Only you can change your life
My readers—yes, I am talking about you—are damn cute. They will message me with superfluous words to inform me in private that they totally enjoy my work and that I am this and that and how I’ve made their lives better with my genius spin of words but they won’t even bother to drop a heart on my blogposts or share my blog links with their friends. They would rather take screenshots of their favourite lines and paragraphs and keep it to themselves. Well, these blogposts take weeks to compose (mainly because of my laziness). Anyway, it’s a strange secret affair that we have here. And this behaviour is not restricted to Substack. The same thing happens on other platforms like Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube. I receive super-kind messages but the very same readers don’t even react to my content. Maybe they don’t understand how the algorithm of social media works. Or maybe they are plain lazy. Like me. I think we deserve each other.
Very few entities can overwhelm a child the way a library does. When a little boy or a girl come face-to-face with the sheer volume of books in front of their face—elegantly lined up, stacked up and down, releasing a benign scent that will remain etched on the walls of the kid’s mind for decades to come, and in an order that a kid can’t fathom—a whole new world beckons. A world filled with curiosity, a world that is so silent and yet so loud with knowledge, a world that welcomes questions and cross-answers, a world that is nothing like the one that a child inhabits in general. That is the understated beauty of a library. Unfortunately, the library is fast becoming a relic of the past. If I was a father to a little human, I’d have definitely introduced her to the joy of scrolling through book titles. Humility taught by a library can’t be learned anywhere else.
Gene Hackman is 93 and hasn’t appeared in a movie since 2004. Morgan Freeman is 85 and is still active. Anthony Hopkins is 85 too and he won an Oscar recently, becoming the oldest guy to win in the Best Actor category. Jane Fonda is 85 too and she is nowhere close to retirement. Maggie Smith is 88 and so is Judi Dench — the former has a movie lined up for release this year while the latter seems unfamiliarly quiet in 2023. Michael Caine is 90 and he has upcoming releases, and not just Christopher Nolan movies, mind you. Clint Eastwood is 92 and he is busy working on his swansong. These are some of the more celebrated oldies from western cinema who have entertained us for years and years, and it’s worth spending a minute on a gloomy thought that one day, they will just disappear, leaving a spot that most probably shall never be filled again.
As long as you have a sense of humour—doesn’t matter if it’s good or great; all that matters is you can laugh—either at yourself without restraint and others with empathy—you are doing absolutely fine. The moment we lose the drive to greet life with irreverence, we let life win. And we shouldn’t let that happen. At least that’s what the finest comedians have tried to teach us. From Bill Hicks to Mitch Hedberg to Robin Williams, a common thread (and dread) was their ability to continuously make others laugh. Why so? It’s extremely difficult to eke a laugh out of someone. That art form is wicked. It’s not for everyone; to build a story and drop a punchline isn’t everyone’s cup of coffee. When Sean Lock passed away to cancer, we sort of expected it because he was thinning with every passing episode on the telly. When Norm Macdonald passed away, it was a shocker because nobody—including his family members and close friends—knew. In a tragic manner, Norm had his best punchline with his demise.
Since nobody talks about penis and testicles, this blog will make a concentrated effort to keep them hanging in our daily conversations. Let me start off by sharing a thought I had recently: if my body can put on weight, why can’t my penis? Moving on, the eunuchs of the last Chinese emperor, Puyi, belonging to the Qing dynasty, were supposed to wear their severed testicles and penises in jars around their necks while working. As you may know, they performed their guard duties mostly in the court. This raises so many visual questions but let’s not bother with them. Anyhow, I recently learned that a dead body can get an erection. It’s aptly titled ‘angel lust’ and it happens due to relaxation of muscles that control blood flow to the penis after death. Quite a scary movement inside a morgue, one can say. Lastly, to avoid lawsuits, American authors note that a fictionalized character has a small penis. For libel, it must be proven that the real person and fictional character are the same. Since most men are severely touchy about their manhood, such libelous cases never make it to court in the US.
Kindly do yourself a favour and don’t expect others to change your life. Most probably, nobody else has the power to do so. Only you can bring alterations to your thought process, and eventually, your mindset, and then through consistent habits, you can bring about a transformation in yourself. More often than not, we rely on others and devoid ourselves of all responsibilities. This is such a dumb step to take. Yes, you can and you must receive guidance and counsel from those who know better, but they aren’t going to knead the dough for you. That is solely your arena. Your life is your biggest spotlight. Good luck.
I once mused on this blog that what else can a man do apart from becoming a better man. It’s a long arduous journey where he has to course-correct himself and grow stronger with every passing twist and turn. It’s not easy when you don’t know the answers. It’s worst when you don’t even have the correct questions in place. And most of us, men, are having it worse because we are freaking idiots. Compared to a man, a woman is much more composed and in sync with her realities. I am at that age now where I ponder about existential intricacies: what went wrong, what could have been different, who is happiers, who sleeps better, etc. Here is my grand conclusion: a boy becomes a man only when he becomes a good father to a daughter. Until that point, he is deluded by his manic assumptions.
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