Sunday, June 29, 2008

Containers & Labels

... I am taking the liberty to be revolutionary in thinking (or call it insane) - chain me assertively if I cross the borders. The reason for this fathomless feelings and happy emotions are perhaps due to the inevitable fact of life that there is always a 'vacuum' in us that we are searching around for 'substance' to fill. Relationship brings with it substance through its values, and the other side of this is that not all relationship can fill the entire space of this vacuum. A Liz or a Jane or a Robert or a Richard may be filling for you one or other physical or psychological vacuum, and X or Y may be filling the other chamber of that imaginery vacuum in us. Liz and Jane and Robert and Richard and X and Y are all different components that, when "independently put together," produces the kind of combination of the heights of joy and the depths of sorrow that we experience. (do I make sense - but then an insane mind is not suppose to!!) My wife and my daughters gives me immense pleasure on one end, filling one or other chamber of this vacuum. But the truth that we (at least traditionally) deny is that they are not the sole suppliers of joy and sorrows - they are not.


Not one factor or person can be the catalyst to produce happiness, nor can one entity be the sole supplier; it is available from different sources like any other household materials, though harsh it may sound to state so. It may be considered a sin (because I know it took for me minutes to crystallize these lines due to the battle of mind and heart within) if I tell anyone that ones wife cannot provide him absolute happiness (or ones husband to his wife!) - because it is perceived that, that's what a 'family' is for, "to provide each other absolute happiness." When you and I and the others around us are not 'perfect' and thus not 'an absolute', how can one simply be the sole provider of 'absolute happiness' simply becasue one enters into a bond of 'marriage', or put a label of whatever?


We all have different sources to fill our undefined and unconscious needs - one or two corporate leaders in my organization are a source that make me immensly happy that my wife cannot, my books are a source that gives me a great pleasure that the company of my siblings cannot, my wife is a source of great happiness which my mother cannot, my mother is a wealth of happiness which both my wife and daughters cannot, and my friend is absolute treasure of joy and love - a reservoir of happiness which neither my mother nor my wife can. All this doesnt mean that we are battling with each other's significance or identify in life; on the contrary, we are only perhaps finding a ground where we can avoid the stress owing to the conflicts rising day in and day out from faking the 'perceptual significance' against the 'actual significance'.


These are however not the kind of statements that we can talk to a crowd - in fear of making enemies or branding labels, despite the fact that we will have many around us who will nod their head in agreement to these statements - at least when they are not observed, not watched!!!


However we label the human interaction today, to me those labels defines their limitations, because those are all 'containers' that limits the acceptance of its content. Brotherhood is a container, neighbour is a container, acquaintance is a container, friendship is a container, a priest is a container, a rabi is a container, love is a container, a coupole is a container, sons and daughters are containers, because, all these labels have limits of what they can take from us and what we can give into them; it can only take so much, and those are the borders of the labels we define for those interactions.


(and it echoed in the air.... with smell of dry blood.... echo of scream that came from distant horizon... "stone him to death...." ... "stone him to death...."
... so was the dream.