He asked, “What are you doing?”
I replied, “I don’t know. I guess I am just sitting in a lonely dark corner and looking at the world pass me by.”
His confusion growing, he continued, “Why are you doing this to yourself? What are you ever going to get out of this?”
I thought he was just trying to make some conversation. Even he didn’t know what to say anymore. I stayed silent for a while. After staring at the far end of the large ocean in front of me for don’t know how long, I slowly replied, “Have you ever known a feeling while talking to someone when you realize what they are saying is not actually true and so for a split second you stop, look them in the eye and stare, almost like you are willing them to stop lying.
But they don’t. They just continue with the same thing. You know the kind of relationships where you expect your slight stares get answered, the people aren’t really lying to you. They are lying to themselves. To you, they are just saying what they want to believe as the truth.
I think, the more I deal with life the more I realize, nobody really likes to know or even see the truth, let alone say it. They just want to believe what makes them happy, “really” happy. Why I quote happy is because I am not referring to the cliched or text book description of happy. By real I mean that idea which suits your own version of the world around you ad your own motivations of living in it.”
He took his time to let it sink. He said finally, “But, like it or not, that if true can be said for all of us. There is hardly anything that creates any difference. And I don’t think we are the types who would actually believe in any higher power judging us.”
“Yes” I said, “That’s true. So what do you do when you find that your idea of realism is totally screwing your belief in people and the world you live in? When you look them in the eye and all you see is their desperation to constantly justify their own selves to themselves while they go on interacting with others and thus in a way contributing to making it all a big fat lie. All of them and all the time!”
He took my hand in his and said with a slight smile, “You just give it sometime. Like you said, our ideas dupe us but they do this to make us happy. Let your ideas make you happy.”
To that I grew sightly uncomfortable. It was like I have to wait for my thoughts to manipulate me into believing that life goes on and all that we can do is to relentlessly look at the brighter side no matter how disappointed we may feel with our day to day realities. It wasn’t a great idea to sell. And I was uncomfortable because may be I too knew this.
With a tone of irritation, I replied, “May be I think I know the answer. It could be that we need to take life as it comes, make do with whatever we have and try and make the best of it. Cliched but so far seems true. The only problem is that that’s what scares me the most. That no matter how long I spend looking for a better answer, this is what I will have to settle for. It just makes my perfect world seem full of compromises.”
Suddenly, I heard a splash at a distance. I turned to see an old couple giggling like children playing with each other in water all by themselves in a lonely beach except for me at that late hour. I kept looking at them bathing in each other’s love and friendship. I so knew how that felt.
After sometime, I drew in a deep breath, got up and left thinking to myself, “It would have been fairly satisfying for an actual conversation.”
Life, love, this and that 