Something that I have always believed in about decisions, is the fact that it’s not possible to know where the decision you are going to make, falls in the area of correctness. How close or far off across the line does it lie. Only time, the everchanging variable decides its fluctuating ethical placement. And if we believe that we hold the key to self-reflection, while doing the internal course correction, we can keep the variable in our favour. In simpler language, a decision is neither right nor wrong during the time when it’s taken. Only time dictates.
But it also means that it wages a constant internal war, which neither side is ever able to win. As it’s not possible to always be on the right side of the field. So, your decisions are the ones which always keep you undecisive. Such an irony!
Never an easy choice, is it? From which food to pick, to which friend to drop. There is no right answer. Then what do you go by? Nothing ensures a dreamless night, which over time might convert into nightmares. Those innumerable loops of walks from the reason to the decision, to be mandatorily and urgently taken when you question yourself, or when the question springs upon you from beneath the corners and crevices of your lack of surety, at that very second. Does it ever stop? Do they shorten at least? I hope so.
I guess I can surely say, “I know so.” These are the days when it has become easier to permit myself to feel, devoid of where the feeling lies at the spectrum of intensity and ethics. It allows you to empathize and be a bit patient towards yourself. I am able to accept myself more, than asking myself to change as per situation. And it is liberating, with a tinge of hollowness gaping through the holes made by the departure of the people you considered close. You feel that too, a chilly breeze causing you goosebumps. And then you wait for it to subside.
It feels so comical, how interwoven your memories of the days spent is with their presence. You find the wisps of their presence so often in your day-to-day life, that it’s difficult to assess their absence. They are in your songs, movies, comics, manga, food, games, likes, dislikes. They are everywhere. And life keeps on happening as if on an auto scroll. The days go by, one reel after the other on “the Gram”. Before you realize, your recent memory has no storage of them. They all have become different points on your timeline, with an era under their influence, which like all other great things, has come to an end.
Life continues. You try to plan it along the way, and it keeps happening as she likes it. You have your different goals now. Your pathways are different. Technically, they should be only for now, as even roads travelling in opposite directions, meet at some places. Or change their direction altogether. But these are roads not taken, as are less travelled by. So more often than not, they drift away. I wonder what is it that stops people from acknowledging their limitations. What I wonder more, is for the people who do acknowledge; what stops them from breaking through? Is it their embedded knack of privilege?
I had been exposed to a theory, of charmed circle, which basically talks about the directly proportional relation between social acceptance and social power, that can spin around on the basis of race, colour, caste, religion, gender, sexuality, or all of the above together. Now imagine how close to the center a cis-heterosexual able-bodied male, who is an upper caste Hindu – Kshatriya, is educated, and is also fair in complexion, lies in it, if the epitome of the construct holds the central point. I mentioned my caste only to emphasize where would a person, who belongs to the same criteria, except their caste – Pandit, be in the circle, even when compared to me. Funnily, none of these traits have to be developed, or earned. These all are traits people have as their birthright. And that’s how you get privilege, which you do not even have to ask for. In the same universe exist some people who are so down below the ladder, pushed at the edge of the outer circle, for no reason whatsoever. None that should matter at all, at least.
I understand how easy it is to be ignorant of it; it’s just like breathing, as you have been doing it since you were born. The privilege fits like a second skin people are oblivious towards wearing. And it’s so snug, that people grow old and pass away without even knowing about it or its presence. The people who do come to know about it, are never able to look at it the same, some even choosing to believe that they are hallucinating the reality.
Some do too. Unfortunately, none of those who are responsible for holes. Or maybe some of them do too. Some of these holes have also taught how tough it can be to address the guilt that comes from doing things that you believe in are right. Again, because its level of correctness varies depending on what day it is. Or rather I should say, the complexity of the journey from reason to decision that day depends on whims and fancies of everything else, but you. There are days where you get a glimpse of your own cruelty towards yourself. The voices of the holes fuel it, antagonizing your actions, stripping away the kindness you have for yourself. On the contrary are days when the sun shines the brightest, piercing through any haziness of doubt present in the air. It’s an acquired taste, the thrill of predicting which side weighs more today on the see-saw.
There’s another template explanation kept for the days when a different question hits. What about those who have caused these holes, or are clawing away still? No matter how much ignorance you feign about the smoldering anger, or the tired disappointment carried, unknowingly at times, there is a burning sensation in a deep pit somewhere inside your stomach. It feels as if all that was carved out of those holes, has merged together to form a different body, a different being someplace else, and now its whole on its own. Whereas you are on the verge of turning completely see-through. It takes multiple reruns to develop an understanding and acknowledgement towards the presence of this thought across people, through anyone and everyone. If you have holes, you have caused them too. No matter whose body the holes exist in, the residues of abandonment will stick to their inner lining, rotting them from the inside. It’s about how you live with them.
It’s a wonder what people imagine when they say, “time heals everything”. Do they visualize the holes are filled like a wound in the human flesh? That you are just left with scars as a reminder of what your carried. Do they imagine it to retain the vague imagery of their current self, to what they think they have always looked like? To preserve the idea of who they are in they own head, for their own sanity? Aren’t we actually like Ships of Theseus? We keep on completing ourselves by filling our holes while trading with all who enter our lives, before we realise that the only thing that has remained the same since the beginning, is the name we respond to. With that notion, isn’t comparing or shaping current self of one’s being to their idea of what they looked like in a certain time of their life journey, akin to comparing current self with a stranger that only carries one’s name?
All this introspection, at times come to a screeching halt when the realization of the relation between the affordability of time and repeated efforts put into resolving these knots, and privilege stares back. There exists a majority whose priority list has more critical concerns directly related to their survival, for their right to be, to exist. Maybe that is what makes it easier to embrace these holes; privilege. With each attempt to grievously swallow this bitter pill each time, makes it easier to not miss parts which could not respond to its truth. Acknowledgement makes honestly existing easier.
Hence, even if the decisions made put us in our places, holding any resentment against them is futile, as their correctness can only be validated by the tides of time. If I am to talk inwardly, I never took them because they were seemingly right. I took them because it was important to me, for me. As far as the cost they come up with, there will be days when the trade seems fair, and some moments when the curses to fate for getting the shorter end of the stick feel heavier. But past these turbulent moments, exist immense peace, something I wish for everyone to find. Irrespective to which direction the wind is blowing today, I hope time leads them all to it.
ABSINRAW 
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