journal.coffee

I sat in the cab, engrossed with a problem I was trying to solve with my work, a short family trip that I had procrastinated planning on, and of course, writing—in that order. Just then, I noticed the wrong road getting closer and right as the driver was about to make a turn, I told him it was the wrong route. In this ordeal, the intricate tapestry of thought I was lost in collapsed quickly, and all I had done since the moment I left the apartment was lost. I only wrote bits and pieces mentally for the rest of the route, which was not as long to do anything else. I am only putting all that down now, like a loyal assistant. There are multitudes in me. I give myself the orders like a general and follow them like the cavalry. This autonomy has given me so much, and it has taken so much. Now, with everything split even, I sit and write.

As I jot the words down, having iterated over them a hundred times since the evening, I realise there is madness to my method. There is order in my disorder; even when I am in disarray, I am fastidious. When I meet a friend or acquaintance or talk to them on the phone, it is not uncommon for them to ask me: How do you do the same things every day? How do you keep up with it? How do you not forget or lose yourself and never find the motivation to start again? I try to answer them, but then, I get as close as we get to articulating how we breathe. It only gets harder when you try it. Some things appear naturally in people. For a lot of people, it is unforeseen genius. For me, it is this tendency to keep at something.

For many years now, I have joked that some of us are the children of Sisyphus—we do not know why we roll the rock uphill, and if we ever did, we have long forgotten. Jocular as this remark is, I am now beginning to see some truth in it after all. I could not tell you why it is that even if I stop writing in the morning, an hour in the night clears itself up for me as if I had planned it. The universe conspires for a lot of things. In my case, it keeps me where I am as long as I truly want to be there. What it wants from me? I will never know. I am but a man who sits and writes, whether it is day or night is irrelevant.

Lately, I have not adhered to my schedule and have written haphazardly and variably as the days have waltzed past me. Now, I can confirm the muses have their window, and if you miss it, you are gone for good. Nothing will come out of you, no matter how long you sit there at the desk. But like all guests, the muses are understanding and are open to some adjustment and accommodation. In this golden month, as I am still trying to get a grip on my wholesome days, I have made it a point to inform the muses of my tardiness as early as possible. “I apologise,” I tell them, “the day has already unfurled, and now that there are things that depend on me, could you revisit me in the evening?” And when I have had my dinner and drinks and come back to the desk after an exhausting day, I find them waiting. In life, with all things, all you have to do is ask kindly, and even inspiration obliges you. A sweet word, honestly spoken, is better than any pumpkin spice syrup you can concoct on these heavenly auburn days.

The sky was golden this evening, and I could see the flavour of October slowly engulf everything. I was convinced I could make another coffee, sit and start writing. If I had, I could have distilled the evening into prose that would have put the crisp leaves of early autumn to shame. But as enticing as the idea was, it would not have been honest of me to stray away from responsibility, and no art comes out of dishonesty and malice. So, I only made a cup of coffee and stood at the edge of my balcony for a good ten minutes, taking in everything as it stood in front of me. An eagle soared right above the golden light and sky, and the trees were all dolled up with the golden orange blush of the fall sun. And as one tends to get reflective in such moments, it occurred to me how in a few days, a full year would have passed from the last time I was unhappy.

It was when I turned twenty-five years old and thought I was too late for all I was meant to do and everything I was meant to be. The leaves were golden last year, too, and the leaves will be golden next year, still. Now, I know I have arrived wherever I was meant to reach, and I am writing—it is all I was meant to do.

I wrapped the day earlier than usual, which for most people, equates to wrapping it at the regular time. But there was a childlike excitement in me when I did this, and so with time and a bit of the leftover daylight on my hands, I walked to the coffee shop. On my way there, I passed traffic—cars clogging the streets, stuck; the scooters and motorcycles shimmied and zigzagged around them, only to halt at the traffic lights. The illusion of progress is a cruel irony.

