How much pain before you break again?

Every time you wish to be
a simple person with simple needs

Every time you want to say
things that go unheard anyway

Every single teardrop shed
as you think about the path you tread

Every crackle of laughter shared
 puts you in and out of repair

Every silent moment broken
to the sound of thoughts ever so often

Every song of spring heard
brings back a lost memory blurred

 Every night spent awake
wondering if it ever was yours to take

Every light that breaks the dark
fades away so soon there's no more a spark

Every time you wish to hope
you know there's no hope left to hope

Every single time you feel
there's nothing left to believe

Every idea gone waste
because of a mind so numb it can no longer taste

Every time I see you fall
I ask you cuz I don't know it all

How much pain before you break again?

CHICAGO

This is a song I came across when I was on a random playlist. I loved the lyrics. It's not a song, more of a recital.

When all the laughter dies in sorrow
And the tears have risen to a flood
When all the wars have found a cause
In human wisdom and in blood
Do you think they'll cry in sadness
Do you think the eye will blink
Do you think they'll curse the madness
Do you even think they'll think

When all the great galactic systems
Sigh to a frozen halt in space
Do you think there will be some remnant
Of beauty of the human race
Do you think there will be a vestige
Or a sniffle or a cosmic tear
Do you think a greater thinking thing
Will give a damn that man was here

Exams. Sigh

Well, it's exam time and so I guess it's high time I posted something about many thoughts that have been running through my head since morning. Well thoughts don't really run, they just come and go, like flashes of words I want to incorporate or jokes I want to crack and include. Or incidents I want to recollect or people I want to quote. Write about what, one may ask. During exams, what does a normal engineering student have to write about? The usual woes and worries and late night coffees and night outs and attempted wake up calls and snooze alarms and finally - skipping bath, breakfast, lunch to study in those precious last few minutes. All for marks that don't matter even now, let alone matter a few years from now. I see people around me, in a trance - staring at their notes sometimes repeating what they're reading, sometimes going around frantically trying to look for that one person who understood that equation rather than mugging it, and I wonder. I wonder about those days in school when I actually used to enjoy what I was reading, trying to learn new concepts in physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics. Oh math- how I miss math. At university level we get more theory in a mathematics paper than problems. Where's the question of trying to apply what you've studied to solve new, challenging questions? No answer. Half the people here don't even know the meaning of applied knowledge, and half of the rest don't bother to apply their knowledge though they know they can. Unless a system demands  a thorough understanding of basic principles and its application to further one's knowledge in a particular subject, most students are going to give up trying to understand and resort to mugging. Never a great fan of mugging myself, and incapable of doing so even when I need to, I simply give up sometimes. Give up on things that don't matter anyway. Give up on things that should have never mattered.

             It's funny. I've come to the stage where I'm so averse to what I'm reading because of the way the syllabus is framed or the way we've been asked(rather instructed) to answer, I don't even bother to figure out if I like a subject anymore. I automatically resort to thinking that it's another paper I won't like. That threw me off track a few days back. I'm now at a stage when I'm not able to give my subjects more time than that, and I doubt I will even if I did. Anyway, here I am, and suddenly after more than a year there it is. A subject that is staring at me in the face and I actually feel like I like it. There are many things I read about that I like in the field of science, but most of it lies outside my 'academic' knowledge. It took me some time to accept that there was something, if I had probably given it more time, some potential subject that I could like. Well, I'm not blaming the system or anything, it IS after all my fault for not having started earlier, but I do hold the system one of the major causes for changing the course of my liking.

Like I told a friend - people usually say "you either beat the system or join it". But what does one do when stuck in between? Unable to join it, but too insignificant to beat it!

P.S - Due to lack of time (I have an exam tom, people!) and a stream of thoughts that flow faster than I can type, most of what I've said here may seem incoherent disconnected. It's been a long time since I attacked the keyboard with overflowing thoughts, so kindly adjust with spelling errors and the like.

Don't

Don't run behind me
Just leave me alone
I'm standing in the cold
But I'll be fine without you

Don't try to talk
When there's nothing to say
Don't be fake
For heaven's sake!

Tears don't matter
neither do you, most of you
So don't cry for me,
Cuz I won't for you

Don't follow me
I'm going to a dark place
Cobwebs and blind bats
I won't rescue you

Don't come hug me
I won't feel you
Cuz I don't feel for you
Oh but I do - I feel "nothing" for you.

Acceptance? Yeah right.

