It’s been a while I wrote about myself and about my inner world. I feel there’s a reason for that. Although it will all sound self centric, I don’t want to sound like I’m trying to consider myself important whose words should be read or whose life should be valued. This is exactly what I’m trying to write about.
Okay, enough word jumble, I want to sound as honest as possible, because this is about something which I’ve been thinking in this corner of the internet: “why do I write about me when nobody seems to read?”
Readers don’t have to worry about the topic of this blog, as it’s not another “why should I write” blog, there might be really low amount of people in that zone.
An empty courtroom
I think the shift happened inside me when I finally realised something I’ve been trying to escape from. That my existence has no much value.
Think about it, I’m just another Indian guy (which there are 1.5 billion of) living in a small town (which is almost half the population of India when you combine them) and I’m writing about the things which come to my mind instead of trying to scientifically evaluate them or try to decipher them or make them useful for the world to see. It almost feels like speaking in an empty courtroom where even the judge has not arrived. The microphone works, but there is no audience.
The realisation that I matter to nobody and that my words don’t matter in this enormous universe is profound. Not dramatic. Just factual.
Somewhere inside, as I’m now approaching the magical number 30 years of age, I realised how swiftly time moves and how swiftly world changes (almost overnight if you are working in AI industry). You learn something for months and within weeks it becomes outdated. It feels like standing in a moving corridor where the floor itself keeps shifting, and you are blamed for not walking fast enough.
Also when I saw great writers, their blogs, their books and their novels, I realised how little I’ve to offer for this world which is already enriched by something which I feel puts me in the learner category and not the explainer category.
If this is sounding too sad or kinda depressing, I will not resist and would advise you to click away. Because the nature of this write up isn’t to resolve anything. But for sure I’ve something to tell you, because even after all the chaos in my head I’m still typing these words and you are still here to read them.
That in itself is strange. Two people who don’t know each other connected only by text. No proof of each other’s existence except these sentences.
Words that belonged to other people
So let’s start with the language first, I always have struggled with languages, my mother tongue isn’t English, its not even Hindi nor Marathi (which is identify of a state where I come from; Maharashtra). It’s a mix up of Hindi + Urdu + Marathi and some other words which belong to none of these languages.
So the result of this mixup plus my dyslexic brain, I never learned to write my own thoughts until really late, I couldn’t write a simple grammatically correct statement till 9th standard, couldn’t write a statement which wasn’t in my textbook till first year of college and basically had my first blog when I was almost graduated (at 22!).
So if you think I’ve been writing for a while or that I suck at writing even after writing for so long, you would be wrong. Because English is new to me, and even though indians are good at learning it, I seem to have somehow bypassed that educational anchor that keeps the students reminding that they someday have to work for US/UK based firm and be able to talk with them in English. It’s like I missed an orientation session that everyone else attended.
But I’m also glad I found good friends (and “FRIENDS”) to start to understand the English better, to understand the foreign accent better and later started to write my own words slowly and steadily. So basically you won’t find me writing big words, because I don’t have vast vocabulary. But you at least hope (with the help of autocorrect and grammar checkers) that whatever I write at least makes sense.
Language became my tool. These days I think in english, which my high school teacher always wanted us to do. I mostly watch foreign movies (because they usually are better than anything bollywood produces these days) and as my phase of “pop stars” has ended I’m focusing more on poetic stars which have deeper lyrics (IMO) such as adele, I love her!
Sometimes I even dream in English now, which is strange because the younger version of me wouldn’t understand those dreams (that’s so exciting to think about if you know what I’m talking about!)
Learning to feel
But language is just one part of equation, there are several. Even if I had started writing like usual high school student in my late teens I wouldn’t have written this sentence today. Because what are you going to do with mere tool if you don’t have anything to do with it? Learning language is just one part of the story. People use language to express their thoughts and feelings. I think I’m late here as well.
