The Positivity in the Future

For me personally, positive psychology is not new to me. It always fascinated me in terms of the radical departures it took from the rest of its conventional brothers and sisters. It still stays relevant to the overall family but tries, like the rebellious teenage child to rewrite the family’s genealogy and history. I got my first glimpse of this in 10^th grade, when a special class on positive thinking was held. They charged 100 rupees for this and since it had the terms psychology in it, I immediately applied, not having any direct experience with the subject till then.

The basic premise of the workshop was many group bonding and self-revealing activities. It was my first exposure to such activities as well which have now become an intrinsic part of my life. Thus it has two big signifiers in the workshop to my future life and thus shapes the way I see myself from that day onwards. The workshop was interesting because it capitalised on the one thing teenagers of my age would enjoy – questioning the system. It starts with a small prod to our homework and moves on to questioning the entire institution our education system that our lives are built around. He questioned why we accepted blindly the increasing load of assignments, notebook submissions, tests and so on. He told us how it never gets easier and it breaks you so you can enter the working world as a person ready to be moulded and shaped according to the mould they pick out for you. In fact, the word ‘they’ cropped up a lot, often focusing our attention and sudden frustration towards this external entity, responsible for all our problems. Then he asked us – do you know who or what ‘they’ are?

I, being the smartest member (self-proclaimed) of the class instantly put up my hand and answered based on my limited knowledge of online conspiracies and big gigantic illuminati like cover ups, that it was a higher power that did not care what we did as long as we did it that way. Then he looked at me, sizing me up and mostly pouring through my soul like a librarian through her defaulters’ list, and told me “So what can you do about it? What possibly can be done in your age, with this attitude?” I was waiting for this moment, often preparing for imaginary battles such as this where I would be able to show the joy and wonder that I am. Safe to say – I lost the battle.

It was easy now that you look at it retrospectively. His arguments were more concerned with getting somewhere than resting there itself. But how he defeated me was a lesson well learnt. He took me through the arrogance of my reasoning, how either fighting or simply following this system doesn’t work because it doesn’t benefit anyone else except the system itself. And that’s because – everything we do is a product of an interaction between the system and ourselves. He then showed us a simple activity, one which I follow even today. He told us that the only way to truly embrace ourselves and the possible change that is there is to this madness around us is to talk to our future self. The one that would be remembering this and living up to it. At first, it blew my mind the entire idea. All it takes is a simple conversation that begins with you writing a letter to yourself one month down the line. Then when you get there you instantly connect with the letter and remember who you were supposed to be and contrast it with yourself now. Soon this transformed into a dialogue done once a month where you imagine yourself in ‘n’ number of years and talk to them as if they were there.

The reason this portion really struck me and I decided I needed to mention it is that I did it just yesterday when I realised I was due for a talk I made for myself when I was 17 to me when I would be 20. Through the hypothetical conversation, certain things came up. But certain miracles also happened. I realised I didn’t have to only compare who I am now to who I said I would be then. I could also think about myself then and ponder whether I was not inherently biased in saying this. And in doing so I learnt more about myself through time than lots of other activities. It did something that changed the way I am and the way I was – it was a conceptual time machine across different years allowing myself to beat the system and improve myself, a high price in a pricy but cheap world.

The Christmas of 2003

            When I was about six years old, I moved to Australia, where I lived for about three years. Since my dad couldn’t leave India for so long (owing to his work), it was just my mom, brother and I, along with my grandparents. I still remember my first Christmas there. We went to the store and found a Christmas tree that we all liked, so we decided to buy it. We brought it home that evening and put it up decorated it together. There was so much laughter and joy in our home that day. I can still remember the feeling.

            Thirteen years down the line – it’s December, 2016, and my parents and I are putting up that same tree in our home in Vellore. As we hang the fairy lights and sparkling ornaments onto its dark green branches, my mother begins to tell us about what the Christmas of 2003 was like for her.

