Making sense of the world and my anger.
I woke up angry today. My mind clouded in the overwhelm of despair, my shoulders clenched in helplessness, and a heart that shuddered in pain.
Maybe it was the barrage of terrible news that seems to flood all my screens and conversations. All the shootings and bombings and massacres and ammunition going off everywhere. War crimes. Rape. Sexism. Racism. All the other isms that stand for intolerance for all kinds of sub-groups of populations. Cruelty against animals. Cruelty in general. Abusive relationships. Indifferent friendships. The shitty ways we treat each other…
Maybe it was the nightmares that the fear of it all induces every now and then. Maybe it was just an overarching theme of the realisation that our world is perhaps, indeed, in ruins.
I realised I had tasks to finish, that my life needed to move on.
I left for a jog.
Despite the music crowding my ears and my lazy body’s desperate attempt at catching my breath, my head was stubbornly trying to make sense of it all, scanning all reserves of meaning for some kind of explanation to all this. Found myself drowning in naive hopelessness. What if we are nothing but mere numbers across the census of evil and hatred plaguing the world?
Jogging is supposed to clear one’s head. By the end of the jog, somehow though, that clarity felt more like resignation to circumstance and a shimmer of passive hope of some kind, that perhaps someone somewhere with better sense might have the answers. That in my everyday life, it didn’t have to bother me so much, right?
I realised I had tasks to finish, that my life needed to move on.
I came back. Showered. Sat down for breakfast, scanning news on the phone. Drank some coffee. More bad news.
Frustrated, I sought google for answers. “How to make sense of what is going on in this world”, I asked. “Why is there so much violence?” Google seemed to be scrambling around for any semblance of relevance, much like my brain. This time, neither delivered any.
I sent in my prayers with as much honesty as I could muster, trying not to get hung up on the fact that several of the sufferers perhaps had a much clearer relationships with their respective gods. I read about love and compassion and about seeing all the positives as some kind of cure for all that is happening.
Like so many of those recommended, I want to concentrate on all the good that is coming out of the world; I really do. Anyone who knows me knows that I am a sucker for such stories, and much of a believer most of the times. I am all for hugs and love and kindness and compassion, and they pretty much dominate my battery of to-do lists. Today, it just doesn’t seem enough. But that’s all I can do, right?
I realised I had tasks to finish, that my life needed to move on.
Sat down to work. Sent out emails. Transcribed a little. Wrote a little. Researched a little.
My mind kept coming back to this though. What does one do amidst all this dystopian gloom? What does one do with all the anger?
They don’t teach you that in school. At least not directly. Or healthily. Instead at some point, I picked up the message that dealing with anger meant getting rid of it. Being okay was more important, because, like I had seen through the day, there are always tasks in the here and now to be finished. Unless you are one of the select few at the frontlines, standing sure with opinions as weapons, fighting for a cause that you have discovered worthy of your attention. Several of us aren’t that lucky.
I remember something a wise friend once said. In an exchange of emails about the hurt, anger and disappointment we feel for several things that bother us, he suggested distinguishing them from the things that leave knots in our stomachs, wrangling enough to alter our purposes. And then work towards that altered purpose, which he had done. It is perhaps one of the most sensible things I have heard.
Although not quite in line with several other suggestions my rants are responded with, the ones where I am told I get carried away in my idealism.
Maybe, quite possibly, in my overthinking patterns-seeking hopelessly romantic ways, I do. I wonder, however, if we confuse practical objectivity for indifference, or realism for blind resignation to the filth plaguing our world. When did indifference and apathy become cool anyway?
Perhaps around the same time that we began to feel so insignificant in the scheme of things that we forgot that our actions have consequences that ripple through the world. Perhaps when the search for some semblance of meaning in this hapless world and our almost global inability to deal with our anger led some to seek violence as a means for control, as a replacement for answers. Our coping mechanisms are failing across all sides of all kinds of barricades, as also, it seems, is our common sense.
Don’t tell me this isn’t personal. And I don’t say this in denial of my privilege. I am extremely grateful that I live in a part of the world and as a part of a population where I don’t have to worry about my everyday safety. (Then again, I do carry a pepper spray in my bag at all times and have a folder full of safety apps on my phone)
I say this, because I was taught that my privilege isn’t an excuse to not care about my citizenship within the chaos of the world, neither is my existence secluded from it all. Doesn’t that demand that I place myself within all the destruction, conscious of how I contribute to all that is going on, mindful of my responsibility towards it, in whichever capacity I can help? How, I need to figure. The knots in my stomach, I need to get in better contact with, rather than numb them in the humdrum escapism of my everyday practical life.
I woke up angry today, and decided to stay with it. Hoping to be driven by it rather than reduced by it. Seeking to find my answers amidst it, rather than despite it.
Jayati Doshi
12th July, 2016. 5.00 pm
Also at: http://iamjayati.blogspot.in/2016/07/making-sense-of-my-anger_12.html
