journal.coffee

I sit under the warm glow of the lamp, listening to a song a girl sent me earlier tonight. Suddenly, from nowhere I can put a finger on, a question flies into my mind and starts to flap its wings around like the pigeons who will soon be on the balcony—it is past midnight, after all. How would I have turned out if I never became a writer, had never written the terrible poems I began with, had never picked the pen up to write something other than whatever was required of me? I don’t have a proper answer. Who could? Something tells me it would have been a life as great as this one I have, but differently.

I think we tend to think in extremes. If a happy person imagines another life, it is not uncommon for them to imagine one where they were not as happy, and vice versa. But I have always seen it differently. It would have been a different life, but why paint it in any colour?

Perhaps, another me sits contemplating the same question with the same neutrality as I have extended him. A fool’s inquiry, I reckon. There is little I can say or think of that would rest this case and push the question back into a pile. All I can be absolutely sure of is that I would have looked at life, at people, at everything else very differently. All these occupational hazards, this sensitivity for the arts, this highly opinionated self, would have been absent. On some days, like the one I had today, I wish this were the case. I wish I could turn it all off and be like the others.

The music would play regardless, but I would not focus on the lyrics as much, not think of the rhythm, and not enjoy it as much as I do right now. I would think of it as a song, nothing more or less. It must be nice that way at times, I’m sure. It would be like how someone reads these words, if anyone does. It’s funny to be an artist of any sort if you truly believe in it and are in touch with it. It is all so important to you. But to the others, to the audience, it is just one work out of many. Your heart bleeds on the display; they glance at it, move along and never think of it again.

I got out of bed, coughing like a dog, and made coffee. Even when you recover, you are left with lingering symptoms—the minor annoyances remain. I believe I have been ill more times this year than should be tolerated without some sort of concern, but so far, they have only been coughs and colds and fevers. So I am not as worried. It has been a damp year, anyway. The rain has stopped again, which matters little since I’m sure it will begin again soon. At least it is not flooding where I live. This lets me sleep at night. But then, life finds a way to trap us all.

I do not see myself here for long—in this apartment and city. Where will I go? It will not matter. A plan is as relevant as an umbrella in a rampant storm. It feels useful to have it, but its usefulness is limited, and if the headwind is strong, the rain is the least of your troubles as you go around scrambling for an umbrella turned inside out.

To search for new with a stringent set of expectations thought up in the old seems to be precisely the kind of thinking no one ever thinks about, which is to say it is the kind of thinking where everyone does it wrong from where I stand. We must have some idea of where we’re going, yes, but why bother charting an itinerary? We must first find a shore before we begin settling. At least, that is how I will go about this, and it may or may not be wise, but I was never the wisest of them all.

I have only consistently managed to be a step ahead of the curve and not in everything, mind you. In some things, I realise I do not understand even the rules of the games I’ve been put into. But regardless of whether you know the rules, if it is your turn, you must roll the dice. And I, too, have made decisions and said things I learned could have stayed unsaid, not because they were wrong, but because they were honest. You can stay friends with someone for a hundred years without telling them even a sliver of the truth, but tell me, could you live with a liar for that long?

There is no escaping ourselves, and I don’t intend on it. It is the curtains around me that need changing. It has come to my realisation that for all the trees in this valley, no one ever grows here.

The other day I talked to someone about art at length, and I realised that, more often than not, most artists give into the idea of commercial viability. Now, there is nothing wrong with this; everybody has to pay bills and eat at some point. But the part that does not sit right with me, even if what I think barely matters anyway, is how instead of honesty, many try to build a narrative around what they are doing as righteous requirement, perhaps, to convince the dreamers, their younger selves, still hidden somewhere inside them. Now that the ink of reality has rewritten their fates, they attempt to add a biased preface to it all.

