Ruins Build the Dreams You See...

I wonder at times why the things that one seems to want the most never seem to happen, while the ones that one dreads the most, seem pre-destined. On the subject of the latter, I once surmised and still stand by my thought process, that we dread them so much, only because we know that there is a great likelihood of their actually coming to pass.

It’s only logical. Of all the things that you really dread, having an airliner crash onto your head while crossing the street in the morning, is hardly likely to top the list. It’s far more likely to be something much more personal and something that a part of you realises as being somehow likely to happen, however much you try to deny it consciously.

On the getting of things, I started off thinking that perhaps it is similar. Perhaps the things one hankers for the most are the things that you are least likely to be able to get. That actually didn’t make much sense though and it fails to stand any scrutiny from any angle. After all, I know people who seem to have both feel almost rooted to the ground, and yet events unravel in a way so as to deny them something they desired and something that everyone recognised as being immensely achievable for them, even if not their right, so to speak.

It made me question the very nature of desire. The things that seem to make a desire strong or weak. What are these factors? Do they stem from the situation and the likelihood of our attaining these dreams? That’s true for our fears, but not desires surely. Desires, to me, represent you in the most obvious way. If I know your dreams, chances are, that with a little bit of thought, I’d know most facets of your personality. When I think of the stuff that I really yearn for, I know that it tells me a lot about myself.

Why then do we so often fail to attain what we want? If I think about desire the way I described it above, it leads me to just one conclusion. We fail because we don’t really know who we are. And if I look around, it seems to stand up to an initial scrutiny. The people I see who fall short the most, seem to be the people that overestimate themselves the most and vice versa of course.

Now, I speak not just of materialistic things - or MasterCard items as I like to call them - when I say all this. It’s true of the most intangible things as well. There are times when we fail to read a situation properly and start expecting something. There are moments when you are so sure that you know something to be a certain way that you ignore all the signs that point to your being wrong.

That brings me to another point. There are times when each of us passes through a situation wherein you can see what is going to happen to someone and are still powerless to do anything about it. It happens in front of your eyes. And you wonder why the other person did not see it coming. You wonder why despite seeing even more than you perhaps, the other was blind to the outcome that seemed so obvious to you!

That’s where the judgment has come in. You read the situation correctly since you did not have that much at stake. You read it in a more unbiased way and the other person did not. You knew the other person in a better way, because being in a particular situation distorts one’s views, not just of the situation, but also of themselves. That’s what I meant when I said that in every field of life, my belief is that we fail to achieve a desire purely because we make errors in judging the situations and our selves.

Also wanted to say something about fear. I remember mentioning once that fear is perhaps the deadliest emotion that can possess you as it cripples not just your thinking, but every single faculty of yours and ultimately ensures that you lose…no matter what your abilities are, no matter what your mental faculties are, if you’re scared, you’ll lose.

I’m not saying that one needs to be fearless. No human being in our materialistic world can ever be fearless. The battle therefore is not so much to quell it, but to overcome it. You’ll never kill fear, so don’t try. So, then do we all lose because we all feel fear? Yes and no actually. No, I’m not contradicting myself. If you’re scared, you’re sure to achieve less than you could have. That way you lose…so no matter how positive the outcome may be, you could have done better all the time.

A small example of this could be a game of cricket. If the batsman was not scared of getting out, he would chase more balls and perhaps score more runs. He may still score the fastest 100 of all time, but unless he reached that 100 in 17 balls with 17 sixes, he could – technically speaking - have done better. Yes, I have played the game and no, I am not drunk or anything. I just pulled an example out of nowhere to illustrate a point!

The other day I heard of something that happened with someone I know, and I was quite honestly flummoxed at how it happened. It made me look within myself too, for I know that something along the same lines, although in a totally different way, happened with me once. While not saying exactly what, let me just say that it was a case of someone’s fear preventing them from trying to achieve something.

It’s sad when such things happen. It’s even worse knowing that someone’s fear stopped your getting something that you felt was really beautiful or caused you to lose something that was really beautiful. It’s weird. And no, I don’t believe in the theory that everything happens for the best. It’s untrue and you can’t make me buy that…

Anyway, amidst the dreary darkness that seems to have engulfed life these days (what with no rock shows scheduled, exams around the corner and a quiz tomorrow), the bright spot remains that five people who really matter have got things that mean a lot to me. Five down, five to go… Naah! Make that more…