An unsavoury saviour.
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| Makoto Shinkai sure has a way of making dreary scenes look incredible. |
There
are many dreary things in this world, some big and some small. Ones of the
small kind are the kind that get swept under the rug in terms of memorability
and overall personal contentment. Why? Because they’re little things that end
up being ‘a given’ in our minds, deservedly so because having a shower
shouldn’t be something you consider a personal achievement. The bigger dreary
things in life are the things we complain about, things that take up a chunk of
time and effort and are also generally unavoidable, usually coming in the form
of a ‘commitment’ or that contract to harvest the souls of the restless. Look
at your daily life and you will surely find several activities that fall bang
perfectly in this category: a commute, long work hours, compulsory attendance,
cleaning your room/house/cow, wrestling invading bears, wrestling invading
beers, purely tedious work and so on. If there’s something in common in between
the things sequentially mentioned above in a string of words known as a
sentence, it’s that these are all things we generally dislike doing, and what
is another way to say ‘dislike doing’? ‘Dread doing’.
Dreariness
is essentially composed of things we dislike doing and things we generally like
to believe we’d be better off without. Then why did I use words for dreariness
that we’d generally relate to things like holy prophets, gods and pizza
delivery boys? Because there’s a lot more to dreariness and how it plays into
our contentment-seeking psyche. As I have said in the ‘Happiness’ bit, basic
happiness is a momentary emotion while contentment is a grander, over-arching
state of being – thus we, at some point, unknowingly drift towards contentment
in our actions and commitments. Not entirely unlike moths and a flame, minus
the whole catching fire and slowly burning to death part. It’s a part of
growing up, when we drift away from the phase of constant seeking of some form
of inebriation and pleasure, and more towards seeking contentment – usually
following a realisation that a day of contentment makes all the little things
sweeter. Attending classes and sitting through days of college became far more
palatable for me than a day of doing other things outside college when I
realised that the Diet Pepsi on the way home tasted much better when I stuck to
the dreary side. In other words, I am now going to do something I dread to take
this article thing forward – look inwards.
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| Here's a picture to break the dreariness of this article thing. |
First,
let me look at my current situation. I am, for all intents and purposes,
jobless though I am not bereft of work since I wile (AKA spend productively)
away my time working on my own projects and learning skills – all of which I
enjoy greatly, but there is still this unsettling feeling that spreads through
like ink on a white double-spread bed sheet that you got at a 35% discount from
a nearby restaurant. It’s a generally unsettling sentiment that I am not doing
anything with my time, which may have something to do with the fact that I’m
not making any money, and I’ll be damned if it isn’t one of the most annoying
sentiments around. I could accompany this with a rant about ‘artists versus the
world’ with regards to treatment and pay (my views aren’t as one-sided as I
feared) but that is another topic for another randomly written (typed) out
article thing.
The
multidimensional problem with the above problem is that it actually creates a
productivity paradox, wherein productivity slows down owing to that ink-feeling
and essentially creates something akin to a snowball that grows in size as it
rolls and then randomly dissipates and reappears from scratch at random
intervals. Indeed, this cycle became incredibly annoying and led to one thing:
more coffee… and me thinking thoughts and now writing (typing) thoughts here.
The key lay within looking back to times where I felt I was more consistently
content, compare that to my current situation, mix an acid and alkaline to form
a salt and see what the differences existed and wherein lay the origins of the
ink-feeling.
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| Makoto Shinkai eye-porn. |
Turns
out ‘dreariness’ is the thing most lacking in my life right now – the grit and
realism of commitments I have to keep and others I cannot escape, and I was a
bit aghast since surely there must be something wrong with me (besides
everything) that I think that dreariness is what I miss. On paper I am doing
things that I love, things that I ultimately want to devote my life to and
things I’m willing to write sappy lines about my love for. I then brought out
my monocle, proceeded to put it back inside and tried to dissect the curious
problem – and one of the first things I learned was that I had no division or
‘wall’ between what would be called my work and my play, so I’m really in the
same mind-set and frame of existence throughout the day, which makes the lack
of distinct, tangible work hours all the more pronounced. But I suppose that is
more of an ‘Artist World Problem’ than something general.
Ultimately,
the dreariness I missed was not the whole-sale dreariness that accompanies a
lot of other things but the little slices of dreariness throughout a day that
helps ‘punctuate’ the entire day for your mind. Case in point – the commitment
of a job or class, wherein there are slices of dreariness all around it that
help demarcate it in your day and each slice of dreariness fulfilled is another
piece in the contentment pie. Sounds strange? Think about some of the ‘bad’
days you might have at work (or college (or whatever) (there are so many
brackets in my things because I was a programmer at heart)) and think about the
fact that you are still going to feel a strong degree of contentment from it
(note: bad doesn’t include any freak occurrences such as accidents, exorcisms,
fights and crocodiles) – why? Because the entire task of getting up on time,
dressing up on time, leaving on time, reaching on time, leaving in time and getting
home in time in itself propagates your pie. We feel we have done something
meaningful with the day with just those slices punctuating it. ‘It was a bad
day but I still went there and did what I have to do’.
Ultimately,
contentment is rooted in the feeling of ‘pulling your weight’ and a commitment
with these slices about it is a very direct and definite way to feel like you
have done something meaningful with your day. To put it another spin – think
about the fact that I want a job doing the exact (roughly so) same things I
currently do. By all means, what I do will essentially remain unchanged but
those slices of dreariness will add ‘definition’ (1080p or bust) to my day and
make the entire damn thing a more pleasant affair – it’s strange honestly, the
fact that the addition of several mundane activities in your day help make it
so much better. How much better the beer on Saturday is when these have all
been done through the week.
another way to look at it is that your day
is a sentence and just try to think about how aggravating a sentence with no
punctuation whatsoever to help separate it from the others or to give it form
can be
Versus a sentence with punctuation to
clearly define its dimensions, and how easily it flows despite having more
things within it.
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| Nope, dreariness doesn't really work much in a game... especially when there are usually 4 to 7 of these things at a time. |
So,
yes… dreariness is a surprisingly important part of our lives and one of the
basic routes to contentment and, to be a bit blunt, possibly an essential for
contentment. Think about the fact that I sometimes go to a coffee shop, sit
down and do whatever I would do at home, but it ends up making me feel more
content in the larger scope of things – the coffee might have something to with
it, but that’s besides the point – and I suspect it’s because of the fact that
I dressed appropriately (since togas aren’t the standard in India), put on my
shoes, packed a bag, travelled there, felt highly compelled to do what I wanted
to do so I fit the image of a studious lad working hard alone in a coffee shop
which possibly represents a highly idealised and stereotyped romantic image,
drank coffee and then travelled back. Don’t take the satisfaction that spikes
the dreary, non-essential activities flanking the ‘main activity’ (writing this
article thing in a coffee shop) lightly.
All
in all, a little slice of dreariness in our daily lives is critical to
remaining sane. Now, pardon me as I slip into my toga and talk to the flying
purple cat that lives in my ceiling fan.
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