Once A Toxic Life

 A Retro Look At My Toxic Life 

 

Ah, ha, Er (wait a second the narrator is still preparing himself)

[Ready]

Welcome, ladies and gentleman in today's show. Today, I am going to give you a sneak peek into my so called secret private life. To begin with introduction, I am a very cool, very famous, young man (Can I still call me young?). Cool as for the time being at least, because most of the time I am pretty much fucked up, entangled in the tides of my own thoughts (No, don't get the wrong idea of Dual Personality Disorder). By look I am pretty young. Very young.

[Hey, audience is going to run away]

Today, I am going to enlighten you on a very sensitive topic, about the darkness and the path to light. Just kidding. I am, as I said, just a fucked up young man, and today I am going to share with you my experiences of a period when I was very toxic, and my life  was full of radioactive fuel.

Let's rewind the clock to some two years. OK, Ladies and Gentleman what you are watching isn't important for the time being, what I am going to show you is. So Please (that's not my style by the way), close your third eye and with your natural two eyes concentrate on the page open in front of you. I am in there, this is where you have to concentrate. 

Two years ago, here I am -- toxic, walking to the college, well dressed, having a conceited look on my face, pretending to be the happiest person. What's wrong with me? Let's dissect the brain and see, after all it's my brain. Isn't it?

This boy is so lame. Look at his hairstyle, knows no manners. Jogging at this time -- such a fool. What lame videos he was watching. Still talking about the movies what a bunch of fools. Oh, these inferior late raiser don't they have any shame -- playing games and watching movies the whole night. What with that guy, looks like knows nothing about the productivity, what a waste of life.

[Listen, that's enough, wrap it up, wrap it up. I said, wrap it up quickly. You...]

So, Ladies and Gentleman this was my brain you just saw. Pretty lame, ah. Yeah, I do think so. That's why I hereby disowns the brain of my older self. (You piece of shit go to gutter and commit a biologically impossible suicide.) But why is it so? And why not so, now? Certainly something is creating the difference. What is it?

The Books. Yeah, the choice of books made me so hectic and that better similarly. That's the phase of my life when I had just started reading books other than academic books. The type of books I choose or more precisely I accidentally picked, we call them self help books. Those who do not know about this genre of  books: this genre of book talked about self-improvement, enlightenment and stuffs like that. How to win friends and influence people, pshcho-cybernatics, Deep Work, Attitude Is Everything, 7 habits of highly effective people, Think like a monk, Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck. Yeah, these kind of books. Got it.

I read these kind of books in a lot, like 25 books at least in a period of five months, and they made me toxic, or at least nearly toxic. How?

Are the books toxic?

No. Absolutely not.

Then, what? What is that, Ladies and Gentleman, that turned the matter toxic?

It was me.

The way I read them made it toxic. I followed them like a religion that's why they become toxic to me. 'Any definition crossing the defined definition is wrong' - that thinking made it toxic. My intention of reading them made it toxic. And the age I read them made the things and me toxic.  

[Silence and brooding]

They said wake up early because that's what successful people do, so I started waking up early and hating those which were the late raisers - a pure intent hate. They said this is the success, this is the aim of life and this is how a good life/ a happy life should be lived. So left with no choice I started following their life style -- reading 70 pages daily, doing hours of intense workout, no TV, minimalism, journal writing, meditation, no movies, no porn and stuffs like that. I was being brainwashed by them. I had started on the quest of becoming someone which was ideal.

At first I feel like I am the best, I am improving, I am productive, and such stuffs, most of which I do not remember quiet clearly right now. But the obsessed me was on a rampage. I was impatient to become someone bright and great. I thought I was improving, I was happy, I was best at productivity - a complete baseless conjecture. That's when I became toxic.

Although, Ladies and Gentleman, deep down I know the truth. I know the misery of my self; you can deceive the world but not yourself. I know deep down that I want to run, that I was suffocating and waiting each day for that 30th day of the promised month of experiment. I was the man caged by his own self.

To over rule any mutiny I developed that chaotic feeling of extreme false superiority. Superiority gave birth to the feeling of pride and false hollow beliefs. I started thinking of me as some omniscient, some entity who know the difference between right and wrong, good and bad, and almost everything. This was a high shot of toxicity. I started thinking inferior of everyone -- friends, siblings, strangers. I even went on to that last point of nadir when I started mocking and roasting them. Hell me. (Actually, I want to completely disown me.)

[A large painful sigh. The hands are shaking. Heart bpm (beat per minute) is increasing.]

But things changed.

Himanshu (he is kind of Mentor to me) was the first who bought that matter to me. He was the one who put that thing in my mind in a way so I would understand it without being offended. Others who were trying the same thing before were instead of gently slipping the idea into my mind were hitting it hard on my face, and were failing.   

When the truth hit me, it almost drowned me. No kidding no exaggeration, ladies and Gentleman, but pure truth. I was just going to drown into my endless sorrow and huge disappointment. The life I was leaving was completely baseless and hollow -- this truth created lumps of doubts in my head, and I felt as the worst. guy in the world. I didn't know what to do next but to continue and imitate that I am good and fine. Just smile and laugh. Easy. 

Well, it turned out that everything that I adopted in that period wasn't that bad. I continued to read books and write journals. I was addicted in doing so like drugs. By the way, they were helping me as well.

