Fade to Nothing

I had a dream last night.

I am walking down a road. It is unfamiliar to me, but not unknown. I’d never been down this one before, but the terrain, now that I knew. There’s a little bit of me, that tiny voice that loves the ‘unsafe’. This road has huge warning signs all over it. As I walk along, the person walking besides me (changing every second from person to person, everyone I ever knew and loved) keeps asking me to stop. Keeps telling me it is dangerous. Some try to move me away from it physically, but I somehow find the urge to keep going irresistible. The tiny voice in my head is having the time of its life, egging me on. ‘It will be so much fun. Aren’t you bored of being so nice all the time. Aren’t you just sick of doing what everyone else asks you to do? This one’s the biggest challenge I could find for now. If you conquer this, well, you will be basking in the rewards later, and these people will be your side, applauding you then.’ The voice is crazy with glee, overshadowing everyone else’s, and so I pay heed to it. Ignoring the pleas, ignoring the threats from some of my friends. I keep walking. Slowly, my companion fades. In phases, there is someone suddenly walking besides me, and a few steps later I am all alone. Even the voice in my head has left me. I have no company anymore, and if I have to walk down this road I am all by myself. I look back, once, to see if I should really go back, but there is nothing behind me. Nothing at all, just black emptiness. I look ahead and there is the road stretched out in front of me, flooded with blinding light. There is clearly only one way to go.

I’m walking and with each step I take, the ground behind me vanishes into nothingness. The road seems really easy. Is it really the one I’ve been seeking when I was walking through all the others? I know there is something brilliant waiting for me at the end of this road, but the details elude me. I just know that I have to keep walking, and while I cant wait to reach the end, I don’t want the road to end either. I realize that I’ve begun to run, run really fast, and it is so graceful, so fluid, that I almost shock myself into waking up. As I run along, the landscape keeps changing constantly, but one thing remains constant, the road behind me keeps turning into nothing. If it weren’t for the changing landscape, and the fact that I could feel my body move faster than ever, I would be simply standing in the same place staring out into the light, with nothing behind me. I have an aerial view of myself as I run, and I am the line that divides the road from nothing, as I keep moving, the darkness keeps moving, engulfing with it more and more of the road. As I run along, I still catch odd glimpses of people I know. People I’ve loved. Some just stand there, and I am unable to make out any more because I have run past them, and they have been engulfed into nothing. Some I spot from a little distance, they seem to try to mouth something out to me, but with the sounds of my footsteps and my breathing, I can’t hear a word they say. I try to stop a couple of times, but I am unable to, its like I am now a machine that has been set to run at a predetermined sped in a particular direction. Few, very few, try to run along, I spot them for longer periods, trying to keep up, stay with me, knowing I cannot understand, just quietly running along, with the occasional smile that is both meant to reassure me of their presence , and at the same time, sad. ‘Why sad?’ I wonder out aloud, ‘at least you care enough to try to keep up. The others didn’t even take a step‘. As soon as I say this out, their look changes to one of hurt. I do not know why, but immediately after they are left behind too.

I’m confused now, I want to continue, but I still want to stop and go back. I realized I can only go forward. My body has stopped being controlled by my brain, and is just moving ahead, and I realize all I can do now is give in, and wait and watch. I resume my aerial position, and watch as my body moves along the road, with the darkness moving in from behind. It suddenly hits me, I am not running away into the light, I am running away from the darkness, which is engulfing me fast from behind. I am surprised that my body knew this before my mind. Now I am glad that I’m moving away, though I am afraid what it means that my friends are being left behind. As soon as I think this, I spot one more moving ahead. One of my closest friends, my rock. Long before I reach there, my  friend has started to run, knowing that keeping up will require a huge head start. I know that my heart would be a little hurt, lacking the logic that my brain has. I would only have seen it as my friend running away, leaving me behind. My brain understands,  grasps the concept of the true friend and the fact that my heart will never forgive my friend for leaving me behind. I suddenly realize what me heart is asking my body to do, and I try to go back, force it into reason, but the attempt is futile. I can only watch, shocked, as I see myself catch up, and push - put out my arm, and use all the super-human force I seem to possess - my friend into the darkness.

My mind is reeling. From up here, with this objective view, I finally get the look of hurt on my friend’s face, and am ashamed of myself for putting it there. Another one lost into the darkness. All sorts of thoughts are running in my head now. Jumbled, in random order, with little or no reference. I am thinking back to all the times I let my heart decide before my mind, and I think back to the outcomes. Whoever said, listen to your heart over your mind, did they think it through? While I am still coping with the thoughts, still wondering about the kind of person I’ve been, I happen to look ahead, and happen to see what I instinctively know my body has not, the end of the road. Just as the darkness behind me, there is nothing beyond that point on the road ahead, and I am hurtling towards there. Even though I know, that I haven’t been the best person, survival instincts kick and in , and I rush towards my body, determined to get it under control again. I have to make it stop. I don’t know what will happen when I stop, will I just be stuck on the road, between two worlds of darkness? I shall be alone, I have myself pushed away anyone who ever cared. But I know I must stop. I have to. The aerial view I have shows me that we’re almost there at the edge. My heart and body still won’t listen to my mind. On the contrary, I see a smile on my lips, albeit disconnected from my eyes. My eyes look elated, not in a happy kind, just in the sense that says it knows its goal is achieved.

I am too late, in the end I won’t be able to save even myself. I see the light slimming down to a sliver and the last thing I can see is myself, jumping off the edge of the road, (which now seems to be a cliff) into nothing. And then there is only the darkness. The last thing I feel, is my feet leaving firm ground and jumping into nothing, the darkness I’ve been running from. As I feel the lurch of the ground slipping beneath my feet, I jerk awake, breathing as though I had actually run all that way. I do not know if, when I jumped, I managed to fly, or if I fell.

