When I was a little girl, my parents put me in a boarding school in the picturesque valley of Dehra Dun. For a twelve year old girl, at such an impressionable age, it’s hard enough dealing with adolescence, let alone having the trauma of staying amidst a group of teenagers, without parents.
I never fit in well. I felt I had a different take on everything and the world around me was moving too fast in the opposite direction, to hear me out. I had questions and answers that I felt were so unique that sharing them with the ‘superficial’ people around me would only condemn my ideas to mediocrity. I needed a friend, who had experienced life in its absolute form to help me figure myself out.
In my school, it was compulsory for us to do some form of social service for three hours every Wednesday. I took on an old age home. On my very first day, as soon as I entered the gates, I noticed this wrinkled man in red and black checked tapering trousers, a crisp white shirt under a sleeveless beige woolen vest, black socks, well polished black formal shoes and, what really held my stare, the unique sailor cap, tilted on his head. It reminded me of a picture of my great grandfather.
While all the other inhabitants of that place gave us a warm welcome and immediately started singing folk songs, this man sat alone in the garden, grumpy as ever. The nurses at the home asked us to leave him alone as he suffered from ‘something’ which she explained, subjugated him to frequent and severe spouts of passionate expression and rage, which meant, he would get over zealous and sometimes violent when discussing his life. Upon hearing this, I instantly wanted to befriend him and be his ‘special one’ who loved him dearly. I wanted to make him forget all the iniquity that the immorality of life at that age and position had subjected him to. I wanted to be the person who made him smile again and seek peace and solace in the time that was left of this wonder we call life. I suffer from a ‘disease’ wherein it is not possible for me to give up on people I have made up my mind to love unconditionally. I get obsessive. A part of me identified with this fanatic.
I take immense pride in a particular quality of mine that has helped me befriend lots of people of all ages. When I want to get someone’s attention, I don’t start the conversation with greetings and introduction. I behave as though I already know the person and start the conversation first by noticing something unique about their appearance or behavior and talking about that and then correlating the conversation to some problem of mine. I pick up any trivial problem I might be going through at that time and ask for their opinion (it appears trivial to the listener but to me every problem little or huge is a crisis). I show genuine interest in their personalities and genuine misery at my problem. This always works, as sometimes people are not too good at the greetings and this sudden attachment of trust works like shock therapy.
I went up to him and sat next to his chair. He looked at me and his expression started to change. I could make out he was going to get angry and shoo me away from his privacy. Just when he was about to say something, I pointed to his cap and straightened it. I don’t think anybody had talked to him in a long time, let alone touch his cap. He stared at me unable to decide what he wanted to say next. He tilted his cap back to its original position and jus kept glaring at me. I then made a semi disgusted face and told him that my great grandfather also wore it tilted and I could never understand why. This was step one. I was waiting for him to say something about sailing or ask me about my family or just reply with anything. But he didn’t. I then went on to step two, my problem question.
Now the question that I asked him and the answer that he gave me was the whole reason I wrote this post. I was shocked at my own question. I wanted to ask him something profound so that he would be interested in talking to me. Never had I imagined such ‘stupidity’ to come out of my mouth (as I thought then, when I was 12).
The answer defines how I have lived every day my life since then to this date.
“Everyone says- Follow your heart and you will always be happy. That is so easy. But, don’t you think people are unhappiest when they don’t know what their heart wants? Now what should they listen to and follow then?”
He just laughed it off and started telling me stories about his sailing days with the navy. We played chess every week followed by a story which I was sure he made up, because no life could be so extraordinary. He told me about the independence struggle and about his wife. Their family was very well educated. His English was impeccable.
For some reason he saw himself in me. Maybe i came across as a person who didnt fear to explore her uniqueness. Or maybe I was just the first one who ever talked to him.
He gave me the answer to my question six months later on the day before he was shifted to a mental facility for throwing a chair at a fellow inmate.
He replied, “You always know what your heart wants; it’s your heart after all. Even when you claim you don’t, you truly know you do, but you are just afraid of the answer and mask it in uncertainty.”
Choose to be what you want to be. No matter who cringes or who applauds. Make every action and every word you utter so original that you remember it for the rest of your life. We often blame others for not living up to our expectations, for not being what we want them to be, but in all honesty we are dissatisfied at our own apathy to our failures and ashamed at being untrue to our individuality.
Once you start living life on your own terms and expressions your decisions will be effortless. You will never know the exact course of your life and that will satisfy you. Once you live life differently, you welcome change because you don’t fear it, on the contrary, you will handle it remarkably in your own peculiar way. You will never be afraid of solitude because your uniqueness will make even solitude a celebration. You will love unconditionally, only because it makes you happy not because you want love back.
All of us pride our selves on being unique. But when our hearts ache and ask us to do something extraordinary, we fear treading that path alone. Its easy to convince ourselves of our exceptionality, but to be it, in our actions and life is the true test. Invent ‘living’; don’t just modify what already exists.
