Before Dawn

BEFORE DAWN

“Some nights are made for torture, or reflection, or the savoring of loneliness.” - Poppy Brite

The night is an amazing alchemist, it's the drug that relieves us of all pain. The night ends with a person closing the eyes, blackening of the world. The night belongs to the poets, the artists, the passionate ones, even the murderers. The day belongs to the workers- the producers, night to the inventors. The fire in their minds eclipse the darkness of the night. A faint sound of a vacuum consumes the mind and elicits a response. All evil, fears and dangers lurk in the minds of the men(humans) at night. Technically, dawn is the 'first appearance of daylight' but as is the case with all words-it has many underlying meanings.

People return home after a day's work, all drained and tired. They need to 'unwind' i.e. a way in which the spent energy could be regained. Energy, as we know, can neither be created nor can it be destroyed. Therefore it is only logical to spent the energy prudently. A person always diverges towards sleep, into the hush of the night, the harmonizing of the conscious and the subconscious. This is where-'night' comes into action. The apparently soulless world acts as a perfect catalyst. All that a person needs to know is , to close the eyes. Glimpses of the day-gone-by flashes in front of the closed ocular. If a graph could be plot, this shall be the period of latency- the low bar. The brain then emphasizes upon a crucial aspect of the day that might have left its mark, this is the peak. The thoughts linger upon this particular 'scene', as I put it. The scene could be joyous or sorrowful. It persists for quite an amount of time. Some people are so disturbed by it that they wake up sweating bullets.

The silence of the night dons various sentiments. It toys with the involuntary mind in a way that it dictates the following day. Our defenses weaken just before we are about to enter the wonderland. Perhaps, a way of the nature Force, to finally make us come to terms with ourselves rather than running away from it all. The paralysis removes the resistance that we may pose, to hinder the penultimate meeting with ourselves. We dream of what we want to do, either by lucid dreaming or by quilting the subconscious with our desires. Be it a dream to sing, to dance, to invent, to innovate etc., it always begins with a dream. As the flashes of both worlds- the days-gone-by and the day-to-come, come into contact with each other, a feature film is produced. The actors are those we came across, the days-gone-by, the director is the brain, the day-to-come. And during the entire phenomenon, we lose the power to refuse to sit through a painful story. Maybe because it is based on true story, in the brutally truest manner. The truth can be a powerful weapon, of choice, that can burden the wings of a bird and make it lose its gift of flying or. It can also be strong pharos of hope. Whichever it may be, for a limited time it disconnects the wires of the brain that connects it with the realms of reality. Add to this recipe, a pinch of creativity and imagination and the film en routes to a blockbuster. The current scenario of a franchise development is a mirror to our subconscious. When you know what makes you happy, you want to achieve that high, repeatedly. 

That said about dreams, let us digress towards the nightmares. The nightmares are the involuntary, the indispensable fears that project themselves when we are at our weakest. They are capable of breaking a person's reasoning, if not dealt with. It always results from the feelings of anxiety, fatigue. We are born runners, as toddlers as well as adults. We tend to run away from the things that question our authority, our importance and even our existence. As dangerous as it might sound, it can be dealt with. The potency of our mind is not restricted by our spurious notion of 'always being in control'. Consciously we might rush away from the monsters of our minds but, at night we understand the fragility of a living being- loneliness. The world we created, the one we want to live in, is governed by the bulk that surrounds itself by the cranial fortress. As we finally face the reality, the imaginative monsters; we panic. Thus, hypertension, dilation of the blood vessels and shortness of breaths follow. That's the maximum exercise one can get while lying down, like a vegetable, only living. The society of bones and tissues then becomes, a mere biosphere for the millions of the microorganisms inhabiting it. Suspiciously, the word 'lie' is a double entendre. We can also lie lying down and also lie down and lie. One can lie all day or lie all day. Depending on the intention of the user, it can be a double-edged sword. 

As we transit from one REM cycle to the next, we have an interval in-between. No one truly knows what the brain plans for the next screening, but it shall undoubtedly be important. The deepest desires, the scariest of fears manifest themselves while we remain supine for hours. The night truly holds the secrets of the men for it witnesses the veracious human being, in all their wildness. The men, who change their behavior with the change of their inhabitant dominion, akin to the turning of the night into the day. The two different sides of the coin is what makes a coin worthy, provides it with identity. We are who we are, and who we want to be; we require only to be aware of the truer self, if not- it shall be revealed to us right before dawn. 

