The one life we have..

This week before my birthday is the week of existential crisis for me every year. A time of taking stock and always feeling inadequate, not enough. Not doing enough, not planning enough and just simply not being enough. On most other weeks, I have my head firmly on my shoulders, but as my mental Earth is about to complete one more round around the sun, everything suddenly seems out of focus, dizzy and inundating.

The brunt of it is faced with severe force by the husband and a few friends who I fight with or cry on their shoulders or simultaneously both at times. It is also a time when unfulfilled desires which are brushed under the carpet come forth again, with vengeance. You wanted to write a book, didn’t you? Wake up, you are going to be 33 and time is running out. Or did you always think you wanted 2 kids? Uh oh, may be not. Clock is ticking, perhaps you will die as a mother of one and never have a daughter.

Things which make me want to get up and create or procreate or go to sleep for the rest of the week. Its always a dichotomy between two extremes. I can either make a book or a baby. In all probability next year I will be at the same place, same time, turning 34 without having created either.

Perhaps what I need to learn in this year of life is to be alone with  myself, complete within me. Not look at external factors for validation but look within self for the fulfilment that I crave. Par yeh hain kya andar ? Dekhu kidhar ? A well wisher told me to start meditation , another one asked me to write the journal with happy thoughts. Be mindful and try to live a meaningful life. But saala ye sab ek moh maaya hain and hum sab iske shikaar hain.

As a child I loved birthdays, my parents would call a small group of friends from our society and there would be Monginis cake-cutting and some idli chutney or home made Batata-vadas. A new dress was donned, presents were had and in general it was a time of cheer.

Then came the strange early-teen years where I would want the guy I am crushing on to notice me and come say something to me on my birthday, but that didn’t happen. I was very nerdy and the first-bencher types.

Then there was a brief spell of my very early 20s when the world felt this charming thing I had in my control. Education was happening as per plan, I was dating guys who adored me and lavished me with attention. It was a time of roses and chocolates. Even the early years after getting married at 24 were birthdays filled with surprises. Because husband and you are both trying to impress each other and trying to find out what exactly works.

I distinctly remember, I was 28 when I started feeling it’s all downhill from here. All major milestones in life have been met and now it’s just existing. There are wonderful moments in this existence and I feel very productive and fulfilled at work and engaged in family life, but every once in a while it starts feeling pointless, unnecessary. Like, why are we doing all this? Why are we born? Who made us? Why is humanity existing? This feels like a play mankind is acting, but who is the narrator? And the viewers? Why do we wake up every morning and do all these things and make up all the technology just to end up worrying about global warming?!

I have no answers to this and I have read a decent amount of philosophy to know that no one does. Neither Socrates, not Aristotle nor Plato. I am not hopeful that I will find any answers either, but perhaps, dear God, send me some rays of hope, some light which shows me the pathway to why I am on this earth. What do you want me to do with this one life that I have?

I hope it’s something worthwhile and we are not just carbon atoms colliding into each other in different forms

I hope my life matters to someone, something, I leave it a bit better than it would have been in my absence.

One good thing of having a child is, no matter how purposeless or futile you feel, the child will alway think you are the most amazing that has happened on earth. For now, I will hold on to my 4 years olds’ belief of life and go on.

Cheers,

Rutvika

P.S : Check out this if you want to know how inconsequential we are, Tiny Glowing Screens