What does it really mean to have courage? To be bold, to be audacious, to be proud, to be independent? Do they really hold up the same meaning and maybe even the sum of their parts? Why is it so valued and so painfully lucrative to be courageous? There’s so much to reflect and ponder. Sometimes a bit too much; and yet every orator, every voice you often surround yourself with tells you to muster it all up. Needless to say, there’s so much to face head on ,whether you want it or not. But is it really courage you need?
Walking past the bookstore, he always wonders if the next thing that will finally grip him is waiting inside. The idea that the author spewing thousands of words and characters and syntax and grammar and punctuation, will all finally make sense like the thread through the hoop of the needle. It always seems so alluring to him. Just the one (or maybe even two) books, hefty or not, is all he needs. A literary shove over the edge just for everything to make sense and for him to finally be part of the cult of the readers. He never really stops to wonder why this is so important to him. Or why that next book never really comes. He keeps on getting better but not quite fluid. Finishing a book brings a handful of emotions and perhaps a lot of joy but it also comes dragging with it the feeling of a blank slate. Because the book never pushes him into the flow state, if such a thing exists. Rather it does quite the opposite. He reads, he loves, he breathes, he finishes. And the hunt for the next gripping book that will finally convert him, starts yet again. What does she have that he just can’t seem to get a hold of. She slices through novels like a figure skater on ice. It’s not a difference in their approach either! At least not in my humble opinion. Sometimes there’s a lot that he infers and breathes through the pages of a book that she misses. It is the context with which everyone consumes that, alas, plays a huge role. My best friend once told me two lines which ring like alarm bells whenever I think of producing anything creative. With that lit cigarette in his hand and a half empty bottle of the beer (with the best ratio of strong to cheap) he said in a response to a quirky question of mine: “But that’s the thing, you don’t get to decide how your art is going to be consumed”- followed by the craziest line of them all: “That’s why I love being a snob!”. I was literally dumbfounded, at that point I knew I had just heard something that I wasn’t prepared for but something that would follow me for a long time. For the first time in my life, i felt that being a snob wasn’t necessarily bad. And as for art, while i knew you don’t get to control how it is perceived, you always work towards an educated guess (like I am doing with this ramble of words). But that second line made everything make sense. That cigarette in hand, the beer in the other and the smile that would last me the next couple of years. Isn’t it so courageous to be a snob? To love the things you love so obnoxiously! Standing steadfast on opinions and being rigid to change, it seems to me that it takes all the courage in the world to be that firm and unmoving. Because change is the only constant and as some believe it is the only thing that allows us to grow. It seems so ridiculous to stand up against these walls of ideals and just be a snob and that too for fun!!
I think many believe that being vulnerable is also being courageous. As you are letting these ideas flow through you, you are standing with the courage holding you up and letting the streams of consciousness shape and mould you. But I don’t agree with that. I think it takes away from the strength of vulnerability itself which lets you adapt and be malleable. (I had made so many spelling mistakes writing the three sentences in the paragraph till now and it is in my vulnerability that I am able to learn from these, the correct spellings. It did not take much courage but it definitely took a lot of vulnerability to let autocorrect take over and for me to re-read all that i had written to understand how much of a toddler I looked retrospectively stumbling through typing these words.) Vulnerability is so non-human and hence I feel it’s importance rises in this growingly inhumane world. To let thoughts and ideas pierce you is something else. Sometimes those words jab harder than a gash of blood that your cat causes, and the cat gash really hurts both physically and emotionally, like of course physically there’s the wound but emotionally there’s so much going on. You raised that child yourself and here it is attacking you, perhaps it did it unknowingly and wasn’t aware of its lethality. Or perhaps something is off, maybe he’s mad or petty. Maybe you did something wrong and he just remembered. There is so much going on and so much you have to take into account when ur cat causes a deep cut for seemingly no reason. And to think that being vulnerable and some simple thoughts going through your own brain can hurt more than that! It is really bizarre the way things move and the way we are forced to view the world. The tags we are meant to prescribe to or attach ourselves to. It truly makes me wonder if things have always been this way.
No one can quite read what’s on her mind. She is always not just thinking but also expressing. Something is always going on, and no one has an idea about what is happening. Because of her expressiveness on a day to day, task to task basis, everyone seems to think that everything is quite alright. That days are passing by and nothing is really nudging her the wrong way. I think sometimes she thinks that might be the case too. There’s so much in those eyes, but not what people would call a sparkle. A glimmer but not in a positive nor a negative light. There’s just a lot going on or sometimes, there might not be, but yet, just by habit, the glimmer stays. What would you think if I asked you about a person like that? Would you think they are troubled or maybe too preoccupied? Would you consider it unhealthy? I think and I hate to say this, because even a broken clock is correct twice a day, that the answer is just more complex. I think there’s too little or maybe actually too much to find an answer to think about that person. Can you really think something about a person who is just figuring stuff out? Someone that is not quite settled? Some may go far as to argue that being settled is a myth in itself, to which I raise the question, can you really think about another person at all then?
Rather than a very self fulfilling pseudo-intellectual circular argument that “leaves room for thought” , I think the point of my musings are that there are many others like her. Many who aren’t in the right or the wrong. Many who don’t need courage or vulnerability. Many who can’t really be perceived as they are themselves being moulded.
My job isn’t to tell you what they need and maybe your job isn’t to provide. But to think and acknowledge and breathe, maybe that’s what’s important.
I don’t know how they do it. But I do think that there’s one thing that appears as though everything is figured out. As though everything is alright. No need for thought, courage, vulnerability and all those fancy words that I’ve been absolutely struggling to spell. (I don’t write this as a polished essay but I write it as if it were to be spoken aloud to you.) That one thing:
As the wind, a little rougher than gentle, blows by,
They take a second to find the right end of the slim cigarette,
A couple flicks to light it just right,
And then watch the birds with the backdrop of the sky,
fly.