My Years of Stagnation

A man is his own star and perhaps in no time of my life have I felt it as profoundly as I do now. The star makes the planets orbit and sway whatever astronomical objects appears in its life, no medium nor influence can absolve it of its unwavering obligation. And as I am made acutely aware of how deficient I have been in personal agency- by maturity or turn of events- this ring more potent than ever. To begin with-my 8 month backslide from my classmates on eve of not tending to my French or the competing pressure from my mom to return back to my country- giving myself in to the civil service or their business ventures or a general lack of direction and purpose. If I had to summarize my life, all I have done is arbitrarily engage myself with whatever that came in my way, having little thought, care or concern. As these realizations occur du jour, I feel compelled to articulate, act on the actionable and save myself from what I have condemned myself to. It is very tempting for an individual studying himself/herself to claim omniscience and thus I will not claim to know all the forces impinging on my life and also hope that this stands the test of time and the test of Flaubert's famous "la rage de vouloir conclure" or the rage for wanting to conclude……. (French fever!)

In my years of high school and college(since) I had assented to the worst parts of my nature- foolish indifference and flippancy at the heart of all my activities. I had at that time (even now) only academic obligations and with minimal effort I could get away with everything. As I was consistently within top 5 students of my cohort- thus earning the satisfaction of my parents- I could scatter myself to reading or gaming inordinately. If life is a sum total of all our experiences and the fact that I am happy with my life would make this observation grossly unfair. Once however, I put on my critical lenses, I could say this was the incipience of my lack of work ethic. Never have I worked hard or wanted something that could stretch the net of my competence. There has been no instance-literally nothing in the horizon of my memory- where I dedicated myself with a singular focus and industry to achieve something. The fact that I came from a family with lack for nothing (relative to the general population), and how much of it affects my being may also be worth exploring.

But at any rate, once university started- away from my home and family- I was much the same, always deferring my studies and obligations. If my classmates put 80 hours of attendance in class and study, I put only a fraction of it- almost all of it in the week preceding the exam. Hilariously at no point in my life have I exercised my ability to cram and absorb new things as ruthlessly as I did in the last 2 years. It was not that I don't like learning new stuff, in fact I do- to a large degree that it is my favourite past time- but I simply diluted my time and effort into many things. I now wish that I read the management book that my professor included as suggested reading but never incorporated, I wish I finished the econometrics textbook beyond what chapters were included in the syllabus, I wish I did projects with my newfound programming knowledge beyond what was dictated, I wish I attended more seminars and took more courses than necessary( I eventually did but even so!).

If my beliefs are true, then the lack of challenge and growth coupled with my superficiality could have been the catalyst for my stunting. While not entirely scattered to the wind, a lot of my time and effort was inanely mired in things that may never amount to anything. How many hours of infotainment or trivia that have brushed my conscious will never resurface? I understand it is a dangerous game that I am playing here. If I cannot claim omniscience, nor reconstruct all the elements in the development of my life - intellectual, personal, all things forma mentis - who's to say what would remain of my being? Let's say I removed ~2000 hours expended in Dota 2 from my own life ( a real time strategy moba played with 10 humans) would I be writing this(would I be able even)? In the fullness of rationality, I could acquit myself of remorse but the whole exercise should be very inconclusive. To recognize and acknowledge this is not to exonerate myself, rather, to recognize that we may all will be judged for complacency and faults we fail to see in ourselves.

But the ontological nature of my stagnation has a particular piquancy. For whatever reason I am unable to partake in anything that will not meet my curiosity or supersede my self-anointed importance or utility. And so, while I may not scroll endless reels of TikTok or Instagram I will readily consume any documentary, speech, presentation or curated YouTube. I cannot prove or disprove faux intellectualism but pressingly, since being interested by almost everything I hollow myself out inevitably. This takes many other forms such as buying books on whim or alternately filling up my SSD with epubs/pdfs/ mobis- many of which I don't even read or finish- or watching videos at fast speeds or (to much consternation) being unable to watch generic/pop-culture movies, series or play new AAA titles. At the risk of losing articulation: my attention consummation is seeking activities that have an intellectual umami for me……Think of why people add cheese/anchovies/tomatoes/ whatever glutamate(umami) flavour to their food…. to make it more savoury. These realizations, while not entirely novel, have not been dealt with systematically. If there is a way to redeem myself, I must deal with these tendencies and find my reconciliatory footing.

To speak about the actionable, I must start by remembering how I have been given to fits and starts of resolve and purpose throughout these years (perhaps symbolic of the metastasis that ails me). Ill thought or ill- sustained or ill-accomplished – they have all contributed to my feelings of wretchedness and remorse. But the more I reflect, the more it comes to me with an alienated serenity of acceptance. Take the fact that had I started my masters (economics and public policy) at the same department I have been studying since last 3 years, nothing will have changed, and I would have the same affliction of half-heartedness for the foreseeable. And thus, it is vitally important that I used this setback to learn that true growth can only come from within, not from imitating or for its own sake. What also follows is that consistency for its own sake is foolish and impossible. Perhaps deep inside me there is a perpetual ceiling like the bottom of a geyser. I keep on hoping that things might come to an eruption so that I may turn into a different person. And perhaps real transformation may not come as eruption - it may require this very period of stillness to understand what lies beneath the surface- a call for an occasion of self-mortification and examination.

Consequently, I feel strongly that what may also redeem me is that I don't thieve myself anymore of my own time. I must make it my immediate mission to find my latent desire and conviction- the present moment intuition matters more than past decisions or future worries. And in the backdrop of whatever pressure, enticement or convenience I must prioritize authentic self-expression above all. I cannot possibly enumerate the many people who I look up to but in the immensity of their individual work and legacy, I should be able to match in sincere commitment. I have found that I am relentlessly self- critical what gestates into lack of confidence. To channel this into improvement may finally unlock the path of detachment, motivated by enthusiasm and undiluted pleasure in life's work for example.

I have taken a liking to the French word débrouillard (literally translates as "one who can untangle"), a term describing a resourceful and independent person able to cope with difficult situations— something maybe I aspire to ascribe to myself .For me, the biggest emancipation will be able to proclaim I had been engaged, heart and soul, in a pursuit (of fulfilment or duty or struggle or service or endurance or greatness or whatever….. time will tell). But that I might pursue some path, however solitary and narrow and crooked, in which I could walk with love and reverence.

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