I basically had no “thought” to express until I actually learned how to write (which was after my graduation) and around the same time I learned how to feel. Before that, life was happening but I wasn’t registering it properly. Events were there, reactions were there, but no internal report was being filed.
Have you heard about Alexithymia? It is the condition where people struggle to understand theirs and others emotions. Which doesn’t mean they don’t have emotions or don’t feel them, they just can’t recognise them. Trust me, as I’ve observed many people so far, I feel most of us suffer from a form of emotional disconnect.
If you think you know yourself, just stop reading this line and get a pen and paper to write “how am I feeling right now?”.
- If you can write about it in one sentence, you are either a genius or just don’t know who you are yet.
- If you can’t write anything, you need to start your own blog (trust me!).
- And if you have written an entire paragraph (or blog such as this) then you need to resolve it with the help of language itself (self talk).
I was in the first category for so long, I was emotionally dissociated thanks to many (many) reasons in my life (some of which you already can find in my other blogs) but thanks to my friends (especially female friends, there’s a reason why female and not male and that has a lot to do with my psychology but anyways) I slowly started to feel what I was feeling and actually put words to it.
I won’t bore you with emotion graph that every psychologist seems to praise (which I think is valid) but I think it is often really important to identify emotions. I have yet to find the words to describe myself fully, but soon, I think with better language and words at my disposal I might be able to crack open the doors inside my psyche which are not possible at the moment. Or at least realise the doors were never locked, I just didn’t know how to turn the handle.
So why am I still writing?
Which brings me back to writing this blog. Ohh I slightly deviated there from the topic, maybe I’ve bored almost all of you (and there might be few left who clearly don’t have much to do in life or maybe just are resonating with me at least till now, hit me on my email fast!).
See? I’m clearly not so focused writer, I kinda deviated from the main topic and slightly went too personal there. And like I explained in the beginning none of this has any scientific (or even philosophical) evidence that this is true and that you should read me. It’s more like I’m submitting statements to an invisible authority hoping they won’t be rejected for improper format.
So maybe I should stop writing now, and apologise to my reader for yapping about all the nonsense which I did here and in my previous blogs.
So if statistically I’m insignificant, emotionally I’m immature, literary I’m just underdeveloped and based on the amount of readers I get, I’m not a famous writer, why am I still writing this sentence?
If you are waiting for a dramatic answer, I would like to disappoint right now, and I take pride in it. Because the answer is pretty simple and slightly too cliché: I exist.
I exist
Someone with my background, someone with my quirks, someone with my disabilities and my struggles still breathes on this planet. I’m nothing less of a human than the person next to me and nothing more important than someone who hasn’t started writing.
I write not to resolve the things, or to get read or to make sense of the world or (most importantly) to share knowledge, because there are many others who are much more knowledgeable than me and have lived much more life than me.
I’m online right now and you are reading this right now, we probably don’t know each other, but for the past few minutes you have been reading about me and giving me your valuable time (which you couldn’t have wasted on writing something of your own!). You and I, we both matter in this small present moment. We are connected only by these unpolished and grammatically and syntactically imperfect words, but connected nonetheless.
Who connected us? Who gave you permission to read about me? And who am I to write about myself on the open internet? This wasn’t ever about giving you something to read or setting up a hierarchy; it’s about my existence. I just felt like existing and you’re here to witness it.
I wish I had external validation for writing but thankfully there’s no exam to judge its quality. Even if you want to quantify it, you have your own rights. But let me tell you why it doesn’t matter. The existence of this writing has nothing to do with quality or what it generates. It’s simply about my existence, which doesn’t require validation.
The day I stop validating my own existence, I’ll stop writing because then it becomes a pretentious game. I don’t want to write just because someone’s watching.
Ironically, some of the most interesting contacts on my phone came from this blog. I still don’t understand how much power words hold and I still struggle to express myself fully but like I said in the beginning I stopped writing because I was afraid of not putting the most polished version of me.
Just now I realised, nobody’s asking for that polished version, because people don’t care, and I don’t care.
Thanks for (this act of) reading! :)