Living life inside a bubble

I feel like I’m perched on a cloud. The window is opened strategically enough to let a flow of cool breeze inside my room, and the night light is on. Coldplay and Radiohead keep me company. And a bit of Led Zeppelin. It is so peaceful tonight.

Yesterday I saw another splendid sunset, after long (owing to the fact that there was hardly any sun for a long time). But yesterday, there it was, hiding behind the clouds, in all its glory. I sat on the ledge outside our mess with my legs dangling and watched the clouds moving continuously, and the sky turning pink to orange to purple, and the last few rays of the sun glowing and then dying out. It is always so beautiful.

Sometimes it doesn’t take much to make you happy. A sunset, getting wet in the rain, a cute dimpled smile, a gentle squeeze of the hand, a good meal, a laughing session with friends over tea. And sometimes it feels like nothing in the world can change the way you are feeling. I’ve given up on my emotions, I have just decided to embrace however I’m feeling and make the most of it.

Things move so fast here, it is not even funny. These two months have changed me in so many ways. Being a journalist requires you to be hard-hitting, factual, cynical and probing. But I feel like I cannot help being a dreamer. I enjoy the classes, the events, the rush of performing on the stage, the banal chatter with friends, but at the end of the day, I feel like I am floating through it all. Sometimes I just want to close my eyes and feel the nature around me, without being questioned or judged. It has always been about the little things with me. The seemingly insignificant things that sometimes even change the course of how things turn out. Like standing and looking over the valley and then noticing a lone brown leaf, floating and fighting against the strong breeze, and dancing in the wind till it is finally forced to fly away, far away in the distance.

I went to Mulshi recently with a friend, and the beauty swept me away. We sat with our legs dipped in the lake, we felt the streams of cold water rushing against our toes, we saw the clouds looming over the green hills, we felt the breeze against our faces, and there was nothing but the long winding road in front of us, the waterfalls and the greenery all around. The world is such a wonderful place to live in. How do we not look beyond our daily trivialities? Why don’t we appreciate the beauty around us? How are we trapped in our daily chores, enslaved by routine, upset about marks, assignments not well received, gossip.. how do these things even matter?

Sometimes I feel like feel like I’m a very, very difficult person to deal with. Even I don’t know how my brain functions. I have started questioning things a lot, which might seem unnecessary, but important to me. Gallivanting aimlessly across various links on the internet, I somehow started reading about Sylvia Path. She was a poet and a writer who committed suicide at the age of 20 due to depression. I read some of her quotes, and my god, it was like reading something that I would write. My thoughts resonate so well with hers. Read some of her quotes:

“God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of "parties" with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter - they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long. Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship - but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering.” 

“I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between.” 

“Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become acutely aware of all I’ve taken for granted.” 

“The silence depressed me. It wasn't the silence of silence. It was my own silence.” 

“Is there no way out of the mind?” 

“Can you understand? Someone, somewhere, can you understand me a little, love me a little? For all my despair, for all my ideals, for all that - I love life. But it is hard, and I have so much - so very much to learn.” 

“I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, "This is what it is to be happy.” 

“We should meet in another life, we should meet in air,
Me and you.” 

“I write only because
There is a voice within me
That will not be still” 

Tell me you don’t love her?

Sometimes, it doesn’t take much to observe the beauty around us. Sometimes it just takes a friend to notice the cacophony inside your head. Someone, who you know is going to be there, to look out for you, to infect your face with his own smile. And if nothing, at least he is going to hear you out. Or walk with you silently. And that makes all the difference in the world.