A one-liner about self
The other day I was listening to this famous song by George Michael, one of my favourite. As I was following the old video from 90’s, studded with sensual depiction of a fervent topic that beats the impact of time, I felt a string deep inside my psyche pulled hard. Freedom. What does it really mean? And I point towards the gamut of facets of an average human life that the explosive word touches upon. When days are smooth and living is unceremonious, scanty are the reasons for turning the pages of a Merriam-Webster or rather (to draw an equivalence in today’s context) resorting to Google in search for a satisfactory meaning of the word.
Sure, from perhaps time immemorial, political or economic hegemony have been enjoying a sheer contextual advantage for a convincing explanation of the term. But it is more esoteric when it comes to other relevant domains, and to a more individual level at that. Since political hearsay has always been revealed itself to me as an integral yet confusing and extremely complicated part of human civilization, I would rather not embarrass myself with a fruitless effort of sharing my reflections based on the iota of knowledge that I have about that area. But perhaps this note would lend a voice to my fascination with the exercise of individual freedom. At least that is what the intention is..
To me, the most difficult and longest lasting battle that we fight for freedom is the one from ourselves. And the difficulty lies in the fact that we often don’t even recognize the face of our enemy. Stuck in the vicious cycle of epiphany and surrender, we tend to settle with a compromise to restore balance in the art of living. A compromise to find an easy solution to some age-old conundrums—‘Who am I’? ‘What do I want?’ A compromise to employ sedation on the unrest that occasional revelation and introspection bestow upon us. The egoist in us thrives with the incessant supply of an unstoppable drive to justify ourselves in awkward circumstances. So, why does not our distraught ‘ego’ rest permanently in peace by virtue of this clever trick? This is because every time it proclaims its reign over our mind, its endeavour is challenged by a mighty contender buried within. And as is expected from any worthy adversary, the other self, let us name it ‘conscience’ (a fancy word that I stumble upon from time to time), attacks our ego at its Achilles’ heel. It challenges the moral code hardwired within us, it gives us a guilt trip over some decisions we made in the past, it weighs our state of being on the scale of happiness. In a nutshell, this opponent plays nasty. As one might aptly think, there is a thin line between prudence and cowardice. Consequently, the winning party hardly retains its throne.
There is something that makes the situation even worse. At the risk of sounding geeky and at the juncture of sounding smart, let me pose the whole circumstance as a ‘zero-sum game with influenceable agents’. Coming back to English language, this implies a competitive game where the players fight tooth and nail to win but are often influenced by each other. I bet one can imagine what a catastrophic aftermath it may lead to. An occasional introspection often brings out the ever-prevalent dichotomy between ingenuous desire and the desire to fit in, a reason strong enough to keep honesty at bay. Almost all of us want to be wanted. Moreover, a large fraction of those narcissistic souls measure their worth on a scale that others attach to them, which digs the pit for endless confusion and the pandemonium it begets.
Us, humans, are prisoners of our thoughts; our dilemmas. The feeling is ubiquitous. When our conscious mind escapes the jolt, the tremors of uncertainties crawl under our skin and creep into our subconscious mind. Intransigent and persistent, our conscience hung over our closeted soul often weighs heavy. Often, it wears our spirit of survival, makes us doubt our decisions, our cautious actions. And then, as a last resort for freedom, we give in to our ‘rationality’, which is often the visage of masked fear. A creative race as we are, we have invented myriads of fancy words to delineate attributes that a rational mind should possess. And we adeptly keep under the rug the true meaning of those words, away from the curious eyes. That is how ‘narcissism’ sometimes sounds like ‘self-esteem’, ‘megalomania’ appears to be ‘self-respect’, ‘scared’ becomes ‘prudent’, ‘craven’ wraps itself with ‘magnanimous’, ‘irresolute’ mutates into ‘analytical’, ‘diffident’ disguises as ‘decent’, ‘honesty’ appears as ‘verbosity’…. and the list goes on.
We are afraid. Of ourselves. Of our vulnerability. Of the reflection of our insecure anima upon the inner-voice that strips us naked. Our fragile heart throbs at whiplashes of judgments of our own, and of others as perceived by us. We are unsure. Perennially dubious about ourselves. And so we create a bulwark of pretence in the name of preserving our dignity and block the cathartic wrath of the exterior world. But aren’t we all the same? Isn’t it that this hide-and-seek game lives on because we all are eager to be sought by others but are more focused to hide ourselves deep within? I wonder if a coexistence with no facade and no guile would be too boorish to live with or would it bring forth a desirable symbiosis that is blessed with unfettered transparency? And I wonder if I, one of billions on this planet, with the shred of insurgence left within me, would one day be able to chastise my soul by bringing down the walls of conflict and impairments that encage it. For, if anything, such a havoc could potentially set me free.