If someone writes a poem that does not come from within them but is only a reflection of what runs well in the market, there is no shame in it, but by no means is it art, and it should be admitted as such. It should be proudly admitted as a product. But if you are subject to the market, and you still try to convince, if not yourself directly, then yourself through what you tell others, that you are still on some glorious artistic journey, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that, and only that, makes you a fraud.

There is a glaringly commercial appeal to art; there is a requirement for those who serve this, too. I would rather the caterers own up to their role: merchants with artistic skills. An artist should serve their zeitgeist. If, in an insane coincidence, they are a fit, they should revel in it; their life will be easier than they can imagine. And if they are out of step with it, they should either be so good that they turn the wheels in their favour or so patient that they wait for the tides to turn. But I would take an honest business person who knows they peddle films for money over a devious artist who carries an elevator pitch for why the business or the balance between it all is a necessary component on their sleeve any day.

We need these filters in the boiling pot of nothingness that the modern age and art have become. It might create an honest artist somewhere by accident. We could always use more of them, especially in this drought, this arid landscape coloured only by the green of dollar bills.

There is a growing reticence in me, which is proving it difficult to write as much as I want to or as much as I did when I was not as protective of the little things I often think about. I think it eventually comes to a point where you begin to see that people usually only make comments or ask questions that add little to your days, only that since they have to say something, they say the most foolish things, such as pointing out how you change your mind often, that it is in your nature to shift gears now and then, and of course, it is; of course, it is in my nature. What kind of person would believe in the same things forever? But then, it is not worth addressing this glaring gap in their logic. A grown-up can but look and smile calmly at a babbling baby—nothing more to do there.

Life is not one narrative but an anthology. People think they’re living in a novel, but they are wrong. They are just living in an increasingly interconnected web of tales, some of which are about them if they are lucky. Many lives have been lived entirely for someone else. In any case, I think something about the air in my life lately has made me feel as if the parts hitherto permanent have now started to fade into the realm of the temporary once again. My feet have begun to fidget, and I feel as if I have overstayed my welcome in this part of my life, that there are no more stories to tell, the coffee has gotten cold, and the weather seems to have an urgency to it, that if I do not leave immediately, I would be stuck here to the dismay of everyone, myself included. There are things to do, after all. I cannot afford to get stuck in my ways, in this life. There is a lot to do still.

Seasons change, of course. It is raining now. It has been for a while. But it will stop in a month or two. What then? Will we blame the city, blame the sky for changing its mind? Of course not. We will revel in what comes next. Things are always changing; people, too, should follow suit.

All life is a crossroads. From the moment you gain agency over your feet, you must choose to go one way or the other, and like all dichotomies, one will be easier and the other not so much.

You can either take the answers you are given, as immutable as the tone suggests they are, and you can live your entire life the easy way. Or you can do the harder thing and ask the questions and hope you land on an answer. Whether it is the same answers as the others is up to the question, and the dice of fate. But when you find them, they will be your answers no one bothered to find, and there will be many questions and, in time, many answers. If you have a good head upon those shoulders, I can sense the squint of suspicion. Why is this the hard way? Now, that, I believe, is a question.

It took me a while to ask if I am being utterly square with you. It was not until a few months ago that I even had a mild suspicion. Then, I asked it. And surely, right there was my answer, waiting for me: it rarely is about the answer or the question; it is about what you will do with it once it is asked. People, us, we band around our answers.

Who is your God? Is there one? What do you believe in, or do you not believe in anything? Do you play the games society wants you to play? Or do you sit out? How do you like your coffee? What about your tea? What do you think we are here to do? Or is it pointless? Will you take the answers given to you or ask the questions repeatedly until you find your own? It has merit: there may be the right way if there ever was one, and you will have found it. But then, you may be the only one who knows this and the only one you will remain, for no one will ever ask.

The more answers you find by yourself, the less in common you will have with the others, and the further you will get from them.

Where does it end, then? I wish I could tell you, but I’m only on the way. I will ask the question, of course, when I get to it. I will have an answer for you. But, if you’ve been paying attention, I hope you ask it, too. For a change, perhaps, I wish you find the same one, that we meet, you and I. I reckon I am tired of disagreeing with the very fabric of the world.

