I have always felt a compelling need to start writing journals, for the lack of compulsion to write a physical diary that is next to impossible because, I can never pull myself to hold a pen, grab a notebook and pour my thoughts out, as much as I can flip my laptop out and type a few hundred words.
Often I wonder what life has in store for me next, I conjure fairytale dreams for myself and for my loved ones, but I forget to cherish this moment, this very fleeting moment of beauty. Life is short — the statement is as old as time itself, but, despite being said to death, the statement holds true, nonetheless. Although I keep chanting the same inside my head as soon as I wake up heart says, “Well, why don’t you watch this TV show? Or maybe, go out and grab an ice cream with a friend? Or, f— it, seat your a– down and play video games until you’re bored of it.” Hence, I said ‘Enough is enough, let me get to doing stuff rather than just dreaming about it.’
So, two things in today’s journal.
1. Death: Something that I have always been intrigued and uncomfortable talking about, in equal proportions. I have a few friends who wreath together lines of verse that paint a beautiful picture of death. They seem to churn out works of art that make it seem like something coveted, something we all must yearn for. On the other hand, it sends eerie sounds down my ear canal, resonates knelling of a funeral bell inside my cranium and launches pulses down my spine. I am a happy-go-lucky 21-year old. The days of my life are filled with joy, satisfaction, love, laziness, gluttony and self-satisfaction of the sexual desires. But come nightfall, I slip into an unknown realm of darkness, whose roads seem to fade away into the horizon, whose pathways seem to be dotted with potholes of despair, reflectors of the grayest hue and the place I am dropped into is engulfed by the deafening noise of isolation.
The people in India are very sensitive about this topic, or at least the ones I am associated with are apprehensive about it and often veer away from the subject of termination of life. My best friend is a doctor (not a psychologist or a psychotherapist) and she says these are “normal, but disturbing.” I do not understand how my body works, I am a not-so-smart engineer from a metropolis in India, who intends to fly to the United States for my graduate education, so expecting me to introspect and analyze my biological functioning is practically not feasible.
At every step of my life, I only see the day when my era ends, when my stipulated time to impress the Gods is complete and I am relieved of all worldly duties. That said, I do not have suicidal tendencies, I am a person who does not believe in suicides and will not succumb to it. Nevertheless, I have come to terms with the fact that I need to visit a psycho-whatever-ist and I have been told, my university has a few consultants and doctors who can help me with this, at little or no fees, which brings me to the second topic of the journal which I am going to come to in a little while after I wind up with this. Today morning I read this gripping write-up : *WARNING: Not for the faint-hearted* That wonderful piece. It talks about what happens moments after a human is decapitated, milliseconds to seconds. It is quite a long read, about 15-20 minutes, but it is worth investing your time upon. A lot of things get cleared up in your head and few clouds perspire and some get dark and heavy. I shall talk more about it in my next entry but for now, I shall move to the next subject of today’s journal entry, money.
2. Money: I was born into a humble lower-middle class family. I have a proverbial rich uncle, but my father was a simple sales manager at retail businesses. Money has always been a resource that has not been at my disposal for most parts of my life. My father has struggled to educate me and my brother, to run the household and I often bury my face into my pillow, like an ostrich, during nights and tell it tales of how I love my father and how much I have let him down over time in terms of being a spendthrift despite trying to be meticulous in terms of money management.
My father has sacrificed his blood and sweat to put three meals on my plate every day. It is all money, and until recently, he has never taken money on credit at all, but for his monthly credit cards, for which he has no history of default and no history of arrears in tax-paying. He is my financial superhero and will always be so.
When I grow up, when I make some money for myself, I will make sure I have them all segregated into several parts and save them for my life’s ambitions. I have goals for travel, gratitude and desires. I look forward to a time, when I earn enough to put significant amount of money into these three segments of savings every month to realize each dream as and when they show up in my life. My life’s ambitions are for another time, but today I just wish I can manage my finances well and make my father proud.
Until the next time, I convince myself to sit and type a journal out, good luck and best of health to you.
My Journal 