April is usually a tough month for me. It brings with it the realization that I am now a year older. It also brings with it the persistent feeling that I haven’t done enough.
It’s been close to two years since I started working. This means living in a city that is not my home, around people who are not my family. It also means watching people move on to greater, probably better things - new jobs, cities, relationships, positions, packages. The constant comparison that follows leaves me with an ever-deepening feeling of insufficiency, even if what people around me have “moved on” into, is not something I want.
Watching people leave also makes me feel lost in relationships. The constant inconsistency in who I see around me, feels overwhelming. And because we are all young - because we are still figuring out what we want from each individual we meet, I have found myself losing faith in many of the bonds I formed. Not because all of us branched out into different paths, but because I realized that most don’t have the emotional intelligence to be responsible for the relationships they form. Of course, I am equally at fault here.
In short, for someone as Type A as me, life is basically a stressed-induced, unabating volcanic eruption.
REMINISCENCES
I’ve spent endless nights forcing myself to do more. To add one more stint of work experience on my resume, learn another hobby, master at least one sport, network a little more. I’ve forced myself to stop thinking about that one individual who hurt me, only to think about them, in quadruple the magnitude. I read more books in the pursuit of finding another interest, roamed the city alone to find at least one spot of solitude - hoping something, anything - would make some sense and work out. In spite of it all, I felt glued to where I was, like a moment stuck in time, unable to break out of the monotony.
This stillness I had perceived of my life was way too clamorous.
LEARNING TO DEAL WITH IT
It is very exhausting to compare. Very tiring to continually wonder where I would’ve been had I not involved myself with that one guy, that one job, or majored in that one discipline. We do what we do at the times we do them in, because it is the best we know at that moment. I am learning to let it go, even if the time it takes is long. Pain and sadness are a part of life after all, but suffering does not have to be. (Try and read these articles on how suffering is a choice: Article 1, Article 2, Article 3).
The secret to a more peaceful state of mind, perhaps, is to see the world for what it is - for what it has in store for us, and not what it appears to be in comparison to others. We are only lost as long as we think there is a definite path. In a world so varied, and wide, it makes no logical sense to believe that we are behind, especially since we are never in parallel anyway.
You cannot come second in a race that has a different start line with the person who apparently came first.
So, in all this lostness, and maybe-loneliness, I’m learning to not let people dictate my life. I no longer want to be a part of this stack rating system I have established for myself. I want shut my doors for those who aren’t consistent in their efforts, and try, a little harder, to be a better friend to those who have stuck around. Most importantly, I want to believe in the relativity of time, and how differently it plays out for each one of us.
The battle with time, expectations, and set goals is as wide as it can get.
It has to stop somewhere, because (as I once read somewhere), in all this madness,
“It’s necessary to need to stop and laugh sometimes,
Otherwise, we’d all be screaming all the time.” :)
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