Reflection: Thirty-six.
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I always thought that whoever would touch my breath throughout my life must be my heart’s desire—someone who would understand me, whom I could understand, who would grasp the meaning of even a slightly bent strand of hair falling across my eyes, whose every furrowed brow I would read perfectly. I wouldn’t have to worry about my own well-being anymore—they would do that for me, and I would do it for them. They would touch every part of my existence so completely that there would be no difference between having them beside me or a thousand miles away. In feeling, they would be there, always remaining the same. Whether tears gathered at the corners of my eyes or not, if I were in pain, they would know instantly. (One who doesn’t need tears to announce heartbreak—that’s true love!) They wouldn’t have to smile to show their joy; I would understand just by looking into their eyes. If they asked me to jump from the roof of a twenty-one-story building, I would leap without a second thought, because I would know with absolute certainty that there would be some arrangement below to keep me safe. Even if they poured poison into my mouth, until the very last moment of consciousness I would believe completely that for them, this poison was the best option in the world for me. I would drink it and, bringing their face to mind in life’s final moment, cross over to the other side in peace…
But all these hopes, all these expectations—they’re all for that person to be ‘to my liking’ and for me to love them with everything I have. I know I want them according to my own design; I’m not dreaming of accepting them as they are. This too is a kind of selfishness, but what else can I bring to mind? What’s my fault? What can I do? Love holds so much suffering, tenderness, such great anguish! Love creates many kinds of needs within the heart, and when these aren’t fulfilled from time to time, wounds form inside the mind. Love divides the ‘I’ within oneself into multiple ‘I’s, and these selves remain constantly engaged in the conflict of ‘whose need will come to the fore first.’ In life’s reality, under pressure of circumstances, through one’s own fault, or merely through whim, when the person of one’s heart changes, intense anguish spreads those wounds further… The more expectations, the more suffering; the more love, the more anguish! Sounds quite dramatic, doesn’t it? What is life but drama?
So I often think—going out of my way to add so much suffering to life, what’s the point? Here I am, living with myself all these years, and I’m quite well!
What comes of all this thinking? What if my life companion turns out to be someone whose nothing appeals to me, to whom nothing of mine appeals! It’s a small life—can’t we spend it bickering and quarreling? Or will one of us, at some point, start thinking of ending the relationship?
How does life go on with someone you cannot love, from whom you feel no longing to receive love? I see so many people around me living this way! Let the world beyond my thoughts remain unseen—that world whose changing colors would cause me no pain! What does it matter to me whether a world in which I don’t exist changes or stays the same? Rather than the terror that an unknown dream’s colorful path might one day be shrouded in darkness, it’s better to walk the dark paths of the known world with a lamp of light in hand—I’ll kindle that light myself!
Thought: Thirty-seven.
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Now, before love comes romance, and before that comes the body—this is what they call modern love. Instead of the body being drawn by love’s pull, in trying to pull love through the body’s attraction, love itself gets lost. People today don’t stay “in love,” they stay “in a relationship”; they’re even happier to be caught up in “it’s complicated” relationships because in these, there’s virtually no responsibility to bring love to fulfillment or fruition. Anyway, there’s no point thinking about all this. Though for some unfathomable, mysterious reason, seeing even unknown strangers—people who mean nothing to me whatsoever—casually engage in such behaviors makes me weep alone night after night. I think about how no one anywhere hesitates even for a moment to sacrifice eternal happiness for a brief moment’s excitement. In such a world, it’s natural for people like me to have no desire to live; wanting to live would be unnatural. I know, I understand perfectly well, that I live in my world in my own way, and they live in their world in their own way. There’s no conflict between one world and another. Whatever conflict exists is entirely within my mind. I suffer thinking about these things, I cry, but there’s nothing to be done. I ask only this of the Creator: may no one suffer by trusting the wrong person unknowingly, without understanding. The person who breaks trust and walks away was never worthy of trust in the first place. May no one suffer later by needlessly cherishing that misplaced trust in their heart. The one who left would never have stayed anyway—at some stage of life, they would have abandoned and left. What does illusory happiness give but suffering? The shorter such happiness lasts, the better. May no memory of happiness born with the wrong person make anyone weep. It’s better not to let any union with deception and lies gain permanence. Trust that comes from habit, not from love—such trust never causes pain. Whether such trust survives or not, it doesn’t matter to anyone. Those who harbor this trust aren’t troubled by any doubt about it. They know very well, they understand what’s happening and what isn’t. But the trust that love gives birth to—once someone becomes accustomed to living in that trust, may no one suffocate to death day after day in that trust’s closed chamber. It’s an arrangement for death more terrible and hideous than death itself.
