’re going to sort it out… I need to look way up. That is where I put my faith now because like the saying goes… we need prayer, we have no medicines for this calamity…

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 6:44 am 0 comments
Wednesday, March 11, 2020
 
We think about our mortality often, at least I do, perhaps even more so as we grow older. Somebody asked recently what made me become more emotionally mature and it seems to me it is this growing sense of mortality, inevitability, eventuality, nothingness, void. When you see yourself merging with the void one day not far into the future, you see everything in perspective so to speak. The bickering, fights, animosities, pettiness…all lose meaning. You not only want to forgive but you want to do it quickly, you want to return to a state of normalcy or peace…because every moment of limbo, every moment of not being at peace with a loved one seems like a moment lost in the travel to the void…out of which at least the surface evidence suggests we don’t meet again. Every person and every moment becomes so precious. I did not have this maturity when I was younger because I was not so conscious of my mortality…one does not entertain the thought. This perhaps is the reason for the arrogance of youth…the arrogance that comes with not knowing deeply…that you too will not last, you too will one day become old, you too will one day be one of the more susceptible ones to a virus, you too will be one of the most likely to die… sooner or later, you will die.

It’s funny how a sense of one’s mortality brings out the philosopher in one but mortality actually looming ahead like the traffic light which one must pay heed to or pay the penalty brings out the most pragmatic self out of us. We think about practicalities like hand washes, toilet rolls, food stuff, basically how to prolong the trip… we lose the mistiness and sappiness and become the most business-like of men. Maybe I am a bit hard on myself to say this because I am aware I am at heart pretty business-like anyway…I mean, I might philosophise till the cows come home but I will not allow myself to return a piece of work late. So in that sense I am equal parts idealist and realist and sometimes I feel that being both is the main cause of the tensions in my personality. But not to digress from my main theme, the very real danger we seem to be facing from this corona virus, I must admit, is driving my philosophies out of the window and making me think in realistic terms about what now? What is going to happen? When are we going to return to normal… normal news, normal days, normal troubles… and normal sense of mortality in the future…like the moon…ever present but in a comforting, distant, amiable…philosophical sort of way…

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 5:42 am 0 comments
Sunday, March 08, 2020
 

Because loyalty makes me weak
And love renders me blind
Doesn’t matter what you do
Or don’t
All the fault is mine
 
My patience is in short supply
And perseverance gone cold
For never was I taken so light
Nor ever treated so poor

Only for a moment in your arresting gaze
To hear your voice smooth and close
I bear a thousand hard-hearted ways
And make a mockery of my sorrows


~Me

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 4:14 am 0 comments
Wednesday, March 04, 2020
 
Where am I? Who am I?
How did I come to be here?
What is this thing called the world?
How did I come into the world?
Why was I not consulted?
And If I am compelled to take part in it, where is the director?
I want to see him.

~ Søren Kierkegaard

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 11:20 pm 0 comments
Monday, March 02, 2020
 
I think you might have noticed that I blog more from my head than my heart these days but that may be because I was pretty much living in my head for the past one month. Just finished with a rather tough deadline and feel slightly relaxed at the moment.

You, my readers, know very well that I tend to hit the panic button quickly when it comes to health and sickness. But it doesn’t seem like an avoidable topic at all these days. The moment I wake up and check my phone I get to know that more people are infected, when I browse my social media feed all I can read is how surgical masks are not helping, how one must wash hands to be on the safe side, how people are hoarding up on food to prepare for the days ahead, how it’s spreading everywhere and people are dying… I try to not let the anxiety and panic get to me but I have to admit I am finding it hard. I believe I have said before how I tend to develop the worst fears when it comes to health and when anything is in the air it doesn’t take me long to convince myself I have developed it… well, in this scenario it’s perhaps the worst tendency to have! :( I was shopping the other day and a lady wouldn’t stop coughing…I started sensing my own panic…what if? Weird, I know, but that’s what I am talking about… I’m just the worst person in this sort of situation…my own worst enemy. I caught myself thinking while washing the dishes today that at worst I will die and at best nothing will happen…win-win :| I mean, you don’t suffer your own death right, other people do, so in that sense it can’t be so bad. Except that I wouldn’t want to die with my family away from me but in this scenario it would seem best if they were away…well, if you were wondering if I ever let logic desert me then you know now ;)
As if all this wasn’t bad enough, I am grappling with another—I hate to call it a health issue given I just talked about the life and death scale of it—but I am grappling with acne. I realised that this was an issue on top of my mind but I have never mentioned it on my blog because it sounds like one of those trivial superficial vain things… but then I think that if that’s what it is, it is still me… I have had run-ins with acne all my life, not the severe kind but the now there, now gone ones…which is why perhaps it’s never really taken any major headspace before this…now though, it’s different. It almost feels like an attack of the mosquitoes or houseflies, you see one, spray it, you see another, you spray it, you see more, you keep spraying, but suddenly they are everywhere… you feel powerless… and to make matters worse you don’t carry your house around with you but you do carry your face! I have been feeling a little lost about how to tackle this as all the novice type things I have done don’t seem to be working… I keep telling myself that if I stop thinking about it, it will go away… see, there’s more logic for you ;)
The fact is that the really serious health threat is making me look at my small issue in some perspective…it isn’t small because it is affecting my mood and my mental well-being but when I think about the bigger issue it makes me think that I should be grateful that that’s all I have to worry about… I don’t know if it’s illogical but I am actually wondering if sometimes thinking too much about something just makes the thing far worse than what it is… anxiety and stress are known to lead to health issues… I used to suffer from very bad colds during exams as a kid …a tuition teacher once pointed this out to me but as a kid I never made the connection of course of why that might be… in that sense it doesn’t seem very far-fetched to think that maybe my anxieties and stress related to the bigger health threat, related to the future…and a lot of global stuff over which I have no control… is causing my skin to break out. Not thinking much about things might just be the best I can do for my own physical and mental health…though easier said than done… or think about it but not let my thoughts run away with me... maybe it is best to draw on hope…to believe that all will be well… that nothing lasts forever and this situation also won’t…till then, maybe, just maybe, try not to dwell… that’s what I am telling myself, dear readers… and that’s what I want to tell you… keep calm and stay well…

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 6:15 am 0 comments
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