Traffic reminds me of many things. It reminds me of unfulfilled dreams in middle-class homes and lovers waiting for someone who never intended to return; in short, it reminds me of helplessness, and not just any helplessness, but one inflicted onto the self. Like the crowds never realise that they are the very problem they blame when individually commenting on how crowded the city has become, people who bring about problems now and then would do well to realise they were the problems themselves. Even if not entirely, they at least played some part in it. But as I walked to the cafe, I shrugged off this thought. I had wrapped the day early. We cannot all worry about the world at all times; that, too, is a luxury. We have work to do and bills to pay, and if we have an hour, coffee to savour and not just drink as a means to getting through the day.

This was my moment. This was my hour. I was not intent on giving it away to something I could not solve. We have days we care about the ills of the world, and there are days of vanity. This was a day of vanity. The general person goes to work and then comes home and does this repeatedly throughout the week. Even during this, they have time to sit down, read the news, and say, with all their morbid seriousness, “what a terrible world, what a terrible world indeed.”

No one is as aloof or heartless as to not see how this ship began sinking a long time ago, but that does not mean they cannot enjoy a drink now and then. Life is too short anyhow, and all of us are splashing towards the lifeboats. We do not want to be reminded of the world we live in on some days. Some days, it is only about ending it early, taking a long walk, and sipping coffee, quietly.

Sometimes, I sit engrossed with work, but my mind wanders, and I allow it to go as far as it can. To work and to write at the same time is a well-kept secret of the literary world. When people tell you they do not have time to write, you ask them, cordially and nonchalantly, but do you have time to live? In any case, I sat like I often sit, a screen in front of me, some trivial work that may or may not have a significant say in the grand scheme of things. I thought of how most of us are already living in the tail-end of history, that most of humanity has happened already. We are but imitations of each other, all of us working on things to keep the world running. The risky voyages to different, unknown lands are all done. The exchange of culture, of bringing recipes, spices and cats from your land to another, is over. All we do has happened before, and none of what we do will ever be remembered. And then, I thought of how every person before me must have thought of the same thing, and yet, in some way, their life has stood for something.

On a Monday, like all Mondays, I end the day partially asleep as I tell the cabbie to take the correct route before I drift off, only to be woken by the patter of rain on the window and the metallic clinking of each drop on the top of the car. This shower seems as ephemeral as my sleep since it, too, comes along for a minute, only to disappear. Then, I reach my parents’ place, laugh a little, and have a hearty dinner. And after that, I come to my desk and hover near it until I can resist no further, and begin working again. At first, this saddens me a little, but then, it occurs to me how privileged it is: to have work and to love it. Entire lives are passed without even a glimpse of this pleasure, and here I am, drowning in it. The sun had shone, and the rain had taken centre stage; I did not remember anything about it. This, too, was a blessing in disguise.

Sundays are for intentional delays as you do everything with complicit tardiness. While on other days, you often tell others how you were not responsible for being late, that there was traffic, or the imminent end of the world stopped you from arriving on time, on Sundays, you tell them you woke up later than you had intended. You own this folly with such confidence that they must nod and remark on how it is Sunday and we all deserve some rest. And if nature is benevolent, it begins to rain on Sunday, and you can traipse around without having the conversation at all. I came home after such a day, and it started raining while I was on my way back, which to some degree, thwarted my plans to stop for coffee. I could have stopped still, but I wanted to have it on the patio, and the image of a man having coffee by himself as it rains around him did not make the thought enticing. If anything, I could detect the paucity of the positive in the prose a moment like that would inspire. So, I came home.

Then, it stopped raining, and for a second, from underneath the cotton cover of clouds, I could see the blue sky again. But it is October, and all our days have gotten shorter. Before I saw the blue, I saw the night descend upon the city. Now, as I sip coffee by the window and write these words, I ponder how one decision can change even the words someone will write. Each moment we experience locks us out from living the rest. I think of all this, and I debate going out for a walk and coffee later in the evening and if the rain would not return.

There are half a dozen versions of me and half a dozen versions of the evening ahead of me. It can go any one way from between them. Ah, the infinite possibilities of life. It is funny how paralysing they feel. Yet, we continue choosing for and against things and eventually, life does happen. My life only exists because there are so many lives I decided to not live. These words exist because there were countess words I was never in the position to write.