In life, you meet a variety of people who do various things, but sit down with a marketer for thirty minutes, and it will be enough. You will learn everything they are and everything they have to say in just half an hour. Why is that? Because it is a job of make-believe, and worse, it is a job that, more often than not, is nefarious. It is the equivalent of the character in some fable who first appears friendly on the first few pages but later turns out to be the antagonist. Where arts and sciences are the heart and the head of humanity, marketing is the appendix. We could do with fewer marketers, analysts, and fewer pretend jobs. The world needs more artists and thinkers and more engineers and tinkerers.

In saying artists, I do not mean those who merely practice a skill but those who use their medium to say something. There is always a difference between the two. The artist and the craftsman are different, and they can identify who is who really well. But the waters are muddier for the world, and often, I notice people cannot tell the two apart. And when I say engineer, I do not necessarily mean those with a degree but people who think like an engineer. It could be your local MacGyver who builds things that make the lives of others easier in one way or another, too—using their skill to do something.

To say and do something meaningful built what we call the world today. The others came along recently and have managed to infiltrate and fool us all. They say that we will all soon be out of a job. But the arts and sciences will remain till the end of time, for it is essential to the human spirit to think of something new and to build something that makes living easier. That is all our species has been consistently good at.

No, threatened are those who will soon be exposed for who they are: frauds with pretend jobs that change nothing on their best days and everything for the worse on others. Never before has humanity been more filled with people responsible for so much of nothing, and now, it seems they are all scared. But the arts and the sciences will remain as they have, and they will adapt to the world around them and push it forward as they have.

Optimism is scary, but that is why we must believe in it. It is far too easy to be afraid of tomorrow than to look it in the eye, smile, and say, “Come on, come on in; I’m sure you have something good you’ve brought to show me.”

It is still early enough that dawn has just begun to break. I stand on the balcony, looking around, taking a few steps to and fro over the cold grass, taking my time to be a person again. There are others, of course, going through their motions of the morning, peppered onto this scene like watermelon seeds, existing wherever they are, no pattern to it. It is curious how we all begin our days differently from one another, and surely, we spend them differently, but when they end, we all have more or less the same things to say about them. I believe the coffee has begun to work. I feel I fell out of this habit of watching the world begin every morning, and now, I think I will take my sweet time building it back up again. That is all it is, this life: a series of missteps and corrections, minor or major, big or small, it does not matter. So many memories of moments where everything could have changed altogether, so many decisions I made in the moment as best as I could, so many crossroads I will never know the other side to, and yet, I look ahead with a smile on my face.

Where does it come from, I almost wonder for a second, but then, I immediately stop the inquiry. It has been my experience that you must never question happiness, the slightest hint of it. Foolish are those who live to create misery in their own days, of their own accord, when there is still something to laugh over. All days begin and end, and most of what happens in them, or maybe, to be more precise, most of what is remembered about what happened in them is up to us. On most days, we define what the story is about. As much as I have failed continually to write fiction, I believe this is the one medium I can make stories up well enough to convince myself that this is a good life.

After all, isn’t it what you make of it?

Lost all the joy I had on me and did not realise it. It fell right out of my pocket like how when you’re taking something out of it, and something else crawls out, but you never realise it. I reckon it was something like that. It’s a good thing then that you can make more of it, or find it lying where other people left it, or find it in some inconspicuous spot on an old street you remember like the back of your hand, which you flip through as if it were a journal you found in the attic or a trunk. “It truly was a different time,” you tell yourself as you see a spectre of the original thing. Memory is a fickle thing—it makes and breaks a moment all on its own. Today, I found my bearings and my general disposition on the hanger behind the door. Dusty as it was, I wore it when I left to meet a friend at the bistro in the evening.

