Hi reader,

It’s finally the time of year where we all have something to celebrate. The time when we take our long pending leaves and go on that vacation we have planned all the year. The time, when we exchange gifts with the people we love. The time, when we celebrate festivals when we celebrate life! I wish you all a very Happy Festival season.

This season is special, not because we have the most fun or we don’t have to work, but also as we feel and wish happiness for each other. The time when we have empathy and compassion for others. This year has been very different and won’t be wrong to say difficult for each of us, and thus, makes it more important for us to have more empathy and compassion for others.

Recent events or the viral media always keep pouring-in how great we humans are whenever there is something even small we can do. We all have seen the examples of people doing charity or helping financially for the one in need, even remotely now. People have started to organise fundraisers on their birthdays and contribute to a social cause using the enormous power of social media. Few (now trending) influencers captures or record videos encouraging the viewers to buy from local shops and help them celebrate the festivals, and get profited themselves while creating content. Organising the fundraisers in the office is also not new, where each of us tries to contribute even a small amount for the office staff as an extra perk for the festival gifts. The world is great and changing for good as well, always.

However, here I am not to talk about empathy and compassion for others. Though the literal meaning is always, able to understand “others” emotions, in this fast pace and always on change world, we sometimes are so racing ahead of time that we start lagging our own self. We fail, to understand ourself. We become so dependent on the world, for approvals, for validations, for acceptance, for understanding, and for empathy and compassion. We long for, that someone could feel for us of how we feel. Honestly, we don’t feel anything. We feel numb. We don’t have a monosyllabic reply for our current situations, even if I ask for right now, and at times we feel pathetic about it. When we can’t understand our own feeling, how can we have empathy for others? How can we be compassionate for others?

I came across this amazing illustration, which to some extent expresses the fact of the modern world. What we like to hear vs what we get to hear:

It is fine to have problems in life. It is fine to accept it. Continuous and conscious denial is not fine! When I am in trouble, I seek out for someone to hear me, someone who I can talk to. Though, this dependence on someone is tough to be always answered. It is not possible that someone will always be available to hear me out, someone who will say: “I’m here to listen. Let me know what you need.” Then what will I do? How will I get rid of the trouble? Repeating here, we long for someone who feels and has the understanding of what we feel, but that someone is tougher to find than actually finding the topic for the blog (for me, honestly).

What to do then? Will we keep looking out for that someone? And for how long? So, this is why we need us ourself more than any other person, to understand ourself better, to express our true emotions, to recognise what we actually feel, to become the support to ourself that we deserve and look out in others. But how can we do it? I can not actually tell the exact way of how to connect with yourself and understand yourself more, but there are many ways where you can feel better, it can be painting a beautiful landscape while having a sip of black coffee, or can be reading the whole book in a single go with some instrumental ambience music, or can be playing a music instrument, or just listening to your favourite music and going for a long walk, or can be taking your pet out for a walk, or can be doing a great workout, or can be taking a sheet of paper and penning down something to relieve your mind, or can be sketching out a tomato ketchup bottle standing idle in front of you and creating a fictional character next to it sort of saving it, or can be anything, that just relaxes you! And it can be always changing. It is not easy to actually understand our emotions at some moments in life, it is complicated, and while doing such activities, there comes a moment where we feel our gut, it can be the most stressful part of the song and you feel the pain like you are also going through it, or can be doing that extra pushup to overcome that anger, or can be filling more and more shades of colours in the portrait like adding more and more happiness or maybe just dancing. It can be anything, anything that you say it is “relatable AF”.

Once, we become that independent in our life for our emotions and expressions the way we are for digestion and respiration, we might be the happiest creature as well. And, who knows, we might be able to understand others way better than we can do now! Talking to others help, but honestly, no one is here who wants to listen to cries. Everyone is having their own load that nobody wants to hear someone else’s. That’s why, many people say, “Everyone has anxiety, you have to deal with it!” How? No one answers.

Somebody once asked me how I define sobriety, and my response was ‘liberation from dependence.’

Leslie Jamison

I wish the best time of the year bring up so many joys and laughter to you and your family that all the previous months fade away. Stay healthy and safe!

Cheers!
– Navneet