The dying art of chasing butterflies
Whenever a tragedy unfolds, the air of uncertainty envelopes us. For a brief but significant period of time, we battle with the vulnerability called existence. Thoughts ricochet from one anecdote to another, blending into foregone conclusions, making us feel like we know something about our finality. By the dusk of our mourning, we’d already acknowledged—for the hundredth time — the ultimate truth: Nobody can escape death. No matter how powerful or influential or popular we are, an opportune knock awaits us somewhere. Any given day.
Yesterday, when the news of Anthony Bourdain passing away to apparent suicide started flooding in on the Internet, quite a lot of people, including me, were left aghast. How can a man who personifies coolness and candidness — a rare combo in today’s farcical era of instant fame — could take his own life? He had his demons, something he never tried to hide, but he seemed to be not only fighting the battle but also winning it. His unbeatable onscreen charm and respect for foreign culture, through the delicious agency of food, aided by forte for the correct words, only made you admire him more. On top of it, he appeared to be doing exactly what he loved spending his time on right into his 60s: traveling and eating. Then, what could have possibly gone wrong?
The answer is pretty simple. We don’t know. And by we, I mean each one of us, not sparring his closest folks. Turns out a personal journey is, well, personal for a reason. Regardless of how much flavour or colour the external elements add to it, only you know what’s going on in your life. Your understanding of the world and how you’re supposed to be in this intricate structure called society derives its strength from your misunderstandings. Although our temporal knowledge has a scope, it’s quite limited in matters of mental persuasions. Once you believe, you believe. Once you disbelieve, where do you go from there? No wonder we as a species are yet to evolve to a point where we can stomach someone’s admission of his melancholia within a group. For a lot of us, if a person expresses their sad side, they are being a spoilsport. Keep your depression to yourself, sir. We’ve got fake laughs to latch on to.
If anything, a far-reaching demise such as Bourdain’s, or Kate Spade’s a week ago, should help us reflect on ourselves. Hopefully, leading us to question our attitude towards mental well-being. Unless we talk about it, we’ll never mature to a generation who are naturally empathetic to others’ unwordable pain. As of now, we are yet to shed away our skin from the post-war world; slowly but steadily, the ugly terrains of toxic masculinity are being reformed. In simpler terms, niceness is upon us. It will undoubtedly take some time before everybody accepts that peace of mind matters the way it took centuries for everybody to accept that earth is round.
Death arrives in different forms and many a time, we are so busy chasing butterflies that we don’t realize the beauty of our garden. Ideally speaking, everybody should die together. Leave no mourners behind. And if we take this idealism a notch higher, nobody should be compelled to kill themselves. May the moment come when it comes; not a second early, not a second late. Way too many accidents happen to leave any chance for an excuse to leave without saying goodbye. That, in my textbook, is cruel. Both to the one departing as well as the ones left behind.
It’s June already and September is still far away. However, not a day goes by I don’t think of 9/11. To me, the fact that hundreds of people perished while they were in their offices working on a Tuesday morning is disturbing. I wonder how many of them hated their jobs. I wonder how many of them missed the garden for their butterflies.
