Not starting again

It took me a while. Several months, in fact. 

Once this blog was my life, and I posted at least twice a week. But lately, this became a graveyard of new starts. Every time, I was starting afresh - there have been several new starts for me in an extraordinarily short period of time in the recent years - I made posts pledging myself to restart. And, then, I lost my way and became silent again. 

I want to make it different this time. I am looking back and wondering why I start and stop. It is perhaps because I did not accept in the past that I failed, either completely or at least to make good of the pledge that I made to myself when I restarted. Therefore, I guess, instead of making statements of hope and looking into the future, as the American self-help books would have us do, these restarts should start with an acknowledgement of failure. That is exactly why these are restarts in the first place. 

But, before that, I am questioning myself - why do this publicly? When an admission in a private diary would have been enough, why write this in a blog? 

Several reasons for this: I don't think anyone cares for this much, and therefore, what I write has no value except a very public pledge that I made. Writing publicly demands a level of seriousness and commitment that private diaries may not. Besides, one of the changes that is needed in my life is transparency: At least that is the goal, I want to be able to live honestly and transparently, and I can not. There are just too many complex emotions that draw me to different directions, and in the end, I waste a lot of time meeting people I don't want to meet again, or doing things which I don't like. I wouldn't be in this situation if I could live a life according to my wishes. And, I would never be able to live according to my wishes unless I am transparent about them, and examined them over and over again. This is my own way of submitting myself to a very public commitment to my wishes. 

So, where did I fail? I want to live a life of the mind. I have always done so, but never had the courage. Lack of courage is really the failure I have. I am often criticised for my meekness, but the criticisms are usually misdirected: I am told that I can't promote myself, I don't project value, I can't prioritise my interests and I don't know how to ask for things. All of them are true, but I take all those as compliments. I don't want to be 'projecting' value or asking for an outsized reward. 

I don't want to make everything about myself. Instead of 'doing something great', I want to be part of something great. I don't want influence, I want harmony. I see work as a collective endeavour and not an individual pursuit. But I know there is something missing in my approach. That missing piece is courage. 

Courage is not about being myself - it is about being able to part of what I believe. I was recently reading Czesław Miłosz's The Captive Mind, where he talks about the intellectuals 'adapting' without being coerced, for the sake of harmony than in fear. And, one doesn't have to live in an authoritarian state to see this! There is always some kind of conspiracy of silence in our public lives. We seek harmony and therefore act as we think others want us to. We don't want to hurt other people who love us, and who we love. This is about conforming to norms, nodding politely all evening to discussions about real estate and not blocking Islamophic and anti-semitic contacts on Facebook. This is not about being onself, but saying what one believes in and connecting with co-travellers. 

This I never do! Instead, I am a start-up entrepreneur spending all my time with speculative investors and those who 'believe' in numbers. I am on LinkedIn looking like any other professional, engaged in the same ritualistic superficial monkey dance of my 'expertise'. I am a regular person living in London, remembering train times, paying my taxes, being concerned about my son's exam performance and university prospects. Except for occasional poems on Facebook, there is not a hint anywhere who I am or wish to be. My energy is spent on the neatness of this hiding act. This is not honourable and if I am honest, I know I haven't lived honourably. 

Instead, I have been deceitful: None of my fresh starts were really fresh starts: They were just new attempts to conform to expectations 'out there'. And, there is this whole question of courage to end things. I know there are some relationships which have reached their logical end, but I can't end them. I have grown tired of my every day activities, but I lack the courage to walk away. Even with my volutary activities, I pretend to be 'responsible' and don't want to walk away from a project which I know wouldn't go anywhere. I have no regard for private higher education and yet spend most time working in it. I don't like city life but lack the courage to explore anything else. So on and so forth! 

And, therefore, I have actually never made a fresh start, because all my fresh starts are really a rehash of my old life, which I don't really believe in. So, when I write today, I start from a point of failure. I see the debris of wrong expectations, useless endeavours and wasted efforts all around me. But I don't see this negatively, but rather as a marker of freedom. To be free, I must let go. And, to let go, I must start with an acknowledgement of how pointless everything has been so far. 

Except perhaps my reading and writing: The only things in my current life I want to do more of. In fact, this fresh start should not be about making new pledges and becoming a new person, but for me, it is pledge to return, to who I once wanted to be. It is not as ludicrous a proposition as it sounds. 

In 2022, when my life fell apart, I re-discovered the habit of writing poetry again. I was dealing with a failing career, a false friendship and my father's death, and wasn't planning much. I started writing without any specific purpose, but rather to deal with the cruel everyday life. It is different now - I am dealing with meaninglessness rather than torture - but I do remember how writing poetry, which was what I wanted to do when I was young and something I am not very good at (primarily because my English, a language acquired late in my life, is so limited), saved me. I was not looking forward as there was nothing to look forward to; I was looking back at the time when I used to look forward to life. 

That brought me to this blog. I started writing it when I abandoned a whole life - perhaps one rare courageous moment - and started fresh in Britain. It was somewhat similar to now: I had completely wrong expectations and only figured out that I made a mistake after I took the leap, and had to find a way back. That's time I started writing this blog, first as a scrapbook of ideas and then more as a journal! I looked forward then, inspite of the disappointments. I want to look forward now again, and hence returning to the ritual that sustained me.