Things took turn dramatically when it dawned on me that draining my emotions that I was holding on the paper was of great help. I was a little timid to share them bare at first. I turned every thought and emotion into something weird so as to deceive any how. Well, another good thing happened by the same time when I changed the genre to fiction at last. The very popular YA fiction by John Green "The Fault In Our Stars" was the very first and the perfect to get started. From there I pretty much changed in many ways. And I started to accept things.

[Narrator is smiling  through the extent of his face reminiscing all those old memories.]

Here, Ladies and Gentleman, I started accepting many things just because of the fictional stories.

You are lame, you are messed up, you are incongruous, you aren't perfect. But, Ladies and Gentleman, YOU ARE YOU.

YOU ARE YOU.

This is what I learnt from these stories.

Believe me ladies and gentleman, this is not some advice this dude is telling you because he had seen some videos or read some books of so called self-help gurus or motivator, or some spiritual guru. I am saying it by a pure painful experience of mine.

 

 

There is no objectivity in definition of goal or purpose, or lifestyle. No opinion is superior. No one is totally good or bad. In fact we are all gray. There is no crime in questioning God, or government, or the family, or yourself. Take for instance award winning novel "Train To Pakistan", there was a character, who was a magistrate, held high position, not by politically, but socially in the minds of illiterate and socially under achievers, but good people. He picked a sixteen or less years old girl (she herself not sure about her age) to have physical sex and she reminded him as his dead daughter and he drove it from his conscious mind by drinking whiskey. This man became responsible to save hundreds of people (not related to him by blood, caste, religion and by any other social means except they are humans) and to stop to turn a train into corpse carrier. What you will bring out of his character? The good aspect or bad? This is just a mere example and there are tons. You can't judge a book by its cover. Similarly not a man can't be judged simply on the basis of some things. Someone can't be lame only because he watches Big Boss, or read Chetan Bhagat, or have an account on Tick Tok (hey I am not giving a licence to any of those that they are resistant to any judgement. Not entirely but one part of you still judged by these things).

This, I understand from reading fiction. That's why now I tell people to not sweat about the discipline, about self-help, to act somebody else, but be yourself. Whatever you are, you will feel extremely satisfied accepting you.

 

In simple words reading fiction gave me the third perspective; A different take on the life, which was not only beautiful but also moving.

Ladies and Gentleman, or Gentleman and Ladies, what ever you want to call yourself; to sum things up here are some things in quick shots --

Is reading self-help books wrong?

- Absolutely not. It just depend on how you are reading them. I mean, if you are going to obsess about these things like me, the stakes are pretty high that things turned out to be toxic. You have to check as per your apetite. However, my recommendation is three-four such books must do that work.

Is following a strict routine bad?

- This of course depend on you. You are a real human with bones and muscles having a thinking brain. If you really want a strict rule - go for it. But you certainly don't want to become some dumb machine. Do you? (I mean, Ajay?)

Is this any advice from me?

- As I said, I am a simple dude talking about my experience of life. This may help you or may not be. But don't take it as some advice from me. If you are in such a situation as mine. You could think of taking a lesson, maybe. I don't know. You must figure out this thing for you.

Is that it?

- No, that's not me. I change my views very frequently. No, I don't. And I did. That's me.

 

So, Respected Ladies and Gentleman (respected because you read my blog. Otherwise?), thanks a lot for reading up to there. This proves either your life has lots of hours that you don't know where to spend them, or you are really either hating or liking the content. Well, I am like an open season to you now, shoot me where ever you wanted to. That's a once in a lifetime offer, I am telling you.

[The narrator is ceremoniously bowing]

That's the end of the show. Thank you for being there with me.

 [Am I listening applause? That's I think slippers and sandles. So, we succeeded then. Yeah.]

Now a bonus :

I will tell you what I am at present -- First of all I am no genius (yeah, all you who thinks that I am. Baby, sorry -- you are wrong); I plan a lot but I love to go without one; I baffles really bad when it come to choosing; I am literally very bad at talking; I face frequent doubts about myself and about my future and that to a very toxic degree; I pretend that I don't care but I do; I brood about everything even very simple things but mostly on events of great shame or proud or failure or things more or less like these, and they sticks to my memory deeply, I recreate them, correct them, and run them again and again until they become a part of me; I feel emptied after talking at length; I am extremely selfish, yeah, extremely selfish; I want to remain mostly introverted because I am afraid of people thinking wrong of me, though after giving a thought I let all things spit out like I am doing now.

 

Some Likes And Dislike -

I like reading fiction, I like writing a lot, I like bicycle riding a lot, I like running, I like yoga, I like argumenting sometimes, I like being praised, I really like to win, I hate loosing and failing a lot, I hate starting new things, I hate urgency of situation. I like people with different views because I think I can learn from them better, I like that... thing, I mean that thing, yeah you are going right my naughty readers, this is exactly that thing, though sometimes (Tharak hai mere andar aur vo bhi bhari matra main). I hate noisy girls, I hate bigotry (though, I am a bigot myself), I mostly hate kids, I usually hate teaching, I hate company of people especially in the morning the time when I usually writes, last but not least -- writing journal is like my life, I write them more because writing them is my need than I liked them.

 

Note - I want to apologize to all those to whom I looked down upon, mocked and roasted them. Thank to those who instead of being questioned wrongly by my conceited self bore every attitude of me with a smile -- Himanshu and my siblings, especially. And please don't write any reply in sympathy. Just understand and that's it. 

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