"The Tortured Poets Department" sort of thing

I have been too busy, as of late, to write a few words that would constitute a blog. I know it makes me sound pretentious, but it is true. Penning (or rather, typing) a new blogpost is something that has been on my mind since May, closely followed by my need to complete my bucket list and eat lasagna.

As far as subjects are concerned, I admit I am at a loss. It is not that I have nothing to write about. I do. But what I have is not what would follow the course of my routine blogposts. It is something of a lament. I do not know how to go about describing it- The tortured poets department sort of thing? (Though I am no poet, mind you. Just a fellow writer scraping up a living)

I have constantly been typing and erasing the last sentence, since I do not know how to present it. We recently had to learn about censorship in our English text- I just finished my semester exam last week. Censorship is a topic I know very well about. I have always censored my thoughts, words and writings. Even my diary is censored whilst being written. I grew up in a hostile environment, where privacy is a concept that exists only in parallel words. In such a condition, I was forced to invent my own code to write my diary. I have even learnt to write in Arabic for this very purpose.

I hate censoring myself. My censored works do not feel like they have got life in them. I find myself striking off what I feel the need to voice the most. I am afraid of what others will judge of me. I fear the consequences I may face if my orthodox environment reads about how I wrote of subjects that are considered taboo for a “teenager who thinks she is ready for the world but is not”, like periods. It is weird that one cannot talk about or freely express what he thinks. I believe if everyone was given the liberty to do so, the world would be a better place. Almost all the hostilities and toxicity that is going on in the world is precisely because of this- lack of proper communication. People fail to grasp what the other is trying to say, and people who are trying to say something are often scared of being shunned.

As of recent, I have been constantly questioned by one individual (Yes. You.) about what I dream to achieve in life. I used to reply, once, that I wanted to take up Post Graduation in Physics, go for a PhD, work at CERN and live in luxury. You might have guessed that I have changed it. It is not like I do not WANT those things, but that my priorities have merely changed. I do want to achieve all of these, but they are just materialistic as far as I am concerned. I want to write a lot. I want to type and read and listen to music. I want to do menial part-time jobs because I want to make my own money while not taking up too much responsibility; maybe feel like self-sufficiency is not too far away. I want to do stand-up comedy. I want to write songs and attempt to record them, even though I cannot sing for my life. I want to form a band and keep making music, not because I want to get famous, but because I LOVE music, despite lacking talent. I want to surf, skate, go on a bike ride in Brazil, eat Burger King, meet and make friends of all kinds, go for concerts with my best friend, do graffiti and act in a play. But all these will be censored. The reason is that this is not what is expected of me. The aforementioned “dreams” are not what people want me to expect to achieve in life. They want me to give priority to stability rather than happiness. The real question is whether stability actually DOES lead to happiness. What if you are stable, got a good job, green money raining in your garden filled with posh things like sprinklers while you sip glass after glass of champagne under your chandelier-adorned living room, but you are alone? What if even though you have got companions who will stick to you for the free food you buy them and a good time, you have got no one to talk to about how you feel?

When something wrong happens, people tend to ask, “What happened?”. The default answer to that question is “Nothing.” That is because it is the wrong question to ask. It is NEVER nothing. It is always something. The question to be asked is “How do you feel?” The listener should not care about what happened, because it is up to the person to whom it happened to decide whether to take you into their trust. If you truly are being empathetic, you would care about how they feel about what happened- whether they are sad or lonely or angry. Whether they want to break something or bury their head in sand like ostriches do. You should care if they FEEL bad. Not about what made them feel bad, because there usually is nothing you can do about it. What you CAN do is make them feel better.

I have read many books, but I will admit that I have not had the chance to read something censored. The reason is that it has not crossed my mind to do so until this very moment. Why should a book be censored? I googled it (because that is how I roll). I did look down the road to where it bent in the undergrowth, but I could not find any GOOD reason for censoring a work.

Wikipedia says, and I quote:

“Book censorship is the act of some authority taking measures to suppress ideas and information within a book. Censorship is "the regulation of free speech and other forms of entrenched authority". Censors typically identify as either a concerned parent, community members who react to a text without reading, or local or national organizations. Books have been censored by authoritarian dictatorships to silence dissent, such as the People's Republic of China, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Books are most often censored for age appropriateness, offensive language, sexual content, amongst other reasons.”

I do not understand why books should be censored at all, unless it claims some specific age and is inappropriate for the said age. As for offensive language and sexual content, there already are books- bestsellers, in fact, circulating freely which contain such content. If you censor one, you have to censor all of them. Therefore, banning specific books make no sense except for the reason that they are banned for the thought process which they manifest- Some or the other thought that goes against what people want others to think, against the norm. It truly does not make sense.

As far as children are concerned, the reason they behave so well superficially but are internally pressurized is because they worry about being censored by parents and society. I happened to chance upon the concept of “The Golden Child Syndrome”. I admit, it disturbed me a bit.

The Golden Child Syndrome is caused by being raised in a family system where a child is expected to be exceptional at everything. Typically raised by narcissistic parents who are controlling and authoritarian, the main responsibility for the golden child is to be successful. Golden children often struggle with their own identity formation as adults. They may have spent their childhood being defined by their achievements, talents, or the roles they played within their families. Consequently, they may have difficulty discerning their true passions, interests, and personal goals.