The feeling of going to sleep early, not because you want to, but because you are devastatingly exhausted and then waking up with a soft ache in your body, not because you did not sleep well, but quite the opposite, is incomparable and unparalleled. The restfulness of waking up early on the weekend and stretching yourself as you move about the house with your eyes peeled only partially does not come easily, for the exhaustion that compels you to sleep does not come easily, but when it does, you get to experience one of the affordable yet rare pleasures known: a good night’s sleep.

I woke up on the weekend, completely restored, and restored as I was, I thought about love. After some deliberation, however, I realised there were better things to do. Life is so much more than romance—so much to do and see. How glad I am that I get to live and do the things I do, go to sleep, and do them again. There is little space for all else. Now, I meet people but fail to call them afterwards. This may look like apathy to them, but it is only a side-effect of preoccupation for me. Alas, it does not bode well for my case. Then, I never see them again; if I do, it is months down the line and on accident. They tell me they found someone and that they are engaged now. For a second, I feel something along the lines of regret, but then, I brush it off like you brush yourself off when you have a habit of stumbling and falling on the street now and then. It changes nothing; you continue walking as if it never happened. It is a story that is getting old hastily as time continues to climb forward.

Time, time, it keeps passing. It is October already. A part of me questions where this year went, and another laughs and talks about happiness and joy. I am a mixture, a batter of all my ironies. It is the beginning of Saturday. Perhaps, I could make pancakes out of it.

As I walk through the corridors of the building to reach my apartment door, I pass the usual. I pass the guard and the flat, with a plethora of plants outside it. And then, in a daily ritual, the cat scurries past my feet. This conniving miscreant, this thief, always manages to ransack my trash kept outside my apartment. It has made a habit out of it. Of course, I say this in a tone that seems far more annoyed than I am. If anything, it is a bit amusing to me. It is also a welcome back, and it makes me realise that this is what life reduces to when all is good and little is awry. The days end as they end, I work as I work, and then, I come back and see this cat run past me—a slender, grey shadow. But this is life, where you sit and tell yourself not to go and ruin it. It is all too good for me to ruin at the moment, but something tells me I tend to find a way.

For now, however, nothing has changed. I sit here even in October, as I sat here through the other months—working. And I look out the window now and then, and I see the sky change. This city is quite like the cat—it waits for a window and then sneaks up on you. You look outside out of habit and see the sky is pink or orange or another peculiar shade of all things calm and tranquil. And then, suddenly, you snap back into life. I am alive, you think, I must make a cup of coffee at this very moment, and I shall go out on the balcony and stand. So, that is what I do each time I catch the sky in a bit of a mood. And today was the same, I worked hard at things I enjoy, and then, I saw a floral overlay to everything. It was a sort of pastel coral; by it, I mean everything.

Yes, that is precisely how it all looked. So, I took the same cup sitting on the coaster on the desk to the kitchen, and I brewed coffee again, filling it. And then, I stood outside, looked around, and stretched a little. It was then that it occurred to me once again that I was happy.

I don’t want to call it anything. Still, as I come into my own in a year that has passed faster than I could think about it, I have now found firm footing in where I stand in life. If I may be as forward, I may have, in my haphazard attempts, come to know who I am. It is still the first week of October, however, and three months is plenty of time for things to change. Most of us can change within days; a quarter of a year is the universe being generous.

And why do I think so? Simply because I am not distraught—even in October, especially in October when everything slowly turns to the amber death of it all, only to begin again. I have not felt the life going out of me yet. A friend once remarked in a loud pub as we caught up with life that all of us have phases where we thrive and where we don’t, that it is crucial to recognise the latter and be soft with yourself, but that it is equally important to appreciate the former. We are not as equipped to handle peace and calm as we are to handle the inevitable ruining of things. When there is peace and calm, we must recognise it.

