This seems to have
happened to me, more than once, on a recent trip to Mumbai. While I was
pleasantly surprised at some of the things I did manifest, I feel rather
grateful to have found something I didn’t even know I was missing - inspiration. It
arrived in the unlikely form of reconnecting with an old acquaintance from
college, one I never thought I would be friends with, largely because of a
mutual indifference caused by misunderstandings.
So it came as a
surprise when we randomly started connecting over each other's somewhat
controversial posts on social media, and having conversations on topics that
would mostly invite not only the opposing points of view from mine, but also
the suggestion to stop discussing the subject altogether so as to not engage in
a heated and potentially friendship-altering debate. In this day and age of
cancel culture with people getting offended at the drop of a hat, I was able to
have a real discussion with him and get real insights in to opposing points of
view, without either party taking offence to the other's perspective. I had
missed having an intellectual sparring partner, and being able to discuss things logically without
merely participating in the outrage that surrounded a topic of interest was
refreshing.
And so while in
Mumbai, this person and I caught up over a pleasant lunch, and discussed things
I actually cared about for a change, peppered with college gossip of course.
Among the many subjects visited that afternoon, we talked about our shared love
for writing, and how we wanted to write more and frequently. The lunch also
served as a healthy dose of how people perceived me as a conversationalist,
because for the first time in my life, I was conversing with someone who did
not shut up long enough for me to actually get a word in!
Not long after I
returned to Bangalore, he shared with me some of the pieces he had written. Upon
reading them, to say I was blown away, would be an understatement. Although prose,
his sentences flowed poetically; there was imagery, despondency and romanticism
in the carefully chosen words. It was like Robert Frost writing prose.
That is when I
realised that The Passengers knew a thing or two about yearning. You only know
you're missing something when you experience the absence of it. It struck me
that I had been reading mediocre writing, unnoticed, until I read good writing
again. Worse, as a result of consumption of mediocre literature, my own writing
had taken a tremendous hit. On re-reading some of my previous pieces, I was
disappointed, though not altogether shocked, to find that my
"creative" writing was creative no more and instead had degraded to
glorified journal writing.
It should come as no surprise that I
struggle with over-achiever perfection anxiety, and therefore lack motivation
when I do not immediately excel at something. It was even more soul-crushing to
admit that my writing skills were not all that I imagined them to be. Considering my obsession with perfection and
the ridiculously lofty standards I set for myself, this epiphany was a truly
destabilizing moment, and it took tremendous
self-restraint to not immediately delete every post I had
published on my blog to wipe away the embarrassment of such sub-par writing.
But embarrassment and failure are the building blocks of success, so instead of
obliterating the entirety of my blog, I chose to retain the drivel as a reminder
of what comes out when shit goes in.
I often wonder how long it would have taken
me to realise that my writing had been steadily deteriorating if I had not met
this man or read his work. My interactions with him have served as reminders
that I am capable of more, of better. In fact, writing is not the only facet of
my life that I have been forced to reassess because of him. I have since had
other rather eye-opening conversations with this person. Each time, these talks
ended up busting a belief I held or giving me a new perspective on something I
thought I had resolved; each time, I think about the life lessons I would have
missed if I hadn't taken the opportunity to reconnect with this person because
of a decade old misplaced and misjudged prejudice.
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