Thought: Thirty-eight.
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I truly do not want the good people of this world to commit any wrong—I have no desire to let them—if need be, I could become fierce as a demon and destroy them. My desires, at times, become more terrible than I myself am! If my mind could be transplanted into their bodies, then they would understand how much injustice they continue to inflict upon some innocent, simple souls. Do those who commit wrongs ever realize how they would feel if the same injustice were done to them? What would become of the people intertwined with their lives? And if that wrongdoer happens to be some good person who commits such injustice unknowingly, then even thinking about it brings immense pain. I may be insignificant, but I believe that my thoughts about these matters, my sufferings, are by no means trivial. How many people think in how many ways, live their lives. Some are mute in suffering, some are lost in joy, and then there are those like me whose crime is—why can they not simply accept those things with ease! In that crime, before the body’s demands, in the fluttering of sick imagination’s balloon, often, all kinds of selfless love loses—loses and thereby wins. The only victory that comes through loss, its inseparable companion is pain, anguish, loneliness, despair, melancholy, hopelessness. More difficult than going away is accepting being pushed away. Hour after solitary hour, sleepless nights, restless mornings—tired, helpless, suffering-stained filth and salt water-soaked…….even after all this, when morning comes, that person who has won by losing, even to that wrong person, out of old habit wants to say, good morning……..still—be well. Sometimes it even happens that his eyes, in utter amazement, watch his reckless fingers type those five word-bodies! After that, his inner dual nature wages war with the send button.
Thought: Thirty-nine.
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You’re leaving anyway, aren’t you?—then go ahead. Ah, how effortless this emotionless departure! Even easier—to leave callously, causing someone pain. What was my fault, tell me? The person who lives with a heart formed drop by drop from accumulated suffering—you wanted to triumph over that person by inflicting pain, sir? I used to think of you as heroic! If I were to tie all my sorrows to your bus!—it would become so heavy that your bus would remain stuck in the same place for centuries upon centuries. Well, couldn’t you just not commit such injustice? Is living without such wrongs somehow terribly mistaken for those who manage it? I know you’ll probably say yes, that you’re accustomed to such wrongs; or you’ll say my understanding is flawed. You say nothing at all—I imagine whatever I please on my own. You cannot remain silent like this; say something. But here’s the thing—I won’t listen to you the way you typically speak. Perhaps that’s your personal style, but my style of listening can also be different—you should keep that in mind too. I haven’t wanted to hear your words nearly as much as you’ve wanted to make me hear them—you can’t just forget that today, sir! Speaking directly and speaking harshly are not the same thing. You surely know this, understand it. You prefer to speak directly—I know this. But what you don’t know is that you become harsh with certain people under the guise of direct speech. I’ve fallen into that special list of “certain people” without any visible or comprehensible reason—hence all these words of mine. Perhaps to you, I’m utterly insignificant—you’re not obligated to give me explanations—if I don’t text, don’t call, nothing will happen to you. The same applies to me, though. I too know how to live without caring so much about anyone. It took me a long time to learn this, true enough, but I did learn it. After struggling so hard to master that knowledge, when I’ve been living quite well in my own way for years practicing that wisdom, then if someone suddenly appears and skillfully makes me forget it, in such a way that I gradually become accustomed to this new technique—then why would that same person want their magic trick to stop working on me one day? How does this work? It often occurs to me that I simply cannot manage without texts from your phone, that not messaging you is impossible, that you and all your visible and invisible existences and non-existences have become lovingly and tenderly cherished in my life. That you won’t remain in my life—that simply cannot be, even though just a few days ago, I had a wonderful life without you, and I myself am witness to that life, as are you. If I write about how I am now, I would say I will stay with you—because for me, even ‘one’ has great value—if that ‘one’ is you, whom I would have to give up. I’m telling you directly, following your style—I cannot do it, sorry! In some message, long ago, (I know you don’t remember that message either) I once told you this… I don’t know if anyone truly bad, who actually deserves such persecution, has been as humiliated as I have been simply for wanting to remain well in life.
