I feel pretty anxious just with everything going around. Everything looks meaningless and what can I do to give it meaning, I am not sure. I was never a very active person on social media and even in the social world. Thanks to the social anxiety and self resentment which were perhaps the byproducts of the toxic environment in which I was fighting to survive, since forever. Even after I left the physical space, the mental space was already occupied with all of that toxicity. However, we always find ways to survive even though that survival comes at a cost.
With the pandemic going around the globe, natural disasters in parts of the world, millions of people dying every day, people inflicting violence on each other in name of religion and nationalism, people choosing to discriminate between their sons and daughters, people abusing other human beings, partners cheating and indistinctly lying to each other, people walking miles to reach their home while we bang plates in our balcony, light diyas and candles in our spaces to applaud for our administration, preparing grand dishes every day and throwing out half of it while we look at people dying due to lack of basic amenities on our phone screens, not acknowledging the virtual blindness trying to blanket everything that can disrupt our “joy” of the day, is only causing more anxiety.
We are often told, do what you can, you can’t heal the world. I know I can’t, but I am unable to feel okay with everything going around. About people suffering without a fault of their own.
“I Feel Guilty For Sharing My Thoughts And Because People Around Me Have Started Calling Me Negative And Nihilistic”
I don’t know if I am that. But isn’t it okay to not feel okay amidst a crisis? How to close one’s eyes when you know the world is burning and no one cares enough to put out the fire because it’s the underprivileged (whose privileges we have in our own ways scratched away) who are suffering. I feel sad when a person earning enough says it’s not enough. What is enough anyway?
I still don’t know what can I write about this constant struggle which is not only because I am inside my home due to lockdown but because we are so helplessly poor in joining hands with people who need us. I wonder and worry about the children I was working with, they have no home, some of them don’t remember where their homes are and I don’t know how they are surviving in this lockdown.
Today, I saw a 14 years old boy vending vegetables in the street while I was playing with my 3-year-old nephew on our balcony. Aren’t they supposed to be equal? Can I imagine my nephew there? Can that child imagine being at my nephew’s place? Doesn’t he deserve to at least imagine that? I am sorry that I can’t write more for I think even hopelessness is contagious.
I am glad people are doing their part out there in reaching out to the needful while at this hour I can only imagine surviving and contributing in whatever ways I can right now. Love to all the people suffering, struggling, fighting for survival around the world, for your suffering is mine too because we are connected by humanity. And I am glad to call out that bond for us. And it is okay to not feel okay in a crazy world.