It is the parents’ need to maintain a certain stance in the society that prompts them to pressure their child into such extremities. Forbidding children to follow their own passions and likes are also a sort of censorship, if only of the more dangerous kind, since children become inveigled by such trauma.

People hate change. It is okay to. Change is not always good. Movies have managed to instill this over-optimistic thought into the minds of the public, that change is always for the better. It is not change that comes for the better, instead, it is the way life is- ups and downs. The steepness of each “up” is proportional to the slope of the “down” you go (It is also possible to keep going down, but Newtonian mechanics does not allow it. Keep thinking that one day there will be an “up"). It is okay to hate change. In fact, things can change for the worse or for the better. Like this blog, how I employed very few instances of humor in it. It may trouble some of you, or it may not. I, however, am not in the mood to joke. In fact, I feel quite serious. It may seem like I am merely rambling about some random things, but I assure you, there have not been truer things I have written or said. These are straight from my heart.

How do you feel?

Bad things happen because- well, they just do. It is the progression of things. A Yin for a Yang. Black for white.

It makes no sense to associate black with bad. The color black associated with death is also ridiculous. In fact, I would say white is closer of a color to death than black is. People turn white after they die- Their blood turns cold and blue and whatnot. I admit I am not aware of the medical background of the whole thing, but I assure you, it is worth learning for the fun of it.

Death is a concept I have always wanted to write about. The basis of this statement is that I have so many thoughts about it. I think of death so frequently that I probably can write five to ten blogposts about it.

Death is basically the absence of life, but you know that. Life can be defined by the presence of a soul. Not a brain. You do not need a "brain" as such to live. People who are brain dead also live through life-support systems. It is true that these systems provide for all the unconscious actions of the brain, like breathing and digestion, but you do not need to THINK for that. It is automatic. Even without such automations, it is possible to sustain life. Life can only be sustained or preserved. It cannot be made to begin. It can be made to end, yes. External means are possible- accidents, murders. But all of it make use of the theory that the "soul" leaves the body after death and that is what defines the presence of life. It cannot be denied that even though it is possible to make the soul leave the body, it is impossible to manually or externally infuse it within the body of a baby (or an adult, like Frankenstein; Thanks, Mary Shelly, for that nightmare) to generate life. If we succeed in doing so, we become God. But that, of course, is not possible. The soul exists in another dimension. Such an existence cannot be comprehended by three dimensional beings like us. We might understand it in the future, but not now. It is because four dimensional beings have a three-dimensional shadow, like three dimensional beings have a two-dimensional shadow. Maybe we are shadows of Four-dimensional beings, but who knows? Maybe we are all living in a video game and cloud bursts are glitches, but who knows?

Excuse me. I might want to plug in my PC.

Alright. Where was I?

An experiment proved that it takes about thirty seconds for the brain to stop working after death- one conducted rather amateurly, but clever enough in my opinion, considering the availability of options as well as the situation of the era. Allow me to elaborate.

In 1794 during the Reign of Terror following the French Revolution, a French chemist, Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier (Yes, the chemistry guy), promised that he would blink for as long as possible when he was beheaded. He was sentenced to death by guillotine due to his discoveries which include Hydrogen and helping to implement the metric system (That is, for helping science set their wrongs to right). As a scientist he was naturally curious about what happens to the human head once it was removed from the torso. As an experiment he said that he would try to blink for as long as he could when his head was cut off. There were some reports that he blinked for up to 30 seconds.

This is why I consider Lavoisier as one of the greatest scientists in history.

To die is normal. Everyone must die. It is something we all must undergo, but resent having to (Like that paper due on Monday, or semester exams, or that bed-wetting phase). There are people who are scared to die or people afraid their loved ones would die (Thanatophobia).

How do you feel?

To cure somebody of Thanatophobia, psychotherapy or counselling in recommended. I do, however, know of a person who implements her own method of curing her twin of Thanatophobia. She frequently reminds the twin that she is bound to die someday, getting the latter used to the concept, so that when it eventually happens, the effect would be minimalized.

Let me tell you why this is a bad idea.

A person cannot be trained to overcome a fear by forcing them to brutally face it. That is stupidity. It is true that one can overcome fear by facing it, but it MUST NOT be forced. If so, it will only serve to develop as a trauma, ending up hurting the party involved a bit more. The person must understand and accept at their own pace. Do not try to catalyse or rush it. It is not always necessary to rip the bandage. Be gentle.

Familiarizing with the problem with the aim to provide a substitute solution only works in case of vaccines. To face Covid-19, the vaccines that we were unceremoniously jabbed with contain dead or weakened Corona virus. Never implement this method on someone's psyche. It is dangerous. I know because I used to do it.

If you keep reminding them that you are bound to die, you will just take away their happiness for the moment too. Do not shut down conversations of death, but do not bring them up if not necessary.

How do you feel?

I meant to write a bit more about death, but I cannot bring myself to. The fact that all my blogs contain an element of death is a bit disturbing, even for my standards. I will try to ease on it a little bit.

It is weird how you can turn a conversation from one topic to another. I swear I was talking about Lasagna, but we have reached death.

I do not wish to conclude this blogpost. The reason is that I simply cannot. I lack the ability to sum up what I talked about for the last three pages of this word document, because I cannot find a common thread connecting it. Writing is my therapy. I write to get things out of my mind. And since thoughts move at a speed greater than that of light, I currently have a blogpost.

Keep asking, How do you feel?