On Balance

Lessons from the Realm of the Bantering

I’ve always been unbalanced. Oh, damn! That doesn’t sound right. Stability has never been my forte. Gaaah. Not that either. Screw it! I go to extremes, alright? Even my walk is a continuum of wobble with random veers thrown in for fun. It works for me; not just the walk down the road but through life. The concept of ‘settle down, son’ is wasted on me. I’m that joker who would kick a bucket because it makes me uncomfortable watching its boring and stable smugness (who moved my bucket? I did, uncle). When I was five or six, I took my father’s automatic movement wristwatch, opened it up, and took it apart just to see what made it tick. I’ve known joy since then many, many times but nothing near as sublime as watching those many-sized gears arranged neatly. I think my fascination for engineering started from then. So of course, I didn’t become an engineer. I knew not of the aphoristic sardines and their grossly inadequate cans back then but I got the concept. Dismantling an exquisitely engineered mechanical watch is one thing but assembling it back into its casing is not a thing at all unless you want to use the act as punishment. Pity the Greeks didn’t have this case of metallic clicks and tricks on them or they wouldn’t have let Sisyphus off so easy rolling a stone. Anyway, something unusual happened. It occasioned one of only two instances of my mom giving me a thrashing; the other time was when I stuck (and patted it down a few times to make sure it did) chewing gum on a fellow student’s head. I did ask his mom the next day how she removed it. She slapped me for my audacity. Early lessons that the world of men and of women reacts poorly and boorishly with outliers. The genders are not so different after all; divided by parts, made whole by stupidity and a debilitating bankruptcy of imagination. Moving on. I was gifted a toy car, one that you pulled back a few times to store energy in the springs (no, I didn’t know the physics then) and let loose. I got the idea of that. Pfff, easy. And no, you probably wouldn’t know the kind of toy I’m talking about unless you’re an ancient relic of time (ah! You nearly admitted to knowing about it, didn’t you? Bbbbbut that would make you…). This  little roller had a trick topping it - a flashing light that would go on when it moved. Since there was no battery – yes, I knew about those way before I started making little torture devices for fun – I wondered, oh! I wondered. Nothing for it but to smash it open in the interests of science and knowledge. Aha! A little metal strip attached to a not so little flint stone wheel which made sparks when the wheel did its cycling. That figured, I got bored. My mom saw me with the broken car. She fixed me with a gaze that posed a definite statement: “This creature didn’t come out of me, could not have.” My sense of not belonging bloomed spontaneously at that moment. It has remained fresh and smelling swe…well, smelling of different things since then for five decades. I did make a lighter with that stone and metal strip combo and gave it to an older boy in the neighbourhood who I knew used to surreptitiously smoke cigarettes. Always happy to help.

This is all leading somewhere. If you’re the kind who needs to know always where, go away. The remaining seven of you (three is it?), read on maybe.

That desire to figure things out, fueled by fun and wonder and cheap thrills and not giving a damn for strictures, has remained undiminished in me. People who know me reasonably well understand that I’m overburdened equally by empathy and exhaustion at the ills of our world and guilt at my inability to heal what’s wrong with the world. This unbridled curiosity to have fun figuring things out is the only thing that keeps life fresh and limitlessly interesting for me. It prevents me from falling into the abyss of corrosive cynicism or turning my light out. It also keeps things real and grounded. It allowed me an unusual understanding. For instance, I’m not a musician yet I feel and understand music in a way even most musicians don’t seem to. I grew up in an India at a time when to be a success professionally you had to be a doctor or an engineer failing which at least an MBA. I refused to be any of those. Yet I retired professionally when I was 41. My generation built careers ‘serving’ years in the same company. The longest I spent employed in any one organization was 37 months; my average was under 2 years. The last time I was interviewed for skills was when I was 24; all my job interviews after that were about ‘organisational fit’ HR shit, whatever that is.

If you’ve come this far, you might well think this is an exercise in self-aggrandisement. It’s not. I am not gifted, I am not precociously talented. I am reasonably intelligent but so are millions of others. What I do have is a high level of empathy, imagination, and a near-suicidal appetite for risk. An issue with authority too. Most importantly, I have an unquenchable thirst to be better; in 54 years of living, it's become spinal, I don’t even think about it. I break things but I build things, often better. What I’m saying is that these are traits you can develop. I’m not extraordinary in my gifts and talents yet I have led an extraordinary life. Why cannot you?