Made the impossible demand that everyone understand every ounce of myself at all times. It’s a tall order, and even if there were a person like this, I am not sure I would want them to perceive every corner as it seems. I believe this is the perpetual state of inconsistency I have called home for many years now. All people are inconsistent, of course. It is the mark of a liar—a constant state of being. I am only able to call my bluff when I see it. Then, I own it like a scar. If it is there, you cannot do much about it. So, the only thing you can do is own it. Perhaps, this consistent brokenness of my narrative of myself is, in itself, a blessing. It keeps these vignettes fresh. There is no plot to this absurd life, and as I have admitted before, I am okay with any ending. But even then, even with all these things in place, a reader may need some sense of conflict. Well, here it is, in all its glory: I was lost for a little while, and now I am found, and I will be lost again.

Oh, what reader, you ask? I wonder, too. I wonder about that all the time. Maybe, some things are still being written. It is much, much earlier than I like to admit. We’re only at the first third, by all estimates.

Connection is all I crave. I go out of my way to understand everyone else; why, then, am I denied the same privilege? I do not know. I am too tired to ask. All my days end the same way—the bitterness of never being understood, its sick aftertaste causes a lump in my throat, and I am unable to form a question, or a sentence, or even a word. There goes my heart along the pitter-patter of the rain. I do not know what else is there—to do everything right and still fail to be read without bias. I’m listened to like a song whose lyrics are never paid attention to. Often, when I notice someone has not grasped what I meant to say in the least, when I see they are entirely off the mark, I get this impossible wish never to speak to anyone again. There is so much love and admiration I hold for this world; why, then, do I not get this in return, not once, not enough?

I am exhausted, but not in body or mind. There’s a third way. I do not know what to call it. So many people around. All of them look at me. Why, then, do I not feel seen? I see where everyone comes from. Why then do they not bother to take a step back, out of their own heads, out of their own stories, out of their own little world to see there can be one more, another world which is as much about them as theirs is about mine, which is to say it is not about them at all? If I can do this—look past myself in conversations, in places where I am asked for advice, over and over, day after day. Why, then, has my life begun to feel like a solo performance, an orchestra of one, where the conductor is absent, and I am left to fend for myself in front of an audience I can never please? So many questions, barely any answers. And now, I see the day is already over. What to do? Go to sleep and hope for another day, and if nothing else, for the tenacity to be solid enough to bolster through all that and, since the world is ever-so-relentlessly blind and dense, through a little bit more.

Twice this week, under the slight inebriation of beer, the first and only thought on my mind was how there is nothing I would not mind trading to be completely, fully understood for but a fleeting moment in this long life. I believe most people we know, those we find in life, and those we lose, understand us in parts, in slices and tokens of the entire thing. At least, that is how I have felt all my life—misunderstood on most days and barely understood on others. If I mention this want in front of others, in an overt display of irony, they fail to understand even this and hand me their golden nugget of advice: that my wish is unrealistic, that I should temper my expectations to about seventy per cent, that it is more achievable. I do not blame them, of course, but only out of a habit of shrugging misunderstandings off. A part of me remains furious at how blockheaded people can be at times. But then, there is little you can do. So, I do what anyone would do: take another sip from the pint, shut my trap, and then let the conversation slide into whatever people do understand.

I believe I am partly to blame, after all, for I am never truly myself when I am with other people. It is only when I spend time as I did today as I cleaned the house, managed to finish chores, and stood with my arms on the balcony slab, staring at the sunny day, that I am truly myself. The rest often involves me playing some part of what other people want me to be—little tricks and adjustments I have learned in all these years to get through my days with minimal conflict. Naturally, I feel inadequately understood because the bridge goes both ways. There is nothing I can do with this, of course. I believe I can follow the advice of tempering my expectations after all, but that does not change the fact that I would trade all things I have, and if not all, then most things, to feel a slight second, even in error, of being wholly understood—a pipe dream, wishful thinking, of course. But then again, most wishes seem abstract until they somehow come true, do they not?

