Not doing enough?

Sometimes we feel as if a current crisis could be resolved if we worked harder, thought harder and so on. We assume that we are not doing everything possible, everything in our power to fix the crisis. This can lead to severe mental stress, we feel guilty, weak and angry at ourselves for not doing enough, for not doing everything possible, for letting the crisis continue.

But this is a wrong way of thinking. We must acknowledge our limits, and we must acknowledge that sometimes even though we could have done more, we ultimately didn't and this happened for various reasons. It is not that there was a giant obstacle, but sometimes even trivial issues can be an obstacle to our functioning. The workers who are watching the patients afflicted with Ebola die in front of their eyes, unable to help, knowing that these people have no chance of survival - how terrible they must feel, how helpless, how angry, and yet they might think they could do more, perhaps they could organise protests to get the pharmaceutical giants to work harder on finding a cure, perhaps they could work harder on each patient to make them more comfortable, and so on.

This was an extreme example, but all of us have faced this problem, in issues both big and small, and we know in our hearts that the feeling of helplessness and remorse is no less strong simply because the issue at hand is small.

We can see the reason, but our heart rejects it, perhaps we need more maturity to accept that the world is chaotic, and out of the blue bad things happen which affect us severely. Things which we cannot control and cannot mitigate, but are forced to watch helplessly as it takes its course, all the while an inner voice chastises us for being weak, ineffective and passive. Is a reconciliation possible - I hope there is - but as of now, I do not see one.

The moment of despair

There are moments when I feel so trapped that destruction feels like the best option. There are no exits in those moments, no possibility of a window opening up, of a ray of sunshine coming through some long forgotten opening in some corner of the prison. Those times are dark, and I do not like the darkness. I look for an opening, fully sure that I will not be able to find one, and yet the realisation of that fact hits me so hard every time. It's a wash-dry-repeat cycle of despair. There are only two options you have when you find yourself in a prison like that – try to escape, or forget somehow that you are trapped.

Escape from this prison is impossible; in the many years I have been here I have not seen one opening that a mouse could crawl through. Making an opening for myself is a courageous thought, but the walls of this prison is invisible. So far, each time, I have chosen the second option, to forget where I am, to rip my mind away from the fact of my imprisonment to something else. When the walls are invisible, it can actually be done for a moment, until the inevitable stimuli that lies waiting brings me back to reality again, and the cycle continues.

There is a third option, and that is the most effective, most brutal one. There can be no prison without a prisoner, and even if the prison cannot be destroyed, the prisoner can be. I have not taken that step yet, I like to hold it as a trump card, to have, literally, the last laugh at the prison. But hope still calls to me, and I wait for something to tip the scales and break the cycle, one way or another.

Internet graveyards

I have always loved the internet, let's get that out of the way. For an introvert like me, having access to an entire world that is unlike anything humanity has seen so far, all from the comfort of my own home, was a godsend. I was never good at the usual stuff people use the net for, such as social networking or promoting whatever content they had.

Rather, I took an explorer's attitude towards the internet. Since the internet was man-made and the only ones using it were humans, it'd reflect human personality in the way it'd be shaped, with the important caveat that the internet afforded anonymity. We now know that the anonymity part is false, but, the sense of it is still there. There is a sense of liberation in letting something loose onto the World Wide Web from behind a pseudonym.

I have a lot to talk about if I get started on the internet, but what I want to talk about today is relevant to my attempted reboot of my blog, one that looks to be over before it started, which brings me to the title of my post.

Though the internet is a relatively new technology, its growth has been phenomenal. People from all across the globe have joined in, created their content, and as they have grown older, have abandoned what they created. These creations, websites, blogs, forums, now lie dormant on the web servers awaiting a final deletion, and one can often come across these things by accident.

I was browsing the blogs on my sidebar list today, and apart from one, which migrated to another blog, none of them are active. Some have been inactive for one year, some two, and some three. In case that doesn't seem so long, a year is a long time on the internet, where things move really, really fast.

It is a strange coincidence that these people, along with me, stopped blogging at pretty much the same time. It's like a period of life went by during which blogging was an ambition, and then poof, it was left behind.

If you bother to look, there are many other sites like these. Sites created when a particular activity was an obsession for people and then one fine day they decided that it didn't matter anymore. Sites for that one movie that we loved when we were 15, sites for that teen celebrity we adored, sites for the latest world shattering event in high school and so on.

So now these sites lie abandoned. They don't rust or break down like physical structures. They still look as fresh as the day they were created, but a quick browse through them reveals their age, the content that is not relevant anymore, the issues that have had their day bare testimony to the passion that was.

There are also hastily built sites that were quickly abandoned, a spur of the moment decision that was never followed up on. These are awkward things, lying haphazardly around the web, not knowing what they're supposed to do.

There is also consolation and the occasional wisdom to be gleaned from these sites. We realise that the problems that we face currently were also faced by countless others, and that gives a comforting perspective. Seeing the sites people made over trivial stuff makes us less embarrassed about stuff we liked that now seem silly.

I suppose talking about websites like this enforces the point that I really, really love the internet. I'll see if there are active blogs around that are going the path and maybe the reboot will be possible.

A possible reboot

It's been two years since my last post. I don't know why I write this after so long a time, but like a lot of writing, it has to do with me trying to put into words what is only a vague mess of thoughts and emotions in my head.

Things haven't changed a lot outwardly since I last wrote here, which is disconcerting, but there have been internal changes.

Outwardly, I'm in a state of suspension, as it were. I've graduated college, and I don't have a job. For some people, this is a period of free time when they work for the good of society, or travel, read, write, or perform some other activity their heart's desire.

I, however, have no bearing on my mind, and hence have no idea what it is I should do. My mental health has improved significantly since college, when I was daily plagued with depressing thoughts. While I am more stable now, the plagues have not entirely stopped. Infact, I am experiencing one right now, which, I now realise, is why I write this.

These spells are poisonous, if kept in the mind and left to roam; while they do leave after a while, they come back later with more ammunition. Better to put them into some tangible form, such as language, and let them loose. That is what I plan to do from now on. It has a name, I believe : journal therapy.

I doubt if anyone will read them, but that's not the point. These are more for my benefit rather than my hypothetical readers. If anyone does happen to come across this, I hope they shall trigger some thoughts in your mind as well, and you will be kind enough to let them loose in the combox. Hearing other thoughts also leads to freedom from one's own.

Here's to, what I hope, is a new beginning. 

Cheers!