Existence & Nostalgia
As I sit in the bright, cozy sunlight of January, the slow and dull realization of the pandemic completing almost two years grows onto me. With every passing month in this duration, my expectations from life reduced in parts. The first phase was that of sheer joy — the possibility of doing nothing but relaxing and eating. To some extent, it was even exciting. Nothing like this had ever happened in a century. As time passed by, I developed the realization of my passing young adult period. The wish to club, party, travel, all seemed distant possibilities. Things I had waited for all my teenage started to fade and my expectations lowered. Eventually, the domino effect led to “is living worth ?”
For most people, pandemic has taken a toll on our evolved human brains. All of us suffered from a lack of sufficient stimulation. Studying a bit of psychology has even helped me understand that, ‘the brain, in the lack of sufficient sensory stimuli, may develop hallucinations to feed itself’. Depression and anxiety saw worldwide peaks, and there was a general drop in resilience. At a time when everyone is struggling for survival, it is natural to reflect on our fragility. It is natural to look up to some sort of bigger purpose to justify all the struggle we have been putting just to survive. Most people fortunately, find a suitable distraction — in religion, spirituality, work or even in their families and loved ones. Yet, for some people, their minds pierce through these distractions and they are forced to see the truth, which is the eternal absurdity of our lives.
The anxiety one faces on the verge of this realization can beat the scariest horror show on this planet. It is something absolutely scary and something absolutely real. As for me, my brain had shut down. I drifted on and off various consciousness, almost like a sublime travel from one dream state to another. Whatever I did in one state was totally disconnected from the other, and I hardly had much memory of things. Experts use terms like depression, brain fog and derealization for it. Yet, since it lies beside the point, I will refrain from such labels. I would cry sometimes to feel something and sharpen things. It was like some sort of magic, wherein I would see the world in a very blurred manner and as soon as I cried, things would get crystal clear, even though for a few minutes. It wasn’t even sad. It was just bleak.
Everyday I would play a recorded debate in my head : to live or not to live. Somehow, I managed to tilt towards, dying does no good. Yet, I was still not convinced if living is good. I would keep hanging there, hours passing by, in a dream like trance, trying to cope with what people may call, ‘an existential crisis’.
Days later, as I write this, I realized that I found an answer which was probably not as false as a distraction, and is a good reason to live. When I started journaling my daily activities, as I was coping, I found the answer in a recurring pattern. Everyday, I indulged in nostalgia. Each day, I changed my perspective to my past, bit by bit. Reckless flings with strangers shifted to innocent times spent with my friends. Memories of self-harm shifted to sagas of my perseverance and achievements. Through these vital shifts, I came to realize, I have been wrongly hating myself and running from my past, when reality was something different.
The simple answer lay in the phone gallery stacked with silly pictures, in the new-year greeting cards with misspellings, in the faces on social media you no longer talked to and in the conversations of the neighborhood kids playing every morning. Existence makes sense when you realize that, you don’t have a past, you have a history. There is a missing sentiment in the present moment which automatically emerges when the moment becomes a past. It is like kimchi, achaar, or wine. Time grants it a certain zest.
Perhaps, existence has no bigger picture. Even if it does, perhaps, it is not something we can fathom with our limited human capacities. Yet, the fact that every nostalgia feels like a fresh experience is meaningful enough. I feel happiest when I look back on things I did. Even if the time is bleak, I wait for it to become past, and for my mind to automatically add that seasoning to it, which I am such a big fan of. It is this subtle link of the past, present and future that our existence finds meaning in. For the entire meaning of life culminates on our last breath, let’s fill it with nostalgia. For suffering is too beneath a thing to define a majestic thing as life.
