Brave New World.. And A Man Who Dreams of Fewer Things Than There are in Heaven and Earth

"We are not our own any more than what we possess is our own. We did not make ourselves, we cannot be supreme over ourselves. We are not our own masters. We are God’s property. Is it not our happiness thus to view the matter? Is it any happiness or any comfort, to consider that we are our own? It may be thought so by the young and prosperous. These may think it a great thing to have everything, as they suppose, their own way-to depend on no one-to have to think of nothing out of sight, to be without the irksomeness of continual acknowledgment, continual prayer, continual reference of what they do to the will of another. But as time goes on, they, as all men, will find that independence was not made for man-that it is an unnatural state- will do for a while, but will not carry us on safely to the end.
A man grows old; he feels in himself that radical sense of weakness, of listlessness, of discomfort, which accompanies the advance of age; and, feeling thus, imagines himself merely sick, lulling his fears with the notion that this distressing condition is due to some particular cause, from which, as from an illness, he hopes to recover. Vain imaginings! That sickness is old age; and a horrible disease it is. They say that it is the fear of death and of what comes after death that makes men turn to religion as they advance in years. But my own experience has given me the conviction that, quite apart from any such terrors or imaginings, the religious sentiment tends to develop as we grow older; to develop because, as the passions grow calm, as the fancy and sensibilities are less excited and less excitable, our reason becomes less troubled in its working, less obscured by the images, desires and distractions, in which it used to be absorbed; whereupon God emerges as from behind a cloud; our soul feels, sees, turns towards the source of all light; turns naturally and inevitably; for now that all that gave to the world of sensations its life and charms has begun to leak away from us, now that phenomenal existence is no more bolstered up by impressions from within or from without, we feel the need to lean on something that abides, something that will never play us false-a reality, an absolute and everlasting truth. Yes, we inevitably turn to God; for this religious sentiment is of its nature so pure, so delightful to the soul that experiences it, that it makes up to us for all our other losses."

From Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley

Precariousness

One shouldn't write during such times.  Why would you? These are times of mass events that sweep everything in its way. Times when the value of an individual completely disappears to give way to the value of the crowd, when you don't exist at all unless you are a part of a huge determined crowd that is up to something and won't back off until they've had it. Times of action. Times of endless talking yet no one listens to anyone at all. Times when the progress of events is pushed by a force that cannot be seen nor understood. Times of uncertainty when you know everything and yet not sure of anything at all. Times when the future totally eclipses and no glimpse of it can be seen or even predicted.

Who cares what you think at such times? Who would want to listen? There is only the rallying, the cheering, the storm. History is in the make, and you either participate or shut up and watch. When the angry demonstrators are passing by you, you join them or you just step out of their way. There is no room for side-road rooting here.

You still exist though. Your life and the events tangle together yet find a way to coexist somehow. something I could have never imagined. When reading books or watching movies about revolutions, the focus on the events gives you the impression that life stops and holds its breath in anticipation till it's over. To have an on going revolution and still go to college in the morning, go home and study, take exams, talk to friends, follow the news, join the demonstrations (not that I do), discuss cardiology clinical tutorials and the uprising simultaneously, is something I could have never imagined. A modified on the edge sort of life but still a life.

You learn to appreciate small things you've always taken for granted. Like not having to worry about  returning home before its dark. Like the luxury of worrying about how well you'd do on an exam instead of worrying whether the exam can be held under such circumstances or not, whether you'd be able to make it to the exam or not. Distant gunshots or screams arise some faint sense of curiosity in you but doesn't necessarily make you move out of your chair. Listening to the international news about street fights, explosions, shootings, snipers, riots and exclaiming "Thank God I'm not there!". Trivials as these things are, they mean security and consequently they mean everything. But security is never an unpaid for gift, for some nations they just have to get a job and work hard to be secure and that's it, for others they have to risk complete loss of everything they ever had -including their lives- in order to be secure, which is the most sensible paradox of all time, the paradox of a revolution.

Who cares what you think at such times?

Egyptians have chosen to play the game the hard way, that is the idealistic way. We have handed the revolution happily to those who we revolted against them, and now we are doing what should have been done long ago after so long a delay, too late that it makes you wonder if now is the right time for amendments anyway. We are paying the price of looking the other way and ignoring obvious facts for so long, we are paying the price of yielding to the continuously infused idea of not allowing this revolution to have a face, a trusted leadership that would take over, and instead leaving the masses, full of  dreams of a better future and rage over long reigning oppression and tyranny, leaderless, processing a decision of action in 80 million brains, each with its views, interests, fears and hopes, leading into the current chaos we are marching through. But I won't go into that any furthur, because as I said, no one cares what I think.

How much would you pay to have a quick peep at the future to see how things would turn out? But all we can do is wait, and so we wait...

Depression, Mood Swings, Suicidal Thoughts!

We all have bad days. We all have times when we feel absolutely down with no hope for feeling better ever again. But we don't all realise that we ALL do that!


That we all experience both joyful and depressing events in our every day's life is out of question. Some of the distressing events can be worked out and fixed, like failing a subject, losing a job, money crises... Tough problems as they might be but they are all solvable in a way or another. Other things just happen and there isn't the least thing you can do about them, like the death of a dear one, when there is nothing to be done except trying to move on.

That's not the sort of thing that I'm talking about here, I am talking about the blues which come from nowhere at all. You are a perfectly healthy successful person and supposed to be living the best days of your life, and yet you're always talking about how sad and miserable you are. If you are asked why, you find yourself unable to state good materialistic sensible reasons, you probably sigh, or turn the philosophical abstract mode on with a different issue every time.


There you are going down either one of two lanes: You really have depression as in the illness depression and not just a cranky mood that happens often enough and would go away after a good day out with your friends. Or you are one of these "I am suffering because I am different and no one can understand that". I am not a shrink but I've been around lots of people and that's all you need I guess to see this fact: some people think that you can't be a smart special person without being in the depressed mode all the time. It adds something to their character. It makes them think they understand life better than others and that they are capable of feeling and perceiving things that are just beyond the understanding of all the other happy fools they are surrounded by all day. True that the separating line between genius and mentally disturbed is well known to be blurred and swinging all the time, but let me remind you again that the line swings between genius (all bright and glittering word as it is) and Mentally disturbed (a serious condition that hardly ends well, and when it comes to an end you probably would be experiencing the real misery and wishing you have never started such a game in the first place). Are you sure you want to swing over there? Think again.
Another disappointing idea is that we ALL have these moments! It happens at any given time that some one would look at life and sigh: "what an ugly scene!". Except that many people don't talk about these moments and don't air them in any way, they just put up with them until they're over. This makes the idea of mood swings a fairly enough common idea with no specialness whatsoever no matter how you try to turn it inside out looking for anything into it.

The Online life gives room for lots of that and introduces you to lots of these people. You'd specially see lots of girls so much into the character of the black dressed girl reciting dark romantic poetry with tears in her eyes, which is fun and attractive for sometime but definitely gets disturbingly ridiculous when used for every minute of your life, and in both cases there is nothing special about it at all.

We are all different. We all think we are not understood. We all have mood swings and moments when life looks unbearable. and above all, we all think that we are the only ones experiencing that. Just keep this thought in mind next time a mood swing gets enjoyably longer than usual.