Paradoxical Ouroboros

 I do not feel any sense of accomplishment after achieving something. All I feel is a mild sense of relief that it is done. Maybe this feeling is linked to the way expectations around success or success stories have bent our minds to think. Distorted perception that now achieving an academic or financial milestone can set everything on the right track. Everything that has gone wrong is supposed to vanish within a night after a successful ball through the hoop. These expectations may or may not come more from internal pressure or external influences but I think after achieving anything, I feel that achievement to be nothing but a pointless struggle against time. A meaningless meager task that was overhyped and overrepresented through the means of individuals who have already wasted unfathomable amounts of resources achieving the same place in that rat race, and now your own wants you to conquer an already won battlefield for the sake of their own pride and preconceived notions. Your peers become your rivals and life becomes misery. Once you reach those heights, the monumental achievements feel underwhelming, a true disappointment from a false insignificant victory, and the disillusionment begins. 

This cycle of external glorification and internal disappointment creates isolation and then I don’t even want to pursue anything anymore, even relationships. They seem to be pulling me into the material world rather than lifting me higher in the realm of consciousness. It's just horizontal travel every time, nothing vertically upward. Then the beauty of a woman's touch feels like constraint, a distraction from your goals or a limit to your true potential. I think, the more I read, the more miserable I become. What am I supposed to do with the thoughts I am having if I am unable to channel them? Even when I am sick of relationships, I still seek a well-intellectual, heightened woman. All I find are fabricated, pampered children or liberals out of their minds, or some women buried in the realm of material, even if they have degrees and elegant surroundings to become their nearly perfect selves. Sometimes I fear what will happen if I find the woman I seek? I seek, I do not desire because what I desire is not necessarily beneficial for me, but what I seek comes from the depth of my true intellectual self who wants to thrive and prosper with a woman. And this is why I think that a woman of such caliber and credibility would not even entertain me for a moment of her time because I have Impostor syndrome. It's a deep internal conflict and it overwhelms me to the extent that I start recalibrating myself to the lowest standard, more accurately equal to the intellect of society which is disintegrating in itself. These feelings are temporary but they sometimes persist for days. 

To channel myself, the venture of writing is immersive for me. I write when the persistent emotions of self-sabotage inside start to eat me rather than fuel me. Writing helps me to release that pressure, like a pressure cooker with a whistle; while after a certain pressure point the whistle helps so the cooker won’t burst open and harm others in its vicinity, a whistle doesn't mean there's nothing boiling inside. It's just a matter of time or could be a seconds-away-from-chaos situation. For me, writing is more about the release of emotional pressure. It, on the other hand, helps me to clear those cluttered emotions and thoughts and ideas into a clear-cut statement. Statements help me to understand how much I have understood the issue, e.g. social, political, internal or external, flaws in my logic, reasoning of my temper and temperament, approachable scenario toward a problem, etc. Eventually, after a good writing session as a writer, I feel more relaxed and a temporary emotional clarity so temporary that the moment I see some misconduct the cooker starts whistling again. It's an outlet to untangle intellectual complexities. 

So the positive perception is that even if as a coping mechanism, the labor of writing changed me from a below-average student to a man who can now articulate his thoughts into more precise manner, an Individual who now has a personal library to engage more in mental struggle, has read many books, becomes an author. Writing substantially changed the way I think and process and react to ideas, thoughts, opinions, statements, news, incidents, events, and comments. However, it still doesn’t change the dilemma that 'There is no sense of achievement, just a relief of task complete.

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Image Credit: Wikimedia 

Then why this article? Because I contradict myself as much as I can with every step I take in this life. I seek companionship yet find myself standing alone because I know eventually no man or woman, no matter how much one devotes, can fill that vacuum. The vacuum I have been feeding everything I can, yet it’s never satisfied with what I throw into its growling stomach. I seek emotions because tears make me feel ecstatic. Joy is hollow, laughter is absurd, so I don’t enjoy humor; it’s an entertainment for the gullible, or fool, or delusional. I cease to be the man who emphasizes on disintegration of society and seek the joy in creating something meaningful that justifies my existence. I know I will be forgotten because monumental figures before me with Herculean labors and large footprints on human civilization have been forgotten. It will be an honor to be nothing more than a footnote in the books of human civilization somewhere on some page. I have become the version of myself that does not hate, scold, or argue with itself, only communicate and debate, but surely there is nothing to love. There is only to learn that if I can, anyone can, and everyone can, but they cannot because the very essence of madness and insanity of some sort is needed. It’s a curse for the majority and can only be a gift for the few. I care, but I couldn’t care less since it’s deeply embedded into my psyche. 

I find myself in these alone, lost, and miserable people; my hands rush toward them despite my intellect ridiculing me for that. My consciousness screams, and I arrive to save them from themselves, and in this process of healing, I shatter myself over and over again. I stand up and walk toward the better version of myself. I heard them weeping in their own misery; my intellect knows the future of this endeavor, yet my consciousness suppresses it since I seek the attention of a companion who I think will finally arrive. I perform unfathomable tasks to heal people, and each breakthrough makes me feel more human, more complete, and more purposeful. Then the future predicted by the intellect arrives, and I fall, broken and shattered. The beauty of a heartbreak, I put myself together, and the cycle continues. The snake is eating its own tail and begging to be saved. Is this what paradoxical is supposed to be?

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m.दिनेश© 

-Dinesh Mandora     

Dinesh Mandora All rights reserved ©

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