I’ve never been afraid to make an ass of myself but this a new one, being a pompous ass. At the risk of sounding preachy which I have assiduously avoided so far I tread into new territory for me. Lessons from the Lord Of The Bantering (I’m not just all talk, you know):

-              Reality bites. Bites hard, balls and nipples and all those painful places. Get used to it. Life doesn’t suck. You do. Deal with it.

-              Question notions but way more importantly, question yourself. It’s circular; the one snake feeds on the other. Don’t do it for the heck of it. The rebel without cause or pause is a bloody buffoon. Do it to be better, do it to make better. That’s the only worthwhile value of understanding.

-              Rules have a purpose. They’re made for the greater good. Fair. But they need to change with times. Our monsters are different now (Sauron remains though, I should know). Slay monsters!

-              Understand that societal rules are ostensibly an attempt at holding stability but more than that, to keep the powerful in power. Power cuts are good.

-              You need to understand rules and why they exist in order to bend, change, or break them. If you do it solely because you swing to “I’m a rebel”, you’re just being a mindless twit.

-              It’s not ok to fail; it is important to fail. But it is to no avail if you do not understand why, truly.

-              Don’t be a slave to the grind. Question, explore, discover, learn, absorb…repeat.

-              My second favourite quote related to the above is Tolkien’s “Not all those who wander are lost”. Wander, wonder, try things out, fail, soar, fall, rise, grit your teeth, grin and smile, have a ready laugh. Develop judgement and discernment which you never will if all you do is be a conditioned, programmed automaton.

-              Take things for granted, it allows you to sleep well. Don’t take things for granted, it makes you better. It could also make you paranoid though. Judgement & Discernment? Get it?

-              This is my favourite quote: “Don’t be sorry; be better” from the mostly excellent TV series “Elementary”. The first part is not to be taken literally; that’s not the point anyway. If you’ve screwed up, have the courage to accept it, own it, and acknowledge it, and apologise for it even if it’s triggered by someone else. Take responsibility for your behaviour. Do not be put off if the other person does not accept it. It’s important for you to do the right thing. Some people get it, others don’t. But that should not sway you from your own high code of conduct.

-              Integrity and honesty are not easily found now. Make yourself the motherlode of those rare metals. People can question my taste, my judgement, my understanding etc. – heck, I do myself – but they’ll come through as blathering idiots if they doubt my integrity. I’ve made a good thing of it and so can you. Sidenote: read O Henry, like, all his short stories. IYKYK but you won’t till you read. There is such a thing as the honesty scam.

-              Do your damnedest to hold the moral high ground by your own conduct. Integrity. But wear it lightly, yeah? No one likes a priss, rightly so. Be cool.

-              Don’t take bullshit from anyone. Don’t bullshit anyone.

-              Be brutal with yourself. Be kind with others. Try. Between the two, the second is more important. I have had exceptional success with the first. I learnt about the latter later and I don’t always do it. But I’ve always done my best to be fair and that, I think, is a reasonably acceptable substitute for kindness. But be discriminating with both or you could do some damage; judgement and discernment, people!

-              Blaring “I’m cool, I’m awesome, I’m powerful” doesn’t make you any of that. Being so does. Folk bragging that they’re crazy/cool/mavericks are usually people who are far from it and who need help with their insecurities and finding themselves.

-              People change, you change, even a boulder changes. Be fluid. What you derided once might not be so contemptible after all as your own experience and understanding develop over time.

-              Most of what we hold as truth is really only reinforced opinion and as such open to question. So again, question.

-              The only person responsible for you is you. Sitting around constantly using your ‘upbringing’ for your flaws is understandable only up to a point. It soon wears thin. You’re not your parents or your teachers or whatever; you’re more than this. So be. More. Which part of evolution don’t you get?

-              You can’t save everyone and everything; don’t even pretend to. Even one is more than nothing because it makes you better than most. Start with that. But don’t have this pretence of being a saviour. The saviour syndrome is horribly wretched. I see it all the time and I have not seen anything uglier than that, not even a crazed politician’s rhetoric. What did I say? Be cool. The primary person you’re saving by what you do is you and that’s one more than otherwise.

-              Related to above. When I was 18 (years, not months; weren’t you reading properly when I wrote I’m not precocious?), my answer to the question of the purpose of my life was a blithe, maybe trite “If one life has been made better by my existence, that’s it, I’m good.” I’m 54 now. That idea, even if naive, still remains true in my head (maybe I’m a zombie). I hold this and the previous statement very dear. I take it too seriously though. I struggle with guilt at not having done enough. Don’t be like this guilty me. Be a better you. That’s the whole point of this post.

