Life Unscripted

“I want to love glitter and also stand up for the double standards that exist in our society. I want to wear pink and tell you how I feel about politics.”
Taylor Swift

Over the years, I have constantly questioned the contradictions that define me — sometimes they are so drastic that I feel like maybe I’m not being true to myself, maybe I’ve created a façade and I choose to believe it because that’s who I want to be. But, life is funny in a way that I’ve been constantly forced to see that contradictions are normal, that I can exist on two separate polarities and still be me. Every time I feel like I’m cheating, I go back to my undergrad literature class when my professor, in his strong affirming tone read out Whitman’s quote:

“Do I contradict myself? / Very well then, I contradict myself. / I am large, I contain multitudes.”

For Whitman, contradictions are symbolic of Hegelian dialectics in everyday life — there’s a thesis and an anti-thesis, and they are in opposition to each other but they do lead to a synthesis, and in this case, to universal truths. Maybe it’s too far-fetched to be applying Hegelian dialectics to my own personal existence, and maybe that’s not even what it means in the first place (four years of cultural theory and I still don’t fully understand even 10% of it) but in my mind it works. It justifies my undying optimism against my helplessness in the face of certain realities, and it lets me be independent and yet crave a kind of dependency. These contradictions are personal, and sometimes I am led to believe that they might not be contradictions at all. Yes, being dependent is the antonym of being independent but they are concepts that can be felt in varying degrees, right? That is why we can continue to be badass independent people but yet have space that allows us to rely on someone else. I have come to the conclusion that nothing is absolute, everything is relative and everyone has their own versions of absolute and relative.

Now, coming back to the statement that I quoted at the beginning. Everything listed there, and the way that it is listed sounds like contradictory, opposing ideas — loving glitter but being fiercely opinionated; loving pink but being actively political — but there is nothing contradictory about them. When I heard Taylor Swift say this in her documentary, I wanted to stand up and clap because she just expressed what I have been fighting against for years. It made me reflect on this closely, taking me on an obvious tangent of personal, existential contradictions and I realized that this wasn’t an example of that. This was an example of societal stereotyping which pitted these things against each other, making them appear as contradictions despite there being nothing contradictory about them.

Why can I not love glitter and stand up against the double standards of society? Loving glitter says nothing about my ability to be rational, practical and fearless, all it says, is that I love glitter. Why can I not love pink, wear pink all the time, and be political? Does politics have a color and does pink not cut it? Well, I thought about it for a while and like most problems these days, it came down to gender stereotyping. It is a well-known fact that glitter and pink are associated with women — women who are supposed to be intrinsically optimistic, nurturing and pure so that they can create a space of light for the men who are to deal with real, harsh, negative realities of the larger world. The men don’t want to hear their wives talk about the same, depressing news that they’ve heard all day, they want to escape into a home that is a respite from the outside pessimism of the world — for everybody who nodded at this, this is 1800s behavior. This is what Alcott was trying to fight with Jo’s character, and a 100 years later, Swift is fighting through her music. In her documentary, she talks about how she was expected to be a “good-girl” — a tag, that I am more than familiar with. But, society dictates that a good- girl doesn’t voice her opinions in controversial matters, a good-girl doesn’t express her anger or frustration against anything, and a good-girl smiles through every tragedy, even if it breaks her. Well, I’m calling bullshit (oops, to all the adults in my life who thought I was a good-girl, yes I swear). Women and politics has always been a wide discourse, and it has led to some conscious change but not on a personal, grassroot level. The women that we see in politics today, probably had to fight their way into it and it’s incredible that they had the strength to block out the noise and just go for it. But, on a personal, individual level, society is still skeptical of women’s opinions about the “real-world,” and it is a product of years of conditioning against it. But, I think it’s time to start reflecting and consciously breaking from that historical conditioning. It is more than okay for women to be political, actually it’s natural for us to be political, especially at a time where the fascist fever has swept large parts of the world. Be it the women at Shaheen Bagh in India, or the women marching in resistance against Trump in the US, or women like me who are slowly breaking out of their shell and realizing that our voices need to be heard — women have opinions, and they matter.

I know that there is also another perspective on the whole glitter, pink and politics narrative where politics is inherently associated with pessimism and darkness but that’s a whole new article in itself. For now, let’s stick to this. Let’s understand that someone (regardless of their gender) has the right to not be forced into boxed identities, and has the right to opinions, even if they “contradict” their personality. It is not naïve of me to be optimistic in the face of cynicism, it is brave. It is not hopeless of me to believe in a better future despite being surrounded by tragic news every day, it makes me fight harder. And it is not childish of me to love glitter and pink because it gives me the confidence that I need to be myself while I take the system down. You still want to consider these things contradictory to each other? “Very well then, I contradict myself. / I am large, I contain multitudes.”