            She’d just moved to a new country and was supporting two children and two parents. We were renting a house, we had just joined school and there were a lot of things to buy and pay for. In the middle of all that, in came the Christmas season. Now there’s this tradition in Australia, where everything – literally everything – in most of the shops goes on a massive sale the day after Christmas. So all of my mom’s friends advised her to buy us a tree on that day. Considering the situation, it only seems logical.

            But here’s the thing about my mom – when it comes down to it, she doesn’t work on logic. She knew how happy and excited we would be to have a tree up in the house for Christmas. So she decided to forget about the money she could have saved by buying it later and decided to go ahead and buy it before Christmas.

            There are very few things I remember vividly about being six-years-old, but that day when we put up our first Christmas tree in Australia is something that is so crystal-clear in my mind. But I’d never thought of what it was like for my mother. All I knew was how happy I felt.

            When I listened to it from my mom’s perspective, it struck a chord in me. I realised how wise my mother had been in putting our joy first, despite what everybody said. In doing so, she gave me something I can never lose – a beautiful childhood. And that is something that no money in the world could ever buy.

            So here’s the thing about my mother. When it comes down to it, she doesn’t work on logic. She works on love. 

Letting Go

I always felt anger towards Her. It was never ending, this rage, this frustration, this all-consuming fire. No don’t get me wrong. This is not a story of a post break up venting of emotions or a general anger against the women of the world. Instead, it is a ball of negative, maliciousness against all the important women in my life. 

Like all important things, there’s always a downside to them. For me, with my relative inexperience with the opposite sex, it has always been my inability to fully comprehend their complex motives and intentions. It was the reason why movies were a person could read other peoples’ minds always fascinated me – simply put, I was obsessed with the idea that knowing the opposite gender’s mind could help cure my ailments. To understand this better, we have to look back into a past where my major interaction and relation were with boys. This has helped me even today. I know how guys think and how they feel. It is easy to understand what they say and what they mean. However with women it has always been complicated. That’s why with those closest to me from the opposite sex, this frustrates me the most. Cause I never know what you are truly thinking. And that is, for me the scariest reality.

It began from the 10^th grade when I first joined school in India and was exposed to co-ed school where interactions I never thought were common were in fact commonplace. Where relationships and friendships went hand-in-hand. In fact, this was the time I learnt a lot about feminism, about gender equality and the need to have female friends. But from 11^th and 12^th, as my friend circle grew to include more and more girl friends, things became more complicated and frustrating. It was simple – I was always scared to open up to them as I never knew how they would respond and how they would converse. And the bubble kept on growing.

By the time I entered UG first year, I possibly couldn’t match the huge difference I had between my male and female friends. And yet I was scared of opening up. Fear is a brutal thing – it can make you choose to never involve someone in your deepest, darkest thoughts, even when they mean the best for you. Yet, I was having more female friends than ever before and it is still growing. Over a period of time, the shell that I built began to break. And the me that was emerging was ready to be more vulnerable and more open to the people that mattered. The thing is, with men it is often easy to pretend to be macho, chauvinistic and sometimes sexist with a big hint of falseness and fakeness to it. We know each other and we understand that stating the truly emotional stuff is not a possibility either side can bring about. 

However with the opposite sex, their train of thought encouraged that and in fact it was this logic that scared me. I refused to be near them when I wanted to be vulnerable. And when I did choose to be, it often backfired or turned on me and from there comes the anger.

Now that you’ve caught up to the whole argument I’m presenting, what would be the logical course of action I should take up? It was a long drawn out thought where many of my guy friends couldn’t be asked for help as it would be out of their leagues. The end result was that of forgiveness. That the Her I referred to in the beginning couldn’t be seen in that way. That it had to exist separately – in the form of each person who was either good or bad to and in my life. And this was the only solution to move forward. Stereotyping is bad. But when done with the intention to avoid any sort of interaction, growth is bound to stagnate. That couldn’t happen.