-              I’ve always got what I wanted. It’s true. I don’t want much but what I do I get after with all intensity and focus. I can do that because my energy and desire are not spread thin over a myriad objectives. e.g I don’t have a car. I’ve had the pleasure in the past of having driven some nice ones, cars that were mine but that was incidental. I would have been fine without them because I didn’t want them. I’m no hermit, not even suggesting that you be; I’m just clear about what I want and my greed, such as it is, is a tamed little thing. I don’t have a car but I have a pretty good stereo system. I’m not alone in being thus. I have friends who have let go of what would be considered “cushy” for a life that’s satisfying for them. Most people go after things based largely on what others possess. Your wants are yours, not your peers’.

-              Being a specialist is an idiotic construct created by pathetically limited minds whose ideas of excellence breed in a narrow, stunting cage. Try different things out. You might well be the world’s greatest, most balanced tightrope walker. How will you know that if you don’t take the plunge.

-              Dog person, cat person, Swiftie, metalhead, scientist, artist: these are all braindead containers, numbing cages for your mind. Be all of this and more, much more. A steadfast, perhaps manic, refusal to be defined has made my life richer beyond most. No reason for you to be any different.

-              Be aware, be good, but don’t be trendchasing woke. Like, please; that’s just pathetic.

-              We’re all hypocrites. Be conscious of it and be less so.

-              The only fortress you should be in is made of a moving wall of interesting, sensitive, good people. Some of that jolly good, jolly good will eventually rub off on you.

-              If you’re good, own it. Don’t pretend to be otherwise; that is just modesty, false and hypocritical. Then again, being consumed by vanity only makes you a boor. Modesty is for the ordinary, humility is for the great. Accept yourself; nothing more, nor less. Humility = Great, remember.

-              Again: Question, and question mindfully. Steps to an interesting life.

-              If you think about it well, you have little to lose; you only have been conditioned to think about loss and how that loss is gigornimous. Look around you. Our world’s a bleeding mess following the norm. So if you’ve done your thinking right, wreck things. Be an entire wreck things factory. And then build.

-              Get rid of this dumbass idea of immortality. The likes of Aryabhatta and Copernicus, even such later models as Lincoln and Gandhi are already phasing between legend and myth. Immortality is at best a passing phase. What you do in this life is all you do. Don’t do it to be celebrated. Do it because you can get so much satisfaction.

-              Related to above, you live, you die. Make the most of it. You could go all out and be lousy or you could go all out and lay claim to true humility/greatness. Go for humility and greatness - or greatness and humility if you’d prefer that. Strong recommendation, even though I have neither of these qualities myself.

-              Men and women – alright, all the 26 (and growing) genders - are equal. Equally stupid. Don’t be stupid. That’ll then make you superman or superwoman or superwatchamacallit. Super. Whatever. That’s a good exit line, I think. But not quite there yet. Predictable, I’m nut.

-              This is the most important thing and like some pills, best taken together. Be happy but do so without depriving others of their right to happiness. Oh! do go ahead make exceptions. What was that I said about developing judgement and discernment, ey?

P.S.: Funnily enough I had no trouble keeping myself steady and balanced ambling on a ship shunted around on a heaving Drake Passage (supposedly the most turbulent patch of sea on earth) while most passengers were heaving buckets in the toilets. Stability is overrated, like almost all human rules.

P.S.+: In keeping with our times, you can be smug about all this and dismiss it as “Hahaha! Unkal talk”. And that’s fine. But maybe, just maybe you’ll learn something about not being particularly gifted yet living an extraordinary life. Because most people, I think, are not greatly gifted. A few rise above that. It could easily be many more.

P.S.++: Did you spot all the music references and silly puns? That’s all this was about; if you didn’t get it, you get, at best, modesty and nothing, but nothing of humility.

P.S. edge of Milky Way: Know this – this is a sanitised version. This is me being nice, and kind, and polite, and gentle, and all those sweet things your uptight yet quite right mom – bless her - warned you against.

P.S.7 universes away: If you’re not searching (I won’t say Googling anymore) for these terms and references here that you don’t get, why the fuck did you bother reading till here?

P.S. level Lord Of The Bantering: My life is governed by curiosity. Curiosity killed the cat. I’m alive; many times over, even when many have wished otherwise. Ergo I’m not a cat. That’s reasoning, get? Be reasonable.

P.S. beyond everything: I finally found balance, equilibrium. Of sorts. My kind anyway. Here it is, a picture of a well-balanced life.