Folks this is not about me THE VOID but something similar............
in case somebody wanted to write to me, please do so to sthiagarajan@levi.com
in case somebody wanted to write to me, please do so to sthiagarajan@levi.com
A highly energetic person, very ambitious about career. The desire to achieve and work being so strong that sometimes, the basic objective of life itself wasn’t clear to him, but still he was successful in his job. He had a great assignment, which once in a while took him to great places in the beautiful land of Bavaria. The country famous for its beer and beer drinkers, and the efficiency of the work force there. The city is a commercial, manufacturing, and transportation center situated in a vineyard area. It is a major railroad junction and a river port and is served by an international airport. Principal manufactures of the area include motor vehicles, printed materials, electrical and photographic equipment, precision instruments, machinery, textiles, beverages, chemicals, and metal and wood products. The place he visited so often in that part of Germany, stuttgart was a place of great activity during the war years. But now it was quiet, the focus more on a peaceful existence. The same factories which produced the killing machines during the war years were now put to more productive use for mankind .
He was a small cog in the wheel, yet an important one. Like every other assignment, he went this time as well, for just a fortnight. The company gave him a nice apartment to stay in, a cozy two room flat, the balcony on the backside opening out to a lawn, and trees, swaying gently, the leaves yellowing slowly with the onset of winter. As you stood there you could listen to the birds, and the noise of the vehicles raging on the road in the front as the chill breeze hit your bones. The metallic clangs of the tram as it occasionally passed the house………otherwise it was silent, a cold silence at that time of the year. Yet he liked it to be away from the onerous routine back at home. It wasn’t that he didn’t like things back at home, but it is human to stay away from monotony for a while, and once variety becomes a painful repetition you get back to your old way of life till the wheel comes a full circle.
He had a nice friendly colleague in that office, and enjoyed his company at work and outside, be it going for a dinner or just for a casual talk. It was just being together during work and at times after work as well. There was nothing as a motive in that interaction, just a natural relationship when you are in an organization working with others, the only difference was that there weren’t many other people to interact with in this specific assignment. They had an opportunity to go for a drive on one week end, in the German Autobahn, meet with his family, do some casual sightseeing, and get back. Nothing more, and after another week of work, he got back home.
The weather back home being humid, where chaos is a way of life, and anything orderly would confuse people, even people at home, the demands and the apathy……despite he being a part of it was nevertheless; a slight setback. Though he wasn’t new to any of this, always something better overwhelms you with its awesomeness and anything at the other end of the spectrum could take you to depressive depths. Unless you are strong enough, you would succumb to either or both of them. Added to all this was some other nag. He knew what it was. For some unknown reason, he felt that he was missing him, his colleague in the other country. Honestly with no other reason to be attracted, here he was, still missing him and very stupidly felt guilty about it.
So when nothing really attracts you, why would you miss somebody? Being impressed with a particular behaviour is not something which will make you miss him or her. You may want to emulate, you may be appreciative of it, but will you miss the person or should you? And is there a reason to be guilty about it?
So what is it to miss somebody or something? A sense where everything seems so familiar in your immediate surrounding where you are now, yet not so maddening and you feel out of place in your own environs. What is the validity to this, if at all there is one? Is the verbalization “I miss” an insult to the beauty or the goodness you enjoyed? A captive victim would nurture hopes of escape, a torture victim would nurture hopes of easeful respite but when you say you miss and you lose your ultimate sanctuary for however short a period, then what are you hoping for at that moment?