I only dream of the present. Over and over, I find myself asleep with my eyes wide open, dreaming of nothing but the days I waste so nonchalantly. My days begin at this desk; my dreams end on it—one ends where the other begins. As if I were lost at a crossroads, tracing my steps repeatedly, forgetting where I came from and where to go, I lose track of this too. Now, the present is all I see in its exhausting beauty, its painful helplessness, the phalanx of days that all look the same, feel the same, begin the same and end the same. There is so much here, and I love it with all my heart.

I do not know where this absurd longing, this complicated love for the mundane began, but when I meet someone disappointed with life because it is unchanging, I often ask what else they were expecting. And then, I hear what most people would upon asking a question like this: excitement. But then, how long does excitement stay exciting, I wonder, before it, too, starts to feel like a chore, before one has to tape their smile to their cheeks?

In my experience, nothing poisons the well of society worse than those who feign joy and excitement. But it is not their fault; they are prisoners in labyrinths they built. If only they stopped to dive headfirst into tedium, if only they accepted that most ambition goes nowhere, and most hope is just something we cling to so we manage to end our days, which all still look the same. And no, this does not mean we should let go of ambition or hope, but it is why we could hold onto them tighter than we ever imagined: when we know them for what they are and not what we want them to be.

For now, this is all I know: I have fully surrendered to whatever happens in this life on a given day. The exciting bits come and go, but I always end up here, at this desk, with some work, some idea I wish to see through, or these words. But it all does end, and that is why I remain watchful and aware, curiously waiting for the scenery to change, for when it does, I will know it is fleeting, that before I blink, I will be back home, going through the motions. My tedium opens the doors for me. Every journey is a trip back home—wherever that may be for someone.

People exhaust me. The more I hear from someone I haven’t heard from in a long time, the more I want to never talk to anyone again. And usually, they need something from you: an answer, a presence in some event to show others they know people, some favour or some money. As much of a believer I am in always using my words, the less I say here, the better.

One of the most artistically tone-deaf people I know asked me if I ever lose inspiration in this city, of how the life here is not as fast as one of the metropolitans where if the air gets slightly worse, they will choke on their breath. I asked them if they had ever watched clouds move over the sky in July. They said they don’t recall it. I stopped my inquiry there and let the conversation trickle into another topic.

It always amuses me how people with no acumen for anything artistic about life have the most inane questions to ask people like me. The malicious ignorance, the intentional incompetence of their very being, oozes out when they open their mouth to comment on art, the process, or whatever lies in between, making the whole world weep.

Now, some student writing a dissertation in college will want to raise their pitchfork, claiming that this gatekeeping of art is why the world has disintegrated into blocks of concrete where pencil pushers live their lives thinking they contribute to the world. When they make their accusation, I will agree with them so they shut up. I do not have the time for it. There is work to do, for I need to eat, and at some point in my life, I would want to stop paying rent, and when the work is done, and the dishes are done, too, there are words to write.

This is not a heroic tale. It is a life, and I am living mine. All people go through things, but when other people go through things, I’ve noticed they tell a heroic tale. I will make no such mistake. But it still makes me wonder: how would the world change if everyone said, “I am a person, like all of us, and things have happened to me”? What would happen if the world were as earnest? Would I be able to tolerate it, then? Would I not have to feign interest anymore?

A world existing only at face value—a thing like that!

I sit in a cafe, and I read a morbid poem about life. I lose myself in the chatter and murmur. Then, I try to order another cup of coffee. I wish, sometimes, that I could tell you how my life changed, of all the things that happened, of the joys and the perils which are part-and-parcel of living. But then, there are no conversations beyond the end of the line. It is a shame how easily we lose people to time, to our own shortcomings, to the toss of fate—even if I could not, for the life of me, think it had any say in things that happen to us. It’s been more than a minute, of course, and to think about things that happened all this time ago might look like some lingering doubt, but it is not. You miss every day of your life, whether it was sunny or even if it rained. When you reach a certain point, it all becomes about time passed, things felt, the sheer abundance of all that there is to remember, and the lack of time and mind to do it. Just then, the cup of coffee arrives, and I am deflected out of this reverie.