In a time where every new day feels like being washed over by another forceful wave, I find myself steadfastly holding onto the smaller moments. We’ve often been told to “look at the larger picture.” An attempt to move past the everyday inconveniences, to focus on the “big things” in order to forget the small ones — but what do you do when the larger picture looks a little like a Dalí painting? Unsettling in its absurdity, and exhausting in its persistent face-off with reality.

Well, hence the small moments.

I was lying on my deck in the summer night, stargazing with a friend, using our phones to try and recognize constellations, speculating whether we were staring at a planet or a star, when my friend turned around and said, “do you realize that every star that we’re looking at is a different moment in time?”

I was stunned. Not because I didn’t know this, but because I had never looked at it that way. We study about stars, and light years, we study about the vastness of space and the theory of it being boundaryless, but we hardly ever stare into the night sky and ask the same questions. It was a rather incredible feeling, to think of looking at multiple pasts, while being so firmly rooted in the present. That moment was a very small, tangible example of the idea that everyone, and everything contains multitudes. At every moment, we are whole with the memories of our past, the realities of our present, and the wishful-ness of our futures. We contain so much more than we are aware of, and sometimes I think we forget that. We don’t give ourselves enough credit. Every struggle, no matter how inconsequential to the rest of the world, is a personal struggle. Every achievement, no matter what value it added to the larger picture, is an important achievement. In a time like this, it’s easy to forget that, and I’ve caught myself doing two things. One, is undermining my own feelings, insecurities and struggles by comparing it to those of others and second, is undermining others feelings, insecurities, and struggles by comparing it to those of my own. Tricky, I know.

I was thinking about this today, after another big tidal wave of a morning, and I came up with a couple of reminders for myself. Maybe they might help whoever is reading this, or maybe I’ll end up looking like someone who attaches too much self-importance to herself, but give me a chance. Being vulnerable isn’t easy, and it’s especially terrifying to let my guard down and be honest with no one in particular.

It’s not wise to compare struggles.

This seems pretty obvious, right? Well, I’ve come to realize that it’s just that much harder to actually do. As important as it is to acknowledge and help someone going through their own struggles, it is just as important to acknowledge and deal with my own. I guess self-care is about showing up for myself, as much as it is about learning to love who I am.

Taking a step back when I hear, “but think about me…” or “it could be worse” is probably the most agonizing learning I’ve had (am having) to do. But, I guess I can’t show up to help someone without actually doing it for myself. So, yay for growth?

It is my responsibility to actively create moments of joy for myself.

I’m a big believer in the magic of the universe. A disadvantage of this belief is that sometimes I wait for happiness to be handed to me. It’s often easy, it doesn’t take a lot to make me happy — the sky at sunset, my coffee at the perfect temperature in the first microwave attempt, a nice conversation with someone I love, the sound of rain, the list is long. But, in the past few months when the world has turned upside down, and it’s easy to believe that it is all a personal vendetta against me (I know it’s not, chill, refer to my previous point), I tend to sometimes lose sight of joy. A skipped phone call, a shorter conversation, the absence of the particular vegetable I had decided to make for dinner — everything seems personal. But, introspecting at these moments (by the way of angrily scribbling into my journal) has made me realize that I’m looking at the wrong side, and I’m waiting around for something I can create for myself. It’s all in the little moments.

Cooking my favourite meal, watching a movie I used to love in sixth grade, chasing the sunset on a borrowed bike, stargazing by myself, painting images of my best friends’ rooms to feel closer to them, these are things I’ve actively done to make me happy. I guess I’m still figuring it out, but surely there’s some wisdom in the whole “go with the flow” cliché, and I’m choosing to just roll with it.

I’m not actually sure what the point of all this is, but I guess I’m trying to say something like – it’s hard to accept who we are, especially in a time of learning and unlearning, but what counts is the acknowledgement that that’s okay and showing up for ourselves every day. The larger picture might seem like a Dalí painting right now — “confused by an existence without obvious meaning,” but the possibility of multiple meanings doesn’t have to be unsettling, does it? Maybe I’m being naïve, but maybe it can also be exciting, hopeful even.

Contradictions

Navigating an Existence Without Obvious Meaning