In the entangled mesh of things.

When I collect stories, the most striking thing is also perhaps what is the most obvious. It’s the ways in which our inner and outer worlds collide to create the chaos that we live in.

I have my needs and wants, wishes and desires. These wishes are a product of the conditioning through my past, and what it has taught me about what is desirable, and of the imagination for the future it has thus built in me. I go out in the world and make decisions based on this context, and in turn contribute to what happens in the world. My choices and actions, which are inspired this directory of my wants and desires, have consequences that play out in the larger scheme of things.

This larger scheme of things involves also the effects of your choices and actions, which are in turn inspired from your wants and needs, which need not always be same as mine; sometimes maybe even contrasting that way.

Since there will never be an unanimous consensus on the needs and wants, the order of things in the world continues to be a tug of war with each one of us trying to pull the world a little bit in our favour, in the process creating the chaos of circumstance that further becomes the context that we make our future choices in. In that sense, life is a little fair to each one of us, yet can never (obviously!) be fair to all of us.

How then does one find simplicity and order in this messy mesh of things?

One way is to create a social how-to handbook for all to subscribe to, in some kind of an attempt by a majority to create that unanimous state of wants and desires, so that the world can be tilted in that favour. All of our “normative” social structures, right from the way we structure our social relationships to how we place all of our intersectional identities amidst it aims to do that. This is easy, clean and efficient, and often, the chosen package.

Another alternative might be to embrace the complexity of it all, and categorise it to establish a sense of control, and thus security. So, this means that we separate out our wants and needs, accepting that they exist regardless of right and wrong, to have a think about what is productive/ healthy and what isn’t, and then to act upon these ideas by finding wise choices within that. And making peace with the fact that that is all the control we have. And then when these choices, interacting with the world at large comes back to us in the form of consequences, responding from that same space of balance.

Both these methods work differently. The first one is like the regurgitation-based/ formulae-testing exams, while the latter is like writing a detailed paper. The first one’s results are easily quantifiable, really predictable, and those who design the exam paper and answer bank call the shots based on easily justifiable logic. In an ideal world, that’s all that it would be and we could all just be happy preparing and giving these exams. We aren’t as rational beings as we would like to be though. The latter method, on the other hand, thus allows one to take ownership of the material and place it within a certain structure, making space for more negotiation, growth and creativity. However, what that also entails is that someone grading these papers might have a completely different sensibility, and so, one is constantly taking risks. Yet, these risks, oftentimes might just be the source of art.

I wonder sometimes if in this post-industrial era pace of life, we have come to value easy and efficient and clean so much that we would much rather chip away our needs to fit them into neat little boxes of certainty, rather than put in the effort to create the art that comes out of all the other risks we can take. I wonder if we value “simple” too much, but somehow it sometimes seems like that is simply a better sounding synonym of easy, no? You know those genetically modified huge watermelons that are then shaped to be squares so that they can be transported easily? I wonder if we have come to prefer these, even sometimes at the taste of lesser taste, over the more juicy sweeter oddly shaped organic ones. I wonder if this is at the root cause of the culture of mediocrity that we have settled for.

To embrace our wants and desires, and thus our choices and actions as a whole is complex, tiring and fulfilling, yes, but it’s not complicated. It looks like an entangled mesh of thread, but on closer look, each of those knots have been consciously formed as a result of our collective actions, and if one puts in the effort, it can be untangled. Sometimes, one doesn’t even have to untangle all of it to not be daunted by it.

This isn’t a case I am making for either, and I am aware of my inherent biases when I say this. I have always been one to choose beauty over practical, but this isn’t all that much about me. When I collect stories about work and relationships, I am bombarded with stories of what ifs and could have beens, all justified by a set of inherited rules. Stories of chipping away these desires to fit in, rather than finding the tenderness within us to appreciate what Yann D’all Aglio would say is the “sort of poetry of deliberate awkwardness”. I hear stories of anger, hurt, disappointment, frustration compressed tight in the bins of our heart, affecting the choices and actions we make without realising it. I see the ways in which we cause damage because of it, and the ways in which this ripples along unattended. I wonder if we would change the way we acted if we knew just how much our actions matter in creating the larger scheme of things that we make these choices in.

Then again, this is simply my bundle of thoughts and hopes, and not always in line with the pull of everyday beliefs that I am finding belonging within.

Jayati Doshi
August 30th, 2016.

Originally published on: http://iamjayati.blogspot.com/2016/08/in-layered-mesh-of-things.html