When you wake up, perhaps, not with a joy that makes you jump out of bed, but also not some feeling that drags you down into it, only a gentle appreciation for who you are and where you are, you may allow yourself to smile and have your coffee, or tea, or hot water in a cup. But you must recognise it when it happens. When the time comes that you must recall a good time to survive, you should have something to remember how good it gets when it gets good.

I sit here, not smiling but with a smirk that suggests some measure of happiness leaking out of my general visage. It has been a pleasure to be alive. October has just begun, and I know who I am. The contentment of not being lost is unparalleled. I seem to have stumbled my way into happiness. When they ask me how I got here, I tell them I do not know. They ask me, “why do you have a smirk your my face, then?”

“I am as amused by life as you are”, I tell them, “even more, perhaps, infinitely more.”

To write about a moment and nothing else, you must first sit in front of whatever you write on, even if it is a piece of tissue. You must sit straight, close your eyes, and slowly erase everything else. I like to imagine it as a shockwave of deletion as the world around me becomes a grey blur, with only a desk and me in the centre of this vast space of nothingness. A spot of colour between all the white almost painted in rustic brushstrokes. And then, you must bring the first thing you remember into the picture. Then, slowly, you must let the picture form. If it is a cup of coffee, then, in this world of three passages and about three hundred words where you can play God, you must imagine it as you remember it without opening your eyes. You must remember the taste of the coffee to the last detail. One after the other, you must bring each vital thing into the picture again while everything else remains removed. And now, you see the moment for what it is, and you can now write about what is essential. All else is gone.

A writer is not a painter. It is not our job to take in every detail; writing is remembering. It is a test of what you can remember seconds later, days later, and sometimes, years later. As I write these words, I sit at a messy desk in the corner of my bedroom with used-up tissues all over its smooth laminate since I woke up with a stuffy nose. There is a scalding and fragrant cup of coffee, helping me with my runny nose and making it harder to breathe simultaneously. The door to my right opens to a patch of grass and right into the white, overcast October sky, with a broad stroke of the hills: a grey-blue silhouette. The city lays the path between here and the hills. The trees and houses compete for domination as a woman hangs laundry on the balcony, a beeline from mine. Her son—a little boy—stands facing the hills, watching the view or lack thereof. He’s still in his pyjamas; school is off.

The music—a violin overture—sneaks its way into the picture, and the happy, slightly sentimental notes make me remember my childhood. For a second, it seems to be a balcony away, but then I open my eyes. Here I am, back in the room, and the writing is done.

As far as dreams are concerned, there is not much difference here compared to the countless small-town boys who grow up in terrible neighbourhoods that reek of piss and chaos at all times, where the roads are barely paved no matter how the rest of the city looks. That is all you want when all things are tallied up, no matter how fancy the wine or how strong the coffee is. You want a place of your own, far away from the streets and alleys you know like the back of your hand. You want not just to run away but take everyone along with you. Even if you leave alone, you wish to return and take the others along. No one should have to live here, you think, and then years pass, and you continue visiting the streets where pigs still roam and swine talk about other people, and you tell yourself there is work to do. Much work is done already, but in your heart, you know tenfold remains.

A poor house remains that way. No matter how well you live, a house that was poor once finds ways to remind you of where you come from, and if it doesn’t, the neighbourhood is not too far behind. You must leave the place for anything to change. Unlike ideas wildly propagated by the films we watch, no one wants to remember their roots. All growth is pointless if we remember everything about where we began from. The urge to leave, in itself, is an urge to forget. Things happen now, so we can forget what happened before. Such is the dilemma of having everything in the palm of your hand—the other hand remains empty. Looking back at my life until now, as I wrap a quarter spent neatly with the ribbon of time, my days are a whimsical irony. No matter what I do, I will always live between two worlds.

But in my house, we do not shy away from work. Perhaps, there is some merit in those streets after all. Even if I run to some hill half the world away, I will always belong to a crowded market neighbourhood where everyone dreams about leaving and gets stuck forever, in one way or another. This has given me the best about myself, and it has, in many ways, given me the worst of myself.