Look at her arrogance. She talks as though she has mastered the art of acceptance. She seems to portray through her writing that whatever is thrown at her – any new development that she doesn't want, any change that she has been dreading – whatever it is, she’ll get through it without too many bruises or scars. She says that it is okay- she smiles and consoles the people who feel bad for her, telling them that her life is going to be okay after all. Looks like she’s got a heart of steel or rock or whatever that never breaks. She’s got to be that strong, how can she be okay with her life otherwise? Going on as though nothing is ever wrong, as though nothing is ever too big to not shrug away casually like a feather resting on her shoulder. She takes whatever the world gives her, smiling - with a clenched fist and through gritted teeth, but she takes it nevertheless.

For once, though, she finds that she is lost. During all those years of constant endurance – of pain, misery, disappointments, betrayal – not once did she feel that she would falter from what she thought was her way of living. Not once did she imagine that she would come to a stage where everything does seem as gloomy as many people paint it. She always looked at life as something that needed constant improvement, something that was worth fighting for, and something that did not have the time to give to heartbreaks and anguish. Now she finds herself questioning her ability to get over a minor setback. Her life couldn’t be better, one would say. She’s got everything that few people can only dream of at this stage. Supportive parents, academic life going places -what more does she want? She must be arrogant to assume that her life is miserable. What if she’s at a stage where she’s not able to cherish what she has? She feels empty and saturated at the same time. She feels like she doesn’t have anything or anybody to fall back on, and yet she’s saturated with all the attention that is being showered on her for various reasons. Saturated with all the premature experiences she has gathered, not regretting any of them, but saturated.

She wants to go back in time. She almost repents having spoken about acceptance being the only way to get over change. She doesn’t know what she wants to go back to, though. There are many memories she would like to relive just for a moment, knowing that she had to give it up someday. Isn’t that much better than suddenly finding yourself in a situation where you can’t go back anymore? She knows what she wants. She doesn’t want anything to last indefinitely. She knows that’s asking for too much and she doesn’t believe in that anyway. But right now, in this moment of weakness that doesn’t come to her very often, she wants to go back in time and treasure the moment that she wants, understanding the true meaning of what it is to live that moment like it will never be hers again. She wants to consciously interpret the meaning of existence, though just for a moment. She knows this won’t last. She knows that when she reads this again she might consider herself stupid and shrug it away like she does so many other emotionally disturbing things. But for now, she knows what it is to lose something and feel for it. To feel the loss, to appreciate its beauty when it was there, to appreciate the pain it causes when it is gone.

Acceptance

How does one cope with change? When something changes to make things better, everybody is happy. It takes time to get used to it, but nobody complains. However, when things change for the worse - when you lose somebody or you give up something you don't want to, it hurts. To say it hurts is a very crude form of trying to put into words the oscillations in emotions one goes through when adapting to sudden change.

I started reading a book titled "When everything changes, change everything". The title clearly indicates the kind of method suggested to get past a sudden change - move away from what happened and change everything around you. I do not believe in that, and I couldn't continue reading the book, but it triggered off a stream of thoughts on how one does actually deal with change. Does one read such "motivational books"? Or does one go on a holiday and look for better things? Quit one's job and move to a different place?

To change everything when everything changes. Is it worth it? If you lose somebody and you can't stop feeling miserable when something reminds you of it, does it mean you move away? Or destroy those memories, just to move on? Aren't the memories worth more than the treatment you give it? It's worth all that and more, and the worst part is - you know it. Moving to a different place or making youself busier than usual might offer temporary help, might help you forget things till you cross the stage of utter shock and disbelief, but trust me, from personal experience I say that it doesn't work that way all the time. Not if you actually do want to move on and be happy again.

The only way to truly get over something depressing is to accept the situation for what it is. Only when you let go of the restraints that hold you on to a life that no longer belongs to you will you be happy again. Change is necessary, change is the only thing that remains constant, like a lot of famous people claim. But what is most important is how you deal with change. There may be times when you feel lonely though you're surrounded by swarms of people, times when you cling on to somebody you barely know because you're scared to be alone. In the end, what matters is that you get there, not how you do. And when you do, you'll be a stronger person and won't regret the change. You'll embrace it and in a way thank it for making you a stronger person.

Something that was.

Nothing stays forever
hold on to what you have while it lasts
for tomorrow it might be gone

Hold it close
wish for another day
but let it go when it should go away

Memories left behind
a trace of what was the past
a past that will never happen again

A happy time
brings tears when it's gone
a sad recollection of what is no more yours

Time changes everything
what if you don't want it to?
sometimes some time is all you need to move on

All you need
but what about all you want?
when what you want is not what you need to get better

Want for worse?
want for promises to remain unbroken
things to fall in place, not into pieces

Just another day
searching for what you missed
knowing it's not yours to look for anymore.