“Let every dawn of morning be to you as the beginning of life, and every setting sun be to you as its close.” - John Ruskin

Praying With Anger

PRAYING WITH ANGER

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

"Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured." - Mark  Twain

Human being is a fascinating creation, especially the naughty mind inside the solid dome. The resident of the skull is blessed with a lot of arrogance, it never wants to feel sub-par. So when things go according to the King-dome(pun intended), it literally believes itself to be the King. It rubbishes the claims of existence of any higher authority, which is otherwise, felt by the others. Some well taught children obey their peers and not only do they believe in the higher authority, they even look up to it and believe of them as their well-wisher companion. They grow on to be the highly content of the beings. The agnostics, on the other hand, spend their lives under stress, of questioning anything & everything. Give a dark alley to a believer and a non-believer to cross and see the results. The non-believer always has a few doubts but, the confident non-believer shall outperform the believer because s/he analyzes the situation before acting. The believer, no matter the senses or analyses, shall cross it with the faith s/he possess. 

We all lead dual lives, one which we are conscious of and the one which we are submissive of. Sometimes, we make something work that we weren't expected to and, we let others believe that we can do a lot more. The ability to notice such abilities is appreciable, to appreciate them is even more so. It is wise to be well informed and well acquainted with one's capabilities, but such wise men lack the element of surprise, that is to surprise themselves and others. Perhaps the wise do not believe in the power of a surprise, or maybe they do and intentionally refrain from it. Whatever the case be, to the outside world, a person always carries with him/her- a bag full of expectations. Consider this, a barely an-year old infant can count backwards from 10 to 1 in under 30 seconds. When the parents find out about it they, naturally, get ecstatic and motivate the child to do more. Motivation can be a strong thing, for the uninitiated. It acts as a driving force, to use that extra ounce of energy and put it to a constructive use. This might lead to either; the person becoming stronger, mentally, or the person losing all hope, should one fail to produce the expected outcome. Expectations lead to the impossible, to make them un-impossible. There seldom exists any emotion, feeling which one experiences when, accomplishing the goal set for the self. The heart leaps higher, and the self confidence increases. The person then, enters the illusion of being a paramount. The feeling of being invincible takes over, add to it the swift constructing ego and you have the ideal self. Interestingly, the Star Wars villains are addressed as the "Supreme" leader/commander. And like those villains, unrealistic, over-ambitious, over-possessive expectations do not end well for the expect-ator. Achievements leads to great expectation and we usually end up expecting from others what we failed to achieve.

Whether it is looking in the mirror after a sweaty workout, in hopes of finding a newly swollen nerve or a beefed muscle; or getting ready for an occasion to match every crease of the cloth with the accessories, whenever we meet someone, we have an inherent set of expectations associated with it, specifically the person. In the mirror analogy, we are the person we are about to meet- a mirror image, quite literally. Sometimes, things don't always go according to the plan, do they? This is the part where one of mans most primal emotions comes into play - ANGER. Anger possesses quite a quanta of energy, usually directed towards self-/destructive activities. Men burn in rage, viz. the higher form of anger, and it takes a toll on them; both- physically & mentally. The mind is like a stagnant water river flowing with a constant flow but even rivers can turn rogue! Anger can be elicited by virtually anything. The suffocating/suppressed feeling of not being able to express, being dwarfed by another being or even a meager taunt which lacks the innocent panache that accompanied it during its deliverance. People burn in fury, they get consumed by the energy that a fire brings with it. Suddenly, we have the bizarre version of a once perfectly sane person. Unless we understand the root cause of this temporal change in the person, it should be considered a felony to talk about the superficiality of it. 

It is during the darkest of times when the beacon of hope lights the brightest. The empirical, instinctive calling that any person has, during the hours of distress, is that of Praying. There is always an abstract or another human or a philosophy that every person holds high above everything else, the faith in it is what compels a person to look up to it during testing times. While praying is pristine, it is more about the self than the abstract. When we pray, we face the facts as they are. Ergo, in a way, we are consoling ourselves of the dire situation and, are asking for a divine intervention to escape the conscious realms of the world. What goes around, comes around with the added angular momentum and terminal velocity- especially when in the direction of gravity. Some famous religions believe that every human being holds the key to the answers to mysteries of the universe and that, it is the consciousness of the person that burdens the knowledge and replaces it with shallow information. Admitting to pray does not label a person to be an orthodox. Rather, it is a way of learning more about the self, in all its wildness. But when we do share our worries with the One, who are we talking to at that time? It is us. Extending this cynical logic, we are asking for help to ourselves, who led us to the situation that, made us look and ask for help. If you represent the last line in a diagrammatic form, you'd reach a 0. And this, 0, is what is the truth of life. Everything is cyclical, even change. And nothing is a permanent as change.

Ultimately, it turns out that, knowing the self is what life is all about. Some call it a journey, others say it's a voyage. Whichever you might abide by, just peek outside for a view from the voyager before praying as even; praying with anger has some great expectations associated with it.

"Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed." - Alexander Pope