Yet, it has only been twenty-five years. Much work is done already, but in my heart, I know much remains still.

Today, as the evening slowly turned the sky lavender with each passing minute, I thought about time again. There has to be some significance for my deliberation with time. One might even call it obsession, but I do not care what it is called. There is no need to define everything. If there is anything that is guaranteed to bring about the end of the world as we know it, it would be our perpetual need to have words for all things. We must feel to feel, and we must write or talk about the little we remember. I prefer to write. When I speak, I can never seem to find the right words. Even if I forage some of them and string a sentence together, the recipient fails to do their part in finding the appropriate response. The cycle continues.

In any case, as I peeked at the evening come about and change everything to a fluffy, cotton candy pink, there was an urgency in me to get up, go outside and look at the trees and the sky. Time was running out; it was running out, and there was nothing I could do about it. In a desperate attempt to salvage a situation already out of my hands, I ran out onto the balcony and had a quiet moment. I cannot explain this urgency, and I believe there is no word for it. If there is, I would not know it, and if someone told me an obscure, pretentious word, I would still think it captured none of my haste.

Some of us can always see time passing and, thus, are mindful of it. I watch the seconds tick like stray drops on the kitchen shelf, which fall here and there when you make a cup of coffee. Unnecessary and trivial, but small as they are, they are still a part of the coffee. And so, all my wasted seconds bring me a pain I can’t much translate.

I must capture as much of it as possible; even if I do, some of it will have spilt away. I do not much know what to do about it. All the moments I seize remind me of just so many I may have missed.

The server brings the coffee to my table as I am caught staring outside through the glass door that is not fully fixed in its place. As the door vacillates ever so softly, I hear laughter from the group having a grand time after a party on Sunday, catching up over the little bits and pieces you talk about after a party. The “did you remember” and “were you there” questions seem to flow. Of course, as the door opens and closes, I only hear jumbled events, and I can’t much make the story out, but I am not here for that. I am here to have a quiet moment with the music and the coffee. With the soft touch of the saucer on the marble tabletop, I come back into the golden bakery and thank the mild-mannered acquaintance I see more than most of my friends. And then, it occurs to me that even if the light thud had failed in bringing me back to the moment that I came here for, the significantly strong aroma of the americano at eight in the evening would have grabbed me by the collar and dragged me back inside.

And then, for a good fifty minutes, I sit there by myself. I don’t talk or use my phone or read or fidget. I only sit there, sipping silently, like a meditative as a chant from a wellness retreat. Suddenly, all the turbulence that the weekend fell short of alleviating disappears—at least for the duration of my finishing the cup of coffee. One might suggest it only hid from the yellow glow of the light all over.

As I go through the coffee, sip by sip, all troubles that plague me and drag me down, all concerns from yesterday and all those still waiting for tomorrow seem finite. I believe that is all we need to know—that it is all countable. That is all we need to know at all times. I may have a thousand chains dragging me down, but they are thousand, and I know it. It is always better to know these things. I lose myself in the kick from the coffee as a second wind appears inside my heart. There is still some writing to do, I tell myself, and take a walk home. Perhaps, a return to normalcy is in order.

I reckon I have spent much time on autopilot, as one must do when one has to deal with a barrage of emotions. And now, once again, I allow myself to feel.

I have sat for the past two hours and pretended to write, not having thought of a single thing. Mainly because I woke up so relaxed, in such a trance that the veil has not yet lifted off me. But since it is Saturday, and there is not much to do on Saturdays anymore, I think I will have to sit and conjure some words after all. I often think of how I have changed my days gradually. From continual motion and almost no progress, I am now moving so much slower, perhaps, slower than I have ever before, but towards something. I do not yet know what that is yet. But you often feel progress when it happens. You do not wake up one day having reached somewhere instantly. You bear with the journey and the not knowing.

