Childhood is like a dream. Youth comes and goes in frenzy. What remains is an aftertaste. Looking back at my life till now, I feel that never I have known life in such totality as I confront it nowadays. And what do I feel? I feel that life is a struggle. Struggle against the self that is always unabated from both inside and outside. Why I feel this way? It is so because there is some constant craving that keeps on haunting me and eats my insides. I feel a burden in my heart and this burden I am doomed to carry forever. Even though this should not be the case, then why should I suffer like this? Is life perpetual suffering? Struggle and suffering seem to be friends, but what about peace, tranquility and harmony? What about my dreams and aspirations? Where do I find these things that seem to have faded away from the horizon of my perspective to some far distant land that is unattainable? Why do I feel this way? Why should I suffer? It is so because I have the desire to taste life in its entirety. And when there is nothing but a void in your heart, you feel like a moving corpse. What made me ponder in this state? I understand that this type of pondering is still for the fortunate ones who have the capacity to sense that something is wrong.

What about those who still swim in a shitload and believe they are living? A change of perspective. I don’t care about others. Who cares? Do I really care about anything now? When darkness had descended on my soul and there was a imminent sense of drowning and a fanatic and desperate attempts for survival, who helped me? But anyhow, the destinies of one and all are interconnected and hence this reference about others? But what do the others do when one individual is drowning? Nothing at all. Sadly, nobody knows what is happening in the recesses of another individual’s mind, each one is busy fighting their own battle. So in this mayhem, what is the release? The self is the release and the self is the panacea for the ills that are plaguing you and me. So what is this all about? The whole game revolves around the self. When the self is suppressed and is not able to manifest itself, there is bound to be a deep inner conflict in one’s mind. This is what is happening to me. Myself is not able to manifest itself. Why? I can give hundreds of excuses, but what is the best excuse I can find? Yes, you guessed it right, it is life. Life is an excuse when one loses the battle for the self. For once the self is negated and subjugated, there is no life left. Only the aftertaste remains.

When does one die? Is it when the body leaves the soul and the body is lifeless, without the force of the soul in it? Or when the self is negated and imprisoned in the body, subjugated and torn down to pieces. That is also one kind of death. Why such dark thoughts? It is so because I feel an immense sense of choking and there is no relief from this slow suffocation. This slow poisoning of the mind and the self and the struggles associated with it. Hang out just for a while, what is self then, for which I am raving and ranting for so long then? Self is life and self is the soul, it is the very essence that keeps us alive. Don’t you feel that the very core of our existence is being hollowed out by this struggle that I just described? What is this struggle and why should one struggle at all? What is the root cause of this struggle and what makes this suffering real? The industrialized society is brimming to its peak and there is no respite. I don’t want us to go back to the stone age, but who wanted such a fast pace of life when one is reduced to be a mechanized creature. I am not a sloth either who wants to live life in a slow motion kind of pace, but is this fair?

Life was never meant to be fair, I don’t know how much truth the statement holds, but life is hope. In this struggle what makes us survive is the hope. What is life? Is it the laughter, the pain, the numbness the ecstasy, the devil may care attitude or the manifestation of the self uninhibitedly. I don’t know if the manifestation of the self will lead to negativity, like everyone’s desires getting fulfilled at once. But I do know that there are divine checks and balances on the self. So only the positive self gets manifested and the negative self melts away with the pain and the numbness.

This struggle is ancient. What suppresses the self? It is the self itself that tries to suppress the self. But why? It may be the case that I wonder about all the time, why is there so much cruelty and violence and bloodshed in the world? Who created evil? Evil is a part of self. It is like the negative elements of the self getting dominant over the positive elements and creating the world that we increasingly see today. Wars, famines that have been created artificially, food scarcity, religious intolerance, terrorism, etc. are the manifestations of the negative self. Why is the self turning towards the evil and can we stop it? It is a battle that is both collective and individual. We have to fight the devil within us and around us. However, fighting the devil within us is the most difficult of the battles that needs to be won before we fight the devils around us. For these devils mentioned above like terror and fear are created by the devils within us.

There is still hope. I never give up. I always protest. Not by lighting candles or by displaying protest banners or by shouting slogans, I protest in a more subtle way in which I try to make sense of this struggle that is a part of me and you. Making sense of this struggle is important for we need it to understand life in its totality. There is no escape. Everyone is fighting, not a losing battle I hope. I don’t know what your struggles are and what are you fighting. But I wish you strength and respite. Someday, this world will be a much better place.