Incomplete Awareness

 

For the past few months, I have been orbiting too much around the concepts of life. I observed, changed, endured, tried to find meaning, happiness, tried to do things that would bring joy. Some did, some didn’t.

Finally, I found out that maybe most things are just tricking the brain. Or in other words, there are different perspectives of looking at things, and the perspective a person chooses slowly becomes his identity.

For people like me, this ability to think from too many perspectives instead of one has landed me most of the time in dilemma and utter confusion about how to act.

Take this example. When I said “fooling the brain,” that itself is just one perspective. Somebody can look at the same thing through the lens of discipline or restraint. Somebody may call it self-control. Somebody may say it is going with the flow. Somebody may simply say it is all about what you choose to think.

But hitherto, after all the confusion and thoughts I previously believed in, I realised something else. Out of all the possibilities and scenarios arising in my mind, I still choose one action in the end. And maybe that action defines my character more honestly than all the perspectives before it.

Even then, that decision stems from insecurities and fear. Again, another perspective. I could have used words like awareness, maturity, or capability to handle the situation, but I didn’t. And maybe that itself explains the current state of my mind and thought process more honestly than anything else.

The saying that self-talk builds your character might fit here if explained this way. Negative self-talk creates a negative outlook, therefore less confidence, less willingness to act, fewer experiences, and hence less exposure to life itself.

But maybe, again, that is just another perspective. Somebody can still create a boundary and stop these things from affecting them if they truly believe so.

People say happiness cannot be found. You know why? Because maybe that idea itself has been fed into the brain so deeply that people stop looking for happiness directly.

Money buys happiness only if you believe it does.

But still, there is the conscious and evolutionary part of us that exists beyond perspective and cannot be ignored completely. So everything is not entirely vague and absurd. But the meanings we attach during our lifetime definitely are.

Another realization hit me in the past month.

People talk about de-stressing, moving away from places, going on trips, being close to nature, changing environments to detox and reroute the mind. Unplanned trips in the middle of hectic semesters, spending time with friends, talking to someone - people say all these things help.

No. They only help if you believe they help.

You can only be distracted if you want distraction.

Doing all these things, I still felt empty. I still felt the load of life, the weight of consciousness required to keep the body alive and moving every day.

Escape stops being escape when you know the destination is still the same cage.

Another thing I realised is that emotions themselves have become strange now. Earlier I thought I was suppressing emotions, so I started expressing myself more. In the last two years, I cried more than I probably cried in my whole life before that. I can feel deeply now — love, emptiness, grief, warmth, butterflies, the urge to hold the world in my arms - everything feels exaggerated, but only for a short moment of time.

Nothing stays.

I adjust too quickly to situations around me, sometimes even beyond my control. The emotions arrive intensely and disappear just as intensely. Nothing offers peace and calmness anymore, only temporary interruption.

And lately, even happiness itself feels exhausted. The mind keeps searching for stronger stimulation, stronger distraction, stronger interruption - not because it enjoys those things, but because silence itself has become heavy.

Maybe the burden of consciousness is not sadness itself, but the continuous awareness of existing.

Again, after all this discussion, I found that almost every misery of human existence can somehow be funneled down to expectations - whether from yourself or from the environment interacting with you.

And the irony is, even not having expectations becomes another expectation.

Maybe human beings were never meant to carry complete awareness continuously. Maybe that is why we create routines, ambitions, love, religion, philosophies, identities, relationships -not because they are perfectly true, but because they stabilize us enough to continue.

Because life does not wait for certainty.

The body wakes up.
Time moves.
People leave.
Work remains.
The mind loops.
And still, somehow, we continue.

Maybe hope is nothing more than that continuation.