Often when gaming or doing yoga, there comes a point when you realise that one side of your body is usually stiffer or inflexible than the other. The fact of this duality within the same body is bound to leave us frustrated. It’s almost a betrayal of sorts. It exists within you, yet you have no control on it. This duality of existence often remains the cornerstone of relationships irreparably breaking. It also remains the story of how some of us seek help, because we no longer remember what is the original me.
Most times the sage advice passed post liberalisation (in society, not the 1991 reforms), can be summed up in three words: You do you. But just exactly how do I do what I would like to do, when so many parts of me remain conflicted. The media has assured me how most (read: all) of the choices I make are actually defined by someone else. I thought I love travelling, but there is a strong data backed up, convincing me how it’s all a propaganda, yet is it? I think I love sex, love it for me, not with the aim to procreate, not the way I am ‘supposed’ to. Yet a conflicting theory states how sex was never meant for pleasure, and there is nothing else I seek.
Out of 30, the two days in a month when am not hormonal, up, down and stretched in all possible directions. Just two days in a month where I think I am really me. Thinking, writing, emoting what I really wish to than what my stretched Fallopian tubes might just make me utter. It’s those two days when am pushed to a great workout and yum food, yet Okinanawians suggest mild exercise with only 80% stomach being full. If I do me, I would read every possible book there is to be read, write a couple myself. But if doing this, will ensure I don’t live long enough because sitting is the new cancer, how exactly do I do me?
Most days I feel like am in a chapel, fighting against the holy trinity of dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine. Every little wish that doesn’t fit in the cookie cutter rules of this society seem to be taunting and playing with the ‘perfect’ me. The rule book taught us to fight the world for what you believe in. Here the beliefs seem to be inspired, with nothing original really coming from within us, and the fight seems to be with self.
‘You do you’ remains nothing but a poor choice of words. Have you used them in an argument with your partner? The aftermath follows the same frustration for me, as that of applying physical force in a dream. I wake up gritting my jaw over bad sequence of events that didn’t even happen. And what exactly is it supposed to mean? Because the whole premise of the argument in the first place, is that I did me, and you did you. The problem isn’t the solution, ever.
Sit, breathe and think. Are you the person who propagates those green ensaladas on Instagram, or the one that secretly binges of white chocolate everyday? Are you so good at lawyering yourself out of every cheat meal, every new show that you binge watch, and every time you’re mean to someone? Are you the agnostic human you claim to be, or the one whose head automatically bends in reverence before every place of worship? I am everything. I am the scientist, the politician, the writer and the lover.
Beneath the melamine veneer, the complexity of thought remains so strong that each time I am asked to write about myself I freeze. I am so vast within these 206 bones, that I am incapable of limiting myself to words, actions and be held accountable for being me. Keeping the spirit of duality alive, my next post might be pushing you for discipline as I skim through another day without as much as lifting a finger.