The first day we met, we laughed at silly jokes, talked for
four hours and ate and drank our way into the wee hours of the morning. The
three of us. A month or two later, i had a fight with them. ‘I’ and ‘them’
being the operative words here. Where the ‘them’ arose has a lot of
explanantions. Age, and frames of reference being the two most important ones.
The ‘I’ was me, freely expressing what i wanted to express, how i wanted to
express it. ‘They’ also did, and that is probably where the dreariness of the
‘them’ stepped into the argument. There weren’t two ‘I’s, there was a ‘them’.
We all share a country, and common experiences – some more
common and some lesser. We used to share food and dinner time though my tastes differ a lot
from ‘them’. In time, I wanted to cook for myself. And so i started doing my
grocery shopping and cooking separately. I suddenly also wanted a lack of
conversation because i thought i was losing a hold over who i was - trying to fit
in with them. I needed to reclaim my diet, my words, the originality of my
conversations, and my idiosyncrasies. In time, i did. I went farther from them and was very
happy with myself. They frowned , wondering what i was doing and
why. Perhaps they never thought about how important the withdrawal had become
for me.
So what is this world of ours really doing to each one of us? There has
always been a ‘them’ and ‘I'. It depends which one we choose. It matters whether we
fiddle with our blackberry in one hand whilst emoting with the other, and how
many times we facebook in a day. It matters because it changes the quality of the ‘I’ in us.
Being popular is fun. We all take turns at it. Some of us
love following those popular ones and bask in a shared glory. Most of us
probably love them because they can often make us laugh. Our inner worlds get
darker as we acknowledge the burden of knowing more about the world we live in.
We love facebook because it lets us all be happily popular. We also use it as an escapist means. But it also kills the time
in which we can be ourselves. Talk to ourselves instead of newsfeeds and
webpages.
What the three of us thought was a great friendship was now
only ‘them’ and ‘me’. There is a point at which friction arises because we blur
the lines between friends and family. Can friends be family? Well, yes and no.
We use the term friendship to meet our various needs. Some friends can make us
laugh, some can make us so happy. We also visit friends who can make us cry. We
remember them forever. But friends aren’t family. But that is probably not the
only reason why some relationships start out like they were always meant to be
and jerk midway to take an unexpected downturn.
We stop listening to each other. We listen to nagging
devious questions in our mind. We listen to the voice that says ‘this is dysfunctional’
and go along with it.
Conversations are not about efficiency and posting a ‘like’ on the next thing we’re going to say to each other. Our faces and bodies are not instagram photos in all their perfection.
Conversations are not about efficiency and posting a ‘like’ on the next thing we’re going to say to each other. Our faces and bodies are not instagram photos in all their perfection.
Conversations are about celebrating the imperfection in
ourselves and each other or about unnecessary indulgence. I don’t access them
with a password to redeem myself each day. I talk because i need to communicate,
laugh, cry, and feel. Let’s not breed a coup of silence. We need the sunlight
to stream in through the boarded up windows once again.
