easy to dance ...

It is easier to be happy. It is easier to just dance and hang out than it is to do anything else. It is easier to just dance and then talk about how it felt. It is easier to talk about strength and guidance that took you to dance, because that is what matters to everyone. There is no loneliness and depression for the dancer, because he already resides in everyone.

It is easier, to let the surroundings inspire and drive you so that you don't have time to think how to respond. You don’t need the alcohol to lose control. You don't have to pretend because you either embraced it or rejected it. You don’t even know what pretense really means. You don't worry about what to say because there are enough things around you that make you talk.

Then you are not afraid of being defeated in the game, because you have your move and there is nothing to worry about. When there are no games to lose, the team spirit develops by itself. You could look back and think what a hypocrite you’ve become now that you don’t know who pretends and pretends what. None of that matters any more.

You become more desirable, you are sexier. You are social and you know what people want. You are just one of them, and yet you are best of them all. You are rich and you are attractive. You are what you once longed to have become. You are what you were once so envious of.

But I wish it was that easy to dance.

money in new york

Despite having had a small town, third-world background I think I have unconsciously so, got acclimatized to the city-life. Slowly I see that it is more than just acclimatization that has happened over this decade that I spent in the city. I see things differently now, very different from how I would have when I first moved here. A thing about the big city that bothered me a great deal when I was a kid was the comfort with which city folks set money to be the most important goal in their lives, or judge everything on grounds of money. I used to think that dreaming of big money is really a lot about being superficial. Looking back I think it could have been because of having been brought up in a culture where I was not encouraged to aspire. I was made to choose one amongst the few jobs that were offered to me. Success was achieved by adaptability, not through working to make one's dreams come true. I still feel sometimes that I wasn't encouraged enough to be doing what I absolutely loved to do. Through years of subjugation and colonial exploitation, it was actually discouraged in my circles if someone broke free of norms and started anything with a fresh perspective. When I came to the city, I couldn't help but notice that people were not doing anything halfheartedly. If you were into something then it is so because you absolutely love it or at least convinced yourself that you do. Nobody chases money as such. Everyone is doing what they absolutely love to do. Money is only a measure of how good oneself is. It was surprising to see that dreaming to make money in the city is not at all about being superficial. It was actually quite the opposite.

It was difficult for me to choose what I wanted to do. At the point where I was I felt that I hadn't have enough opportunities or didn't feel confidence about myself to take charge of things - mostly because of personality and partly because of the background. Those two factors might not have been completely unrelated. But with time, I had chosen a way and was willing to make sacrifices for choosing what I loved to do. I remember having loved analysis a lot. When I talked about things they were abstract things - things that most people were not ready to grasp. People didn't like that. I still loved it. A human being rooted in his history and ready to understand his aspirations. I felt a sense of bliss in being that way. I swayed from being a conservative to being a liberal and sometimes a moderate, but all this while I think I maintained a sense of honest curiosity, something that I was made to develop by training in science. An education in science does give you quite a bit of money, but not a whole lot. No matter how good you are at something you have to be entrepreneurial after one point. I don't seem to have the opportunity, but if I am positive, I might grab an opportunity if I see one. But being extremely analytical makes you a cynic and somewhat of a pessimist, mostly because you can't connect with many people. I love this energy and vigor of the city, but because of my very nature I can't lie to people that I don't like making so much money. That usually hinders the process of adaptation to the city life and I think that is where I am at this point.

thoughts before bed...

The only thing that I am absolutely sure in life is that I have liked and continue liking to be confused. I love getting into dilemmas. If the life of my lonely self bound within the walls of my desolate apartment in south west Virginia once began appearing somewhat dark, then with this new life in the big city my self tries to seek silence in the sea of people that it is submerged in. I had chosen to move, scared of my diminishing self, to give it a chance to rediscover itself. But now the more it feels lost in the labyrinthine city, the less meaningful it finds things to be. Would it be darker than before? It could just be that I get bored with things after a while. Jaded and dazed I seek more connection among people. I could not ever don superficiality, so now I think that pretending to be something else could transform me fundamentally. I still seek to fulfill the absolute desires that I feel. The more I wish to become a part of my surroundings (possibly with a bit of pretense) the better I want to understand these basic desires. But since I like being confused and I still feel the pretense, I also start rejecting the desires that I perceive to be alien, those that are either invented by me or perceived to be imposed on me by others. I seek to define myself with things that I like and by rejecting what I don't like. The dilemma is because I have rejected lot of what I don't approve and I think if I ever have tried to embrace what is outside of what I understand. I have rejected people because of my preconceived notions about them and I have refrained from getting closer to people in fear of imminent failures. What is this self really trying to achieve. What is its true character that it should live. Kierkegaard may have the answer but he is very obvious, in that he rejects the problem itself. Denying the problem hardly ever solves it.

I think following passions is the right thing to do, but passions are rooted in the environment. If I write music, how can it be not about what normal people like? If I write, how can I reject populism of art? How can I enjoy anything if I seek more than enjoyment from what I do? Absolute passions don't exist. But are there no passions to be followed then? I hate being existential, but is thinking this itself the passion of being? I continue to be confused because life means nothing without a passion and passion itself diffuses the self into nothingness. The solution could be along these lines - I just need to be with people much as I like to think. The equivalence of those two conditions bridges all the gaps in between. We don't need to think that we need to think, much the way we don't need to think that we need to be with people. If that be the case, passions roll out and self restructures itself. The dream of silence can be met only if all desires meet fulfillment and the likelihood of both is equally and dismally minimal.