My surroundings force me to think that the worse one is, the more respect one commands—there’s nothing to be done, the world has become like this, accept it quietly! I can’t make anyone understand that I find all this utterly distasteful. I too want to be well, but my well-being is not like everyone else’s well-being—my being well or not being well has a personal grammar, and I will never step outside of it. I know your grammar is not my grammar. But I don’t understand why you had promised to adapt yourself to my grammar. Making promises you won’t or can’t keep—what kind of character is this? Why did you assume that everyone, like you, lives by mistrusting other people?……The night is deepening…..along with it, a strange silence. You know sir, silence too speaks quietly……have you ever heard those words? Why don’t you have a conversation with it sometime! Have you ever discovered how enchantingly the intimate dialogue of quietude holds one captive, day after day, night after night? People sometimes suffer thinking they are alone. And I often suffer thinking I am not alone. The pain of becoming alone is far greater than the pain of being alone. When a person suddenly becomes alone, they can no longer remain alone. I haven’t bid farewell to my solitude just to become alone again! That’s why it hurts so much—not because I am alone, but because I cannot remain alone! How many forms one pain takes depending on the person!Thought: Forty.
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I saw a girl with hair longer than her dress. Seeing such hair makes me want to pull it—because I don’t have such beautiful long hair myself! Never mind! I don’t need it! What would I do with all that hair anyway? I never have to play the game of enchanting anyone, I’m not obliged to, and besides, why should I call grapes sweet? Hehehe……… Everyone thinks I’m wicked when they hear me talk. Fair enough, but I’m not wickedly wicked, you see—I’m virtuously wicked………. I’ve seen how terrifyingly wicked the truly wicked can be. The masks of false, filthy conspiracies worn by evil people do fall off eventually, but by then, a good deal of precious time has passed in agony for good people, and that time never returns. Suffering never gives any warning, no prophecy either—this is suffering’s most excruciating aspect. Suffering has only one rule—it begins without notice and keeps growing, only keeps growing. No preparation can be made to avoid suffering; when it arrives, one can only endure it. Even in this, one must remain well, must know how to act the part of being well. It seems to me that one cannot simply be well; one must practice being well. If I know myself to be a hypocrite, it’s of no use even if the whole world considers me a saint and reveres me; but if I know myself to be virtuous, nothing can touch me even if the whole world calls me wicked. Truth is utterly merciless, yet sweeter than sweetness itself—once one becomes accustomed to truth, that habit makes a person powerful. Life often magnifies things to appear enormous when, in reality, their true extent becomes something that needs to be understood under a microscope……… Now let me stop, oh my! What nonsense have I been babbling! I’ve stopped. Shall I play a song……. umm no…….. shall I recite something?…….. Yes, I will……. “Imagine I’m taking mother on a journey to distant foreign lands…….” Father isn’t here, so mother is everything! I roam about with mother, I pout and sulk with mother, I love only mother. All my dreams and nightmares—both revolve around mother. Yet even this mother sometimes becomes strangely cruel. The other day, going to market, I lost the keys to the main door and the gate downstairs. In seven years, I had never lost those keys—not that this was any credit to me, but the moment I lost them absent-mindedly, it became a discredit!—Alas! Such is life! One moment’s mistake eclipses the merit of a thousand moments……… I just saw a photograph of you! Oh my! What charm! Men’s charm makes my skin burn! So beautiful, so beautiful! I’m dying! What a terrifyingly beautiful termite from God knows where….! It has devoured my brain completely! Now what shall the nation do with this termite-eaten, useless head of mine? Which cream produces such exquisite grace? I feel like screaming—Hey, whoever you are, wherever you are—somebody catch me! Hold me and drown me in desert water! How can these weak mortal eyes bear such beauty? How, how, how???
Thought: Forty-one.