What causes that emptiness or temporary void? Is it a yearning internally to retain that beauty of a relationship or interaction of the past? It doesn’t cause an eternal sorrow as there is nothing which doesn’t level out over time. We generally say we miss what we don’t have. We never miss what we have. Is that lack of “missingness” due to a sense of insouciance or lack of appreciation. When we miss, there is a certain freshness, eagerness, a painful waiting for the meeting to happen again or to go through the same experience, and to re-live that goodness, but once we get to be successful in achieving that desire, we don’t feel that pang or pain. There is a certain richness, and a kind of softness like fresh snow to that feeling, no bias no hatred, but a willingness to yield and compromise with that person or event or relationship. The same sense of openness doesn’t exist with the near and dear, regardless of it being a human or an inanimate object or even the nature around us. Distance heals, distance in terms of time and space but distance also seems to hurt like the invisible depression in space created by the heavier objects which tend to hold or pull the smaller ones around them. In physics it is gravity, in human relationships, is it synonymous with “the missing”? – the pleasantly painful pull…..
The pain seems to be more beautiful at times and pleasurable that we cherish and live in it. Sometimes a feeling of guilt comes in when you miss a person. The cause for this resting deep probably in a set of lopsided values. It is not wrong to miss or feel the absence of a person, or is it? Every experience has a certain beauty in it. The long felt desire to recapture the past moments of beauty creates the pain as is the case with anything where psychological effort comes into play. In that process to recapture you miss out the present. Neither the pleasure of the past satisfies you as we can never reach it, and it remains a mirage, and the effort to regain it, takes you away from the present beauty, so what is left is a void which gets filled with frustration. This probably takes us away from our immediate surrounding in all its forms so what is left is a sense of loneliness………….We probably miss ourselves when we say we miss. To be aware of ourselves and our interactions in the present is probably to not miss.
When would I not miss? Only when am full, complete. When can I be complete or full? Only when am aware of myself and the present and that means not to live in the dead past, which means not to miss the past. A seemingly ridiculous juxtaposition, when the past is gone, it is so obvious that you can’t miss it anymore, you can only miss the present or the future, so why do we miss the past? So is there an effort required not to miss or is it just to be your natural self in the now, oblivious to the dead? Do we have to spend any energy to be at ease? When we get to meet the same person again, would we talk about the past and live in a regurgitated pool or in the current freshness?
When we are not the same psychologically at different times of a given day, how can we tacitly assume that the other person whom we supposedly “miss” is going to let us enjoy the same experience always, or what is the guarantee that an exactly similar interaction will provide us the same experience. Is that not a bit presumptive? It is a rich feeling to feel the void, live it, see it getting filled and emptied and filled again as a continuous cycle rather than just retain the emptiness, for nature fills all gaps in her own way.
He was a small cog in the wheel, yet an important one. Like every other assignment, he went this time as well, for just a fortnight. The company gave him a nice apartment to stay in, a cozy two room flat, the balcony on the backside opening out to a lawn, and trees, swaying gently, the leaves yellowing slowly with the onset of winter. As you stood there you could listen to the birds, and the noise of the vehicles raging on the road in the front as the chill breeze hit your bones. The metallic clangs of the tram as it occasionally passed the house………otherwise it was silent, a cold silence at that time of the year. Yet he liked it to be away from the onerous routine back at home. It wasn’t that he didn’t like things back at home, but it is human to stay away from monotony for a while, and once variety becomes a painful repetition you get back to your old way of life till the wheel comes a full circle.
He had a nice friendly colleague in that office, and enjoyed his company at work and outside, be it going for a dinner or just for a casual talk. It was just being together during work and at times after work as well. There was nothing as a motive in that interaction, just a natural relationship when you are in an organization working with others, the only difference was that there weren’t many other people to interact with in this specific assignment. They had an opportunity to go for a drive on one week end, in the German Autobahn, meet with his family, do some casual sightseeing, and get back. Nothing more, and after another week of work, he got back home.
The weather back home being humid, where chaos is a way of life, and anything orderly would confuse people, even people at home, the demands and the apathy……despite he being a part of it was nevertheless; a slight setback. Though he wasn’t new to any of this, always something better overwhelms you with its awesomeness and anything at the other end of the spectrum could take you to depressive depths. Unless you are strong enough, you would succumb to either or both of them. Added to all this was some other nag. He knew what it was. For some unknown reason, he felt that he was missing him, his colleague in the other country. Honestly with no other reason to be attracted, here he was, still missing him and very stupidly felt guilty about it.