For all those I have crossed paths with and all who I am yet to meet, I wish nothing but goodness, beauty and magic. It is not in my heart to hate another, even if I hold my anger for a minute or two; it is not in my mind to not find some plausible reasoning for whatever does happen. I can convince myself of everything except this: to despise others. It is not in me to hold a grudge, and even if someone stabbed me in the back, if I manage to live somehow, and then if I see them on the street, and if they need a hand, I will be the first to extend it; if not the first, I will extend it nonetheless. There is still hope in this world, in me, yet. I look around the cafe, and I see only this: potential. From whoever I have ever wronged, even if in error, I ask forgiveness, and to every person who ever harmed me, even if they did intend it, I say, “It’s alright, have a drink and tell me what have you seen since we last met?”

The world is alright, if we talked a little, and then if we all talked a little bit more. But people seldom talk as much as they should. When they do, they talk about all the wrong things, and then they wonder where things went wrong.

I barely sat to write this past week and lost track of how many days it had been. There was so much to do, important things—some truly important and some only because everyone else deems them so, but to exist, we must abide. But this Sunday, I woke up in my own skin for a change and decided it was as good a time to write as any. Often when I talk to people about things, about religion or politics or society, in general, I softly realise that I am an outcast in more than one way, that I only manage to feign my belongingness in some sense, like a poor disguise, and that the people I meet can slide this veil off in variable amounts. But on more occasions than necessary, I feel out of place, or at least out of step with the world. Things that are apparent conclusions to me are absent from the view of others. I think it is my general competence to follow instructions when I choose to that lets me fit in with this world. If I were, by some odd curse, incompetent, I would have had a hard time building a life. But now that I can carry myself, I can enter the same places as the others even though we all know I should not be there.

Growing up, people often tell you some things that stick with you. One such memory is when someone told me I had raw ability, that it was a rare gift where all my measure of talent had no adjective around it, that I could truly do whatever I wanted to if I set my mind to it, and if I chose to, that it was all like clay waiting to be moulded. As the years have passed, I have seen exceptions to this and found things I could not learn for the life of me, a graveyard of attempts, but I have found that statement to hold its ground more times than I could discount it entirely. Perhaps, I can fit in as well as I do because of this, because of my ability to learn and be useful. It only helps that my only want from life is also this: to be useful. But if I were asked if there was a place I truly belonged in outside of my home, I would say the list is sparingly short, and even then, I would be giving some grace to some. But mostly, I am a part of myself when I am out in the world. I often knit my life across several parts of it to feel complete.

Another day spent sitting on this chair, facing one screen after the other. The immovable desk, the constant moment, the perpetual rains that have not paused for a second these past few days have remained. I have stayed in place, staring at the drops trickle and race each other over the glass panel around the balcony, measuring its length only to fall into a tiny puddle and disappear forever. In the morbid obsession of getting things done and finding solutions to problems I could not care about if I were not being paid for it, I made some comparison between all of us and the drops, but then, owing to it being cliche, I decided to let it all vanish, too. Dullness all around; why add more to the puddle?

I often end my days with disappointment that settles as comfortably as a guest who sits on your couch with a thump and sigh. The light frustration of not amounting to whatever I set out to be and then finding something else to find meaning in, as all of us do, makes its home in me, like how when you are out for breakfast with your friends, and you ask the server if they have orange juice, and when they tell you they don’t, it does not take you long to ask them what else is there. It does not matter what is there for as long as there is juice, and so, when they say watermelon, you don’t think twice before ordering it. When you are twenty-six, almost twenty-seven, a bit differently than you’d imagined, you don’t complain or flail and wail in agony. You turn the music on at the end of a day in a long series of days, and you take a swig of whatever sits at the desk—water, whiskey, tea, coffee; it does not matter, for nothing matters as long as there is something to drink. It is the sip that counts. All that matters is that something exists, that you are something, that there is something, whether it is one way or the other bears no meaning.