When you sit on a train, unless you know the route by memory, you often pass stations you have never seen. It does not bother you, and the not knowing does not impact whether you reach the place or not. If in some world, for some reason, the ticket master came and quizzed people with questions like, “what station did we just pass?” or “do you know where we are?” at random, lest they be thrown off the train, no one would get anywhere. To not know where we are at a given point has no say in where we end up; it only means we are on our way.

As relaxed as I woke up, I did manage some chores, sliced up an apple and had it for breakfast with my coffee. It is a Saturday well done, from where I stand. Perhaps, as the day gets on, I will spend some time with family, go for a walk and watch a movie or read a book, if time allows. As I move towards my late twenties, with the days ticking one after the other, I notice how this lethargy is part and parcel of being an adult. I used to look at people who were grown up when I was a child, and I was baffled by how slowly they moved. And now, here I am, cutting up apples and thinking that is enough for a day—to eat healthier. But again, I wonder, what else must a person do to justify their time?

And come to think of it, I am writing as well, aren’t I?

It makes me chuckle as the last night of September slowly passes me by. It’s fantastic how another year has passed. I look at my hand as this thought catches me off guard. I touch the desk, which was not even here when I found myself on the ground after a gazillion attempts to not fall. But all of us fall, and all of us stand up again. I think of all the words I have written while sitting here at this desk and how I have watched the seasons change, one after the other, and now here we are: it is autumn again. I had decided to do things differently around twenty-five days from this day last year. It seems all within the time it takes for me to blink, I now face the fruits of my little attempt. Fortunately, things seem to have gone my way. Things have changed for the better. Life is a gamble, of course. It could have gone either way. Everyone must celebrate when they make a decision, and it works out, regardless of whether it was some display of skill, hidden genius or just plain old luck.

I don’t know which of those it was in my case, but I am not for empty arguments anymore. If all my happiness results from a wild stroke of luck, then be that as it may. I do not much care. I am only grateful for it. When you reach a certain age, you do not much care how things happen to you, and indeed, you understand there is no glory or vanity alike in being revered as the one who makes things happen. Things happen with or without my touch. I only happen to have an urgent disposition. But things would happen, even if I were not the way I am. It is juvenile to ponder about and, worse, to believe the cause of all in your life is you. Things are too complex as they stand, and the best we can do is take what we get and be quiet about it. And so, as I sit on this September midnight, writing, I bask in the soft satisfaction before we step into the month I most enjoy and, in some ways, equally dread.

All my life begins and ends in October. Everything that has changed for me has changed right before it, and all that I change myself has happened right after. October, the auburn beginning of the end, already ashen, already dead.

I sit with my family, and we talk about things. I make myself comfortable on a narrow slab of the windowsill in the old house I grew up in. I remember sitting in the exact spot for much of my childhood. Almost a decade later, I find I can still fit on it; if not, a little discomfort is nothing when you’re happy. But this is not about me; I look ahead. There are faces, some old and some very new. I sit there and watch the next hour unfold as the conversation continues about all sorts of peculiar oddities. In many ways, this is what I live for, I think to myself. In fact, barring a few singular pleasures, this is all I live for. There is tea, and we have some things to eat. The new baby has learned to chuckle. But like all people, young and old, there is a time and mood to his shenanigans. And we wait ardently for the right time. What else is there?

In many ways, I know this moment is mine, despite arriving in the middle of a crisis. Life has a habit of squeezing joy over most pain and stress. On the pot of boiling pressure, this moment is a welcome garnish. Everything I’ve ever wanted and received, and everything I have ever craved and been denied, has led me here. In these days of fortune and folly, of grace and melancholy, the meaning of why we do whatever we do creeps up on me, and I get startled for a second. But then, I sit there, on the dark slab right below the old window. I sit there, and I look ahead at the history of us, and I sit there and get a glimpse into the future of us. And as averse to superstition and all things magical as I am, I sit quietly and make a wish. Of course, I avoid talking about it and quickly click a picture. You often don’t forget moments like these, but a picture, as always, is a reliable contingency.