“Time takes it all whether you want it to or not, time takes it all. Time bares it away, and in the end there is only darkness. Sometimes we find others in that darkness, and sometimes we lose them there again.”

- Stephen King

Note: Didn't exactly think this one through. The work of a truly insomniac mind.

Waiting

• Waiting for the world to change.
• Waiting for me to be the supreme power that the rest of the earth bows down to.
• Waiting for a future that is better than the past.
• Waiting to find the courage, to turn my dreams into reality instead of just waiting by, while others take my dreams and turn it into their reality.
• Waiting for the day that I can finally say I own every materialistic thing on my wish list and not possibly want for anything more.
• Waiting for someone to give me the inspiration to be the writer I want to be, get my work published, and have it read by people who can be honest about it.
• Waiting for someone to tell me, my dream land is just that and give me a huge reality check.
• Waiting to not be judged by my gender, looks, or age.
• Waiting to meet one person who ‘really’ is different from everyone else.
• Waiting for someone who really will accept me for who I am, remaining the same, yet constantly changing.
• Waiting for someone to understand that I can be the same and yet change.
• Waiting for someone to remain the same always, even if I might change. :-p
• Waiting for my friends to realize that if they must, they should think of setting me up with someone I could actually like :-p
• Waiting for someone who cares, and isn’t afraid to show it.
• Waiting for someone who understands when to keep things to them selves.
• Waiting for someone to would try to break past my walls of self defense and stay.
• Waiting for someone who won’t leave, because people always do.
• Waiting for someone, who like me believes that loving someone is more important that being in love with them.
• Waiting for someone who actually means what they say.

Waiting for the world to realize that I can only try so much and wait for so long, before I give up.




Note: Compiled on the basis of thoughts I've had myself, and shared by friends. Expect more to be added.

If you were not afraid, what would you do?

The song running through my head the past couple of days, has the line ‘By now, you should’ve somehow, realized what you got to do’

My team lead put on an interesting message on his IM yesterday. It read ‘If you were not afraid, what would you do?’

At first glance, it seems like one of those random questions people ask, just outta the blue, either to kill time, or gain some insight into the person to whom the question is asked (I’ve done it, am sure you have too. You know, the ‘who do you think will win in a Batman v/s Superman fight?’ kind of questions. Very valuable insight). A simple question. If you know the answer.  If you do, I envy you. You see I, even at my brilliant current age, haven’t been able to decide what I ‘really’ want to do. Sure, my education has gotten me a decent job that gets me a monthly paycheck. But do I really want to get old doing this? No. Am I sure I don’t want to get old doing this? I don’t know. The obvious answer to the second question is YES, but if you ask me to give it up, I’m not sure I will.

So the question for me really isn’t about what I would do if I were not afraid, but what I really want to do. Last week I met a kid, all of 7 wise years, who when asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, counted five options off of his hand. At just over thrice his age, I’m still undecided. I may even have more options than fingers on a hand. I wrote an earlier post about the things I’d like to do in life if I had all the resources I need available to me.

Co-incidentally, today I started off on one of them. Learning to play the guitar. I’d started earlier but then stopped, but I’ve started again, and this time I don’t intend to stop. Let this post be a testimony for times to come.

Just after I’d made up my mind on that one, I logged into my e-mail account and found a mail, which asked for applicants for Teach for India. Another one of the things, I’ve said I wanted to do. And here, opportunity comes knocking right at my door, er, inbox. A few days, ago, I was speaking to a guy I was just getting to know (Yes, asked a few of the afore mentioned questions, though not superman v/s batman, that’s my decider question, if you wanted to know, which I’m pretty sure you didn’t) who spoke about his plans for leaving his current job to teach. He seemed pretty determined. I hope he gets to live his dream. It’d be really simple, one application form I’d have to fill in and submit, get through the selection process and I’d be doing one thing I’m pretty sure I want to do at some point in my life. ‘If you were not afraid, what would you do?’ I sort of have the answer, but I am afraid. And I have not yet made up my mind about it. I have the time, but I’m sure of my decision yet.

Why? No child dreams of growing up and becoming an engineer in the sense that they want to go in for a 8 hour shift each day, staring at the screen waiting for that silly piece of code to work today like it did yesterday. Office to children is where their parents go, and if they’re excited by it, it’s because of the mystique the briefcase (these days the handbag/laptop bag) holds. They imagine a much interesting world out there. To be an engineer, for a child, is to make things. To create, to design, to build, to develop and not just as terms in the SDLC. As we grow up, we realize the façade our dreams have been, but we still go on with them. Pretend we want to be more realistic, rather than dream, squeeze our dreams down to weekend hobbies, if at all, and pretend that the tag and the salary (about which we start cribbing after the first few months) matter. We even enjoy swapping the ‘no-job-satisfaction’ stories with our friends in similar situations. All the while knowing, that this isn’t what we’re meant to do.

So even when we find a way out, even if it is right in front of us, like it is in front of me now, we are undecided. I can crib about my job all I want, but can I really let go? Can I deal with the insecurity of an unsure future? The answer to that is simple. No, not yet.

But someday, the answer will be yes. And I’ll be sure about it. Someday I’ll have the answer to the question, and the answer would be, I am not afraid and I am doing it.

P.S: Just as I was getting all excited, and wondering if I could really fill in the application, I came across a quote:

Don’t mistake coincidence for fate.

Go figure!!!