not caring is quite powerful
but somehow i think the true power is in caring heh
this week’s Thought (singular)
bad novels come in fours. please let the next one i pick up be good please please
hi
recently, i was having a conversation with a dear friend about hope, and caring, and expectation, and how terrible it all is, and how much easier things would be if i could just, cynically enough, be objective in all tasks that give rise to the above emotions. instead of getting an emphatic nod of approval and enthusiastic agreement, i got these two messages that felt like gunshots through the very fabric of my reality.
of course, in a very abstract way, i knew this. by holding my reflection up to myself regularly, by being forced to identify my feelings, thoughts, reactions - i had recognised that to care, while difficult and terrible, is the only real way to truly live. but i had never had it put in front of me in such stark terms, and in such a revolutionary manner.
the merits of not caring, of being generally apathetic about personal and high-impact events, are numerous. they revolve around protection, security, safety. if you don’t hope, you can’t be let down. if you don’t expect, it can’t disappoint. this sort of self-preservation is almost instinctive after a while, and it’s a lovely, thin, gauzy, terribly inefficient material around a heart that worries more about being in one piece than about pumping. the lub-dub doesn’t matter so much as the compactness, put-togetherness, stay-in-place-ness of the fist-sized organ.
the fear of a let-down, of crushed hope and what it can do to you, is a powerful deterrent from fully caring. and in some roundabout way, in the way that we’ve started placing an inflated sense of importance on objectivity and stripping away the tiniest semblance of emotional variables, self-inflicted and deliberate apathy seems like the sensible thing to do. the rational thing, the logical thing, the grown-up thing.
i’m not immune to this way of thinking and this way of being. in fact, for the longest time, i’ve been an enthusiastic subscriber - nay, endorser - of shutting down the parts of us that could derail any precarious feelings-related equilibrium. but now, i’m faced with a sneaking suspicion, brought on in no small part by the above two messages.
the true power is in caring. imagine the efficiency, the quality, the clarity of a task if i allow myself to be fully invested in it. by fully, i mean every part of me - emotional and others. how powerful is it to give something all my passion, all my interest, all the things that are fragile and could crumble if it goes wrong? maybe the only way to live a full life is by serving our brittle up to hope, to caring, on a silver platter, painfully aware that there is a chance that all we’d be left with at the end is our stark reflection on a cracked, empty plate. maybe true power doesn’t lie in the desperate self-preservation that relies on cordoning off the ugly bits, the fragile bits, the treat-gently bits; maybe it lies in caring with our whole being, and suffusing every breath of clear-eyed objective and skill-based effort with desperate, blooming, awful hope.
not caring is quite powerful. but somehow i think the true power is in caring.
ps: to all the new readers who subscribed over the last few weeks - welcome. thank you for joining us. i hope you enjoy your stay here.
English Recitation Competition
I keep making the same avoidable few mistakes that I’ve always made, and then regretting them, and then regretting them less. Think of all the suffering happening everywhere, all the time, for nothing. What if memory’s just the dead, flourishing differently from how they flourished alive?
The Harp of Broken Strings, John Rollin Ridge
Well may this harp of broken strings Seem sweet to me by this lonely shore. When like a spirit it breaks forth, And speaks of beauty evermore! When like a spirit it evokes The buried joys of early youth, And clothes the shrines of early love, With all the radiant light of truth!
A significant factor generating my