So when nothing really attracts you, why would you miss somebody? Being impressed with a particular behaviour is not something which will make you miss him or her. You may want to emulate, you may be appreciative of it, but will you miss the person or should you? And is there a reason to be guilty about it?
So what is it to miss somebody or something? A sense where everything seems so familiar in your immediate surrounding where you are now, yet not so maddening and you feel out of place in your own environs. What is the validity to this, if at all there is one? Is the verbalization “I miss” an insult to the beauty or the goodness you enjoyed? A captive victim would nurture hopes of escape, a torture victim would nurture hopes of easeful respite but when you say you miss and you lose your ultimate sanctuary for however short a period, then what are you hoping for at that moment?
What causes that emptiness or temporary void? Is it a yearning internally to retain that beauty of a relationship or interaction of the past? It doesn’t cause an eternal sorrow as there is nothing which doesn’t level out over time. We generally say we miss what we don’t have. We never miss what we have. Is that lack of “missingness” due to a sense of insouciance or lack of appreciation. When we miss, there is a certain freshness, eagerness, a painful waiting for the meeting to happen again or to go through the same experience, and to re-live that goodness, but once we get to be successful in achieving that desire, we don’t feel that pang or pain. There is a certain richness, and a kind of softness like fresh snow to that feeling, no bias no hatred, but a willingness to yield and compromise with that person or event or relationship. The same sense of openness doesn’t exist with the near and dear, regardless of it being a human or an inanimate object or even the nature around us. Distance heals, distance in terms of time and space but distance also seems to hurt like the invisible depression in space created by the heavier objects which tend to hold or pull the smaller ones around them. In physics it is gravity, in human relationships, is it synonymous with “the missing”? – the pleasantly painful pull…..
The pain seems to be more beautiful at times and pleasurable that we cherish and live in it. Sometimes a feeling of guilt comes in when you miss a person. The cause for this resting deep probably in a set of lopsided values. It is not wrong to miss or feel the absence of a person, or is it? Every experience has a certain beauty in it. The long felt desire to recapture the past moments of beauty creates the pain as is the case with anything where psychological effort comes into play. In that process to recapture you miss out the present. Neither the pleasure of the past satisfies you as we can never reach it, and it remains a mirage, and the effort to regain it, takes you away from the present beauty, so what is left is a void which gets filled with frustration. This probably takes us away from our immediate surrounding in all its forms so what is left is a sense of loneliness………….We probably miss ourselves when we say we miss. To be aware of ourselves and our interactions in the present is probably to not miss.
When would I not miss? Only when am full, complete. When can I be complete or full? Only when am aware of myself and the present and that means not to live in the dead past, which means not to miss the past. A seemingly ridiculous juxtaposition, when the past is gone, it is so obvious that you can’t miss it anymore, you can only miss the present or the future, so why do we miss the past? So is there an effort required not to miss or is it just to be your natural self in the now, oblivious to the dead? Do we have to spend any energy to be at ease? When we get to meet the same person again, would we talk about the past and live in a regurgitated pool or in the current freshness?
When we are not the same psychologically at different times of a given day, how can we tacitly assume that the other person whom we supposedly “miss” is going to let us enjoy the same experience always, or what is the guarantee that an exactly similar interaction will provide us the same experience. Is that not a bit presumptive? It is a rich feeling to feel the void, live it, see it getting filled and emptied and filled again as a continuous cycle rather than just retain the emptiness, for nature fills all gaps in her own way.
1 comment:
Increasingly envy ur clarity of thought and command over the language. All the three new additions are opening up new vistas of thinking especially pertaining to each of the aspects discussed in them. Though would like to debate on some of the thoughts that you have voiced here, would save it for some other time. Keep writing. :)
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