To be a fool and to know that I am a fool hurts

How to keep active, and keep afloat too, when the mind is crying for silence and the body is demanding complete immobility?

There are so many dimensions to the issue.

When I started posting in Orkut or Yahoo groups some twenty-five years ago, or when I used to participate actively and often with acid fingers in many groups, and when I was readers noticed and read my articles too, I did have a sense of fulfilment.

I started writing to impress others, and to impress others one has to use hyperbole and oxymoron, innuendos and indulge in so many tricks.

However, human nature is quixotic.

Give a child the best of toys. It will be giggling and cooing and will be supremely happy for some moments, for some days even.

Then it becomes rather indifferent or neutral to that toy. Later on, it would even throw away the toy once for all.

Longing for approval from others is also like that.

It might give a temporary kick. However, it will wane away.

Moreover, even the best of accolades give euphoria only at a particular moment.

Some performances and performers might become legends. Like Gandhi, Tagore, Einstein, Pele, Sobers, Kapil, Gavaskar or Tendulkar.

Even the accolades such legends receive rather muffled and jaded accolades after some time. Time changes. Passions change. Heroes change.

Therefore living on longing for the approval of others really is not very useful, not realistic.

My flamboyance in my thirties and forties stare at me as funny and buffoon- like in my sixties and seventies

Today I do not fear anyone, almost.

Even as a student, I was never afraid of any of my teachers.

Most of what I learned was from what I read, and often I found myself ahead of my teachers or out of sync with them.

Life is the only teacher I respect. Of course, I would bow courteously to any teacher from school or college days, but that is just that. Way, just a tradition.

Writing can become sublime only if the process of writing leads to some sort of self-discovery, and a finished product of the fingers just look at you and congratulate you too, and perhaps expresses gratitude to you for having been born from your fingertips.

There was a phase in life where I experienced that.

I do not feel that exhilaration anymore.

Honestly, I believe that I can make any impression on anyone else only if I can impress myself in the first place.

In the process of rediscovery, I cannot brace myself up to congratulate myself on what I do this moment.

That is the dilemma.

We can draw examples from scriptures and stores of wisdom of great persons, but then they are like raw vegetable or raw rice. We have to wash them, cook them, and add spice or sugar so that we could eat them with relish.

When the raw products have no sufficient attraction for me and when my interest in them has waned, what purpose is there in adding spices, what more is there in store for me?

I have been facing this situation after I retired. It must be the same with many people of my age groups

Neither challenge, nor interest and inclination.

Stagnation of the mind and brain.

Of course, some people are under the impression that they are creating sublime literature, music, and so on. The population of such self-proclaimed greats is quite dense among old people.

Then they are living in fool’s paradise, and do not know where they live.

I too am an occupant of such funny paradise, but I am acutely conscious of that. Moreover, that awareness pokes me, and laughs at me.

To be a fool and to know that I am a fool hurts.