There it is, I think as I look at the blurry mess captured hastily. There is my moment. Something tells me this is a crucial time in my life, and we have a habit of missing these, and even if we wanted to catch them, we rarely know when we’re in them, but I see it. I’ve seen it just in time. No matter what happens now, I’ve seen it, even if it were to fade away as all things eventually do.

Slowly, I am moving to the age where when you arrive at a party or a dinner by yourself, they find a way to make a question out of it. It could happen out loud if someone feels particularly obnoxious or drunk, but on most occasions, it occurs in soft, intimate interactions where someone asks you one of many variants of the same question. The night has gone on for a while. The energy has succumbed to isolated murmurations on tables and balconies as people talk and give away their deepest secrets. With pints of beer, in the forefront of blurry music emanating from some corner of wherever we are, they ask me the cliche, “Were you ever in love?”

“Yes, more than once. I wonder who hasn’t?”

“What happened?” They follow up almost as if this were a scripted interrogation.

“Nothing. Nothing ever happens—seasons change. Have you looked at how gorgeous the weather is lately?”

“You writers!” They laugh, “Always writing your way out of everything!”

“Not everything,” I whisper, smiling as I spin my pint slightly, giving them the pleasure of having stirred something.

But they haven’t. They seldom do. When people ask you if you were ever in love, or if you have someone, or what went wrong, or if you plan to find love soon, they are only trying to ask you: don’t you feel lonely? But they are also telling you something: because I do, because I do all the time, I don’t know what to do, help me. And so, I humour people and then ask them to look at the weather. If only they knew that was the answer after all: to look around the world at all times, to keep your eyes wide open.

It was how you ensured you saw love arriving, greeted it with a smile and said, “The weather looks lovely today. Would you like to take a walk with me?”

The pieces are set; it’s all in place. You seldom get this feeling. Most people search for it all through their years. Then, one day, like I have, they stumble upon days that feel like this: the pieces are set; it’s all in place. Everything is as it should be. It is a beautiful world, time has never felt more abundant, and things are going as they should, for better or worse. I stand on my balcony and stare at the breathtaking view ahead of me. I do this in the morning, and I do it in the evening, and even when I do it every day, it does not seem to change how novel, how fresh it feels. Laughter with the people I love and would continue to want to live for is the only major priority. I drown myself in all life has to offer, and in doing so, I learn to swim through the river of time. I must continue to be here; I must continue to live; there is so much more to do and feel; I have only just begun. Only one proclamation echoes and pulses through my heart: I must keep my eyes wide open. All else will fall into place. I am infinitely in love with life, so much so that I am willing to be destroyed by it. It is the only way I know how to love. My guard is down. I am alive.

This year appears to have changed me on a molecular level because no matter where I look, I cannot find my old self. I wonder, no, I am sure this is happiness. This is the happiness that arrives and softly knocks on your door when you come into your own, when no part of your body or mind feels foreign. For the first time in the quarter of a century that I have been here, I believe I am meant to be here. There is no greater feeling, nothing else a person aspires to. All of us only want to wake up in the morning and know, deep in our hearts, that we are not trespassing and are, in every capacity, supposed to be here. I cannot promise it will always be this way; I can’t promise that to you, or myself for that matter, but I am privileged to have felt this, even if for what feels like an infinite moment, even if it is that, and even if it is a glimpse in the montage of time. I have lived to say I belong here; nothing compares.

The wild tempest last night gave way to skies so clear they persisted till midday. Even the sky compensates for lost time. I wonder, then, what prevents us from forgiving ourselves? But then, I wonder of many things over the day, and then, I leave the thought there and then like you leave some stuff in an old apartment. It is no compulsion to take all we think seriously or along with us. We can leave thoughts where we meet them. Opposed to what many people may imagine when they read, if they read, these words, I rarely think about things at length. All my observation is a passing thought. And then, some things keep coming back, and I know they are formative ideas of my personality, but all else can be changed on a whim. All people are capable of change if they learn to keep their beliefs and thoughts down on the ground, stretch their shoulders and crack their backs. Then, they can see it all for what it is: a cumbersome bother. Most of what we believe can be left on a bench in a park like you leave a lover you don’t see a future with—it may hurt at the moment, and it may confuse you for a bit, but it is also the only right thing to do.

