Spiraling Away

By:Varshaa

Living is gamble, loving is much the same, 

Life is chaos, existence is arbitrary and overthinking is everything.

So, excuse me if I sound overly analytical of inane if not mind-numbing things. Also, fair warning, you could most definitely go down a spiral reading this, so get ready for the ride.

When I started attending university, I had suddenly filled my day with so many things to do that I started to make sense of time with intricacy I had never before. I had finally capitalized on time, made these fancy to-do-lists, color-coded, with cross-references to a master list and whatnot. Everything was perfect, no time to overthink, no time to question anything.

Cut to, months later, I was home, and the concept of time was lost on me. Tuesday and Thursdays sounded no different from one another, days and nights merged and I was losing so much time, which I was constantly anxious about. At this point I should remind you, I am an extremely restless person, so when I say I was lost in a timeless existence, I mean that I was trying out new things every other minute and feeling constantly inadequate.

One thing, however, was never lost on me, no matter how many times I wished otherwise. Thoughts.Questions. Thoughts and Questions that turned into endless obsessions. One such obsession was the very human ability to be sad. By common knowledge, Sadness (I mean everyday-sadness, NOT DEPRESSION) is what one would describe when one feels like one has lost something of value. Scientifically, it is the consequence of an imbalance of the ‘happy’ hormone. But what I don’t often understand is the very contradicting human ability to pick themselves up and dust themselves off and why some have that ability more than the other.

What if sadness is objective to time? What if everyone had, say, 50% of sadness and 50% of happiness in their lives and it works like a sand clock? Then, everyone would be just as happy or sad in their lives. What if it is us that put a label on our lives to make ourselves believe that someone’s life is happier or sadder than ours? That could mean you are, by intention, trying to make the 50% of your life with happiness, sad. Then, isn’t it your fault for not trying to live up to the happiness of your life? Isn’t it because of your pessimism that you are not able to conquer your own happiness?

At the same time, what if sadness is subjective and all we need is a little perspective? I know it’s an irritating argument, of course, starving kids in Yugoslavia have been brought up enough in these conversations. However, what I mean though, is the stark contrast we see between things that make us happy and things that don’t. What if we are describing the absence of happiness as sadness due to the greed we have for happiness? In the age of social media and pretend lives, we are so saturated with normal and ordinary, that every-day life is not making us happy because it is not especially special and only special things are supposed to be happy according to our pretend internet lives?

And finally, are we all sad because it is easier than to try and be happy?

Well, thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

Yours sincerely,

Spiraling away