Lessons I Shall Not Learn From 2023
The author apologizes in advance if this sounds like a trippy acid trip.
(Come walk beside me
Lend me your multitasking ears
For a minute
Can change your lives
Are you busy making resolutions?
About your diet plans?
About your bank balance?
About your muddled man?)
It is that time of the year again, isn’t it? New resolutions must be doing the rounds wherever calendars and clocks are taken seriously. So basically everywhere. There is indeed something really exciting about new beginnings. We are wired by our competitive environment to be constantly motivated. To write down to-do lists. To find purpose by intentionally seeking out goals. We are taught to dream realistic goals, especially those that yield monetary benefits. And no one can deny the importance of money in our neoliberal capitalistic regimes.
I love routines too. In fact I adore them way too much. Routines bring repetition. Repetition brings success (if they work). We casually say that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west without thinking about the deep philosophy hidden within this seemingly mundane concept.
But if you really think about how the world runs or rather how we want the world to run, things could get really trippy.
Isn’t east and west a man-made convention?
Isn’t linear time a lie?
Isn’t language itself unreal?
The beginnings of a philosophical acid trip.
What is really real then?
I leave it to you. Ponder over it. Maybe with serious frivolity. Maybe with frivolous seriousness.
I am getting carried away. Anyways, what I intend to say over here is that 2023 offered me many lessons from which I could learn like:
The importance of networking
The importance of loving yourself
The importance of stability
The importance of routines…
However I am keen on playing the devil’s advocate. Not just for the sake of it but because:
I love being a recluse too. I feel more with myself when I am really alone. In fact whatever little strides I have made in my life is mostly because I relish the joy of being left alone. When I am in my own company, I get a better view of life.
We have built an industry around self-love which teaches us that selfies and beauty products are more important than reaching out to others. Loving myself also means loving others because we all are organisms, biologically and socially interconnected.
No matter how scary it sounds I consider instability to be of great potential. The Earth itself is unstable. Constantly rotating and churning molten lava.
I think what works best are spontaneous routines. We have our good days and bad days. Days when we have an adrenaline rush, and days when the pillow is our best friend. We must tune our routines through our energies. Not the other way round.
Do you think I am running in circles and not making sense? Well that was my intention. I am indeed on an acid trip. But not on drugs or alcohol. Mind you.
Virtual hugs before the year ends!
©2023 Kaustabh Kashyap