We do not come with guarantees of conviction. There is rarely any obligation for us to think tomorrow what we think today. But, of course, there are certain parts to it. There are things to us that we cannot leave behind, like we cannot leave an old habit or a preference for food. And we must know these things, and they must be few. Everything else is fair game. Everything else can be washed clean off us. I used to think time was running out, that I must make up my mind about who I wanted to be as early as possible to get somewhere. And at some point, it occurred to me that it was not very interesting. And so, I decided to keep my mind and my door open for all possibilities of who I could be, at least in thought. Now, I know time runs out, and I don’t much care. It is earlier, much earlier, for all of us. It will only be late when we’re all dead.

If you notice a leader of any kind—no, not those in fiction who are written to be the epitome of human wisdom, but those who stand atop or aspire to stand on pedestals and platforms in the real world—you may notice how they only talk in pithy platitudes. They never delve into the utter chaos of nuance. It is too difficult for them to navigate, and if I were to place a bet, it is far too hard for them to understand. They are simpletons. It is the mark of common person, living a common life, brimming with the common trouble of finding the middle ground every living, breathing day to know there is no simple answer.

A person you meet on the street will rarely be able to give you succinct advice because their life and all they go through daily will force them to consider the lack of one. The denizens of marble citadels, literal and figurative alike, live their lives within the confines of one laconic maxim. They can do so because they can afford to do so. The inadequacy of those we lift is precisely why we are tempted to do so, but in the end, it is inadequacy no matter how appealing, and eventually, it reveals itself. All pithy advice falls flat in the face of fate and fortune, and the further we raise the messengers, the further from reality they go, and the wiser they appear, and eventually, as things play out, the further down they fall.

The world is a scrambled place. Once we accept that the answer if there ever was any, is never contained in a few words is when we truly begin to live. Surety is taught to be a sign of intelligence, so most children are a bit too sure of themselves; as they grow older, they realise doubt, not surety, is the mark of the wise. Even fools, especially fools, can be sure of everything, especially themselves; the rest of us continue to second-guess everything we do and think, and for good reason! There is always more than meets the eye. In a world that is a smidge away from a million little oblivions and in days that personify a thousand contradictions, it is but a privilege to be pithy. For the rest of us, we must use all the words we have. There is so much to say, at all times, always.

If you have a lot to say, you may as well share it with a friend before you are left with nothing, and then, and only then, should you sit down to write. It is not about having a lot to say that people become writers; it is the opposite. If there is a question on my mind, it is about how life is the same on most days; how do I find something special in it? And for better or worse, my disposition to look at things, ordinary things, only so I could write about them with an earnest appreciation, has saved me from the perils of what most people call finding the meaning of life. It is a fool’s errand.

If life has meaning, you make it like you make coffee in the morning. You make it on your own, and you do it repeatedly; sometimes, when someone stays the night or if you are with others, you do it for someone else. And like coffee or tea, everyone else has their own preferences, which you must remember if you ever have to make sense of things for them, which is why they will never quite enjoy your preferred flavour. There is no grand meaning; what comes close is a strictly independent motivation to create it in the most mundane things. All writing is about looking around and being amused by it all. The meaning of my life is whatever makes me not pull my hair out and go mad. There is so much that fits this description—I am overwhelmed by how much sense it all makes.

And what of happiness? You can be happy with the simplest excuse. It is raining outside. There’s a good excuse. I am here, writing on a Saturday afternoon. I am still young, and there is still time. Those are excellent reasons to feel a sense of meaning, and what is even better, those are all fantastic things to write about because when all the details are stripped away and all the preferences removed, this is what remains in common.

You must not talk about the syrup, the sugar or the milk; you must talk about what remains when they are removed; you must always talk about the coffee. The rains, the coffee, the feeling of time passing and the reassurance that a lot is still to pass. It is why people read the classics. They all find a bit of them in it, and in searching for meaning, a bit is all you need.