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One afternoon. Walking to the market along the road beside the graveyard. Suddenly a thought struck me—what would it be like if ‘death’ were not a proven truth? What if we only knew that one day we must die—but had no proof of it, if it rested solely on belief? We would have no evidence of death before us, yet in our hearts there would be a kind of deep faith in death’s existence—something like that. Just as we believe that sin brings harsh punishment, that there is a chapter called the afterlife, that heaven exists, that hell exists, that after death humans will be awakened again to experience infinite bliss or intense torment—paying the precise, dispassionate toll for all the ways and means of living……all of this, some choose to believe if they wish, while others may not if they don’t wish to. One can live with belief, one can live with disbelief too. But about death there is no hesitation at all. No one says “I believe in death”—because death is real and certain. The more certain something is, the less fear it awakens in the human mind. If being devoured by tigers were destiny, how many would fear tigers? For this reason, humans are far more anxious about life after death than they are untroubled about death itself. Every day thousands upon thousands of people die before our eyes—this habitual witnessing has made us so much more cruel that we digest it easily too….we ought to give thanks for the birth of this cruelty within us……because if the death of my distant relatives caused me the same pain as my father’s death, then living would surely have been completely impossible for me……The human greed for worldly things, so much conflict, so much injustice, so much scheming…..and so much more…..we can see it all right before our eyes. We also see that people come utterly empty-handed, and again, leave just as empty-handed…..no one has the power to take even a speck with them. What if it were so that whatever humans achieved—worldly or otherworldly—when departing, they could take with them, if not all of it, then at least some!……then what would this world be like, what restless times would we pass through, how many new people would join the list of reckless living—the very thought makes me shudder! Love between humans, affection, harmony, sincerity, relationships—everything would crumble one by one……only sighs would multiply!! Well, this thing called sighing—exactly how long is it……? Does a human’s sigh sometimes extend beyond even the boundaries of human life?
Thought: Forty-two.
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Love means—in enchanting, intoxicating evenings, on silent, deserted streets, even while walking alone in absolute quiet…hearing the sound of four footsteps. I, and in my imagination, my mother walking alongside; where to, I don’t know. My mother’s footsteps are memorized in my heart. I never got the chance to memorize my father’s—he vanished from my life before that. When father left me and walked away, I hadn’t yet reached the age to understand how the sound of footsteps becomes forever embedded in one’s heart. My entire existence, moment by moment, revolves around this mother. Otherwise, long ago, I would have… this world… Well, think about it for a moment—the desires that fight desperately against the world’s cruel mercilessness to survive, the constant fear that pierces me that they won’t be able to endure in this world with their own unique essence—in this terror, I never let them emerge from my heart, not even if my life depends on it; the question of sharing them with others doesn’t even arise, and sometimes I don’t even reveal myself to myself. How long can a person live peacefully in such a life? I often step outside of myself. I walk the streets comfortably without myself, watch the human ocean from a distance, I drown in that ocean, but don’t let myself drown… People come, people go… Perhaps they, even when mistakenly looking at themselves, don’t see as much as I do. Their mirrors leave their homes and come to mine, staying here for eternity. When I glimpse their inner selves, I compare them with my own, and find that both are, more or less, the same. In truth, the same face floats in the mind-mirror of all humanity. If I wished, I could count the grains of dust by the seashore. I marvel that waves come to the ocean of life too—wave after wave arrives… the same old eternal waves—even more wonderfully, they arrive in almost the same manner; the rhythm is the same, the beat the same, the tempo the same! Yet, every wave that has risen from creation’s dawn until today—each one different from the others—this mystery, the better one understands it, the more one suffers. It’s terribly painful to accept different people with the same face! The unveiling of mystery causes more torment than mystery’s veil. Thinking of all this, I lock myself firmly within four walls. I admit, I rarely surrender to suffering’s irresistible invitation. Yet, even in that rare surrender, life becomes unbearable within those four walls. In that room, in self-imposed delusion, I remain comfortable believing ‘I’m quite well this way.’ That confined room has small windows, light falls through the windows onto the floor, that light can no longer escape, it gasps for breath trapped inside the room. Through the windows, a colorful world is visible outside. Sometimes, when I feel like it, I place my eyes at the window, my gaze drifts outside, and my mind wants to follow, I try to restrain my mind, but I cannot—alas, the ‘me’ inside me never grants permission to go there… it bears truth with such ruthlessness! The conflict begins precisely then, everything starts becoming chaotic. That conflict never leaves my life, I try hard to remove it, but I cannot. Helplessly surviving somehow, this very me often performs the skillful act of removing myself from that conflict.