My optimism for anything grand to happen wanes like accidental sunlight on a moist day, realising all of a sudden that it does not matter whether it shows its face or not; the rain will carry on as it does, as it has, as it will.

The day is over. Neither the sun nor I have anything to show for it.

It tickles me curious how whether it rains in the first leg of the day or not sets up the tone for the rest of it. The large, zeppelin-like cloud has poured over the city like a generous bartender filling up drinks for the butterflies at a bar. The spills are too many, too copious, and all glasses are brimming. This has set the tone for the day. The week, already at its end, could not have had a better epilogue. The lychee tree beside the apartment complex shakes violently like a drenched dog as the rain begins to die down. It is already over, but it did what it had to do: reminded all of us to go gentle into the weekend. Now, I want to pick up a book as if I were fifteen and begin reading it during the day and continue until I reach the cover. The only challenge, like always, is other people. But to hell with them; I cannot waste such a good day. I shall keep appearances, but I will not worry about the rest.

This is a day that demands you lie down with a light blanket on top of you and read until your eyes feel heavy as you lose yourself in a nap. When you wake up, you look at the pale evening light sneaking in through the window and begin reading again in comfortable grogginess. The light shiver in the air, the soft rumbling in the distance, the birds taking shelter in your balcony—I can already feel it, as if the day has already happened and I have woken up from an unintentional nap into a moment of snug respite. I can only imagine how incredible the real thing will feel in a few hours.

All my life is a stolen moment. My joy is the few minutes I can take away from the world, sneakily and without a hint that I took them. This is true for most of my day. Sure, I play all the parts I’m given with unmatched accuracy, to the best of my ability—to be alive is to be held accountable for something—but if I were given a choice, I would choose to sit in the audience of one—a perpetual spectator, watching the wheels forever. To exist in a pocket of my own, experience the world, art, literature, a rainy day or two is all I want from my life. I will continue to engage in the rest, for I must, but I will continue to steal my precious seconds. That is my only compulsion.

Often, when you stand knee-deep in documents and worries and other little things that affect us all, someone comes along and asks, “Do you think this will matter if you died today?” And through this, they suggest letting loose about whatever troubles us. And when you answer, “No, it won’t,” they ask you in a tone that makes it seem rhetorical, “Then, why does it matter now?” But it is not rhetorical. There is no rhetoric there, just an empty strawman to give you a false sense of ease. It matters because I am not dead yet, because I am alive, and I live and breathe, and everything matters only because I am here to experience it.

The world will go as it goes even when I stop living in it, but if it is raining and if I am caught in the shower, I have every right to be ecstatic, if I have nothing to do and nowhere to be, and furious, if I have to be somewhere and my clothes are soiled. And if I see a sunset, it is only that I see it that matters as far as I am concerned. The sun would set without me, too, and it would not make a difference to me if I were not there. My presence in this world, that I can experience it in my own way, gives it meaning. Do landscapes exist until someone looks at them in awe and wonder?

All our frivolous trivialities matter only because we exist, so yes, the troubles matter, too. They count more than anything else in the world until I am here, and when I’m gone, they will be gone with me. The other evening, my mother and I talked about how even if you leave something undone and do not worry about it, on most days, it remains for you; you must come back and sort it out. This is a good thing. It is how things are. The problems I leave on the desk do not walk away. They wait for me patiently. Whatever we leave halfway waits for us to come back. So sure, look away from it all for a little bit, but know this: to have a life, to be able to breathe, begets responsibility. Whatever that means to any of us is what also has the power to bring so much joy.

My doctor has a habit of telling me, telling us, not to worry about things, that we stress a lot these days. What did people do before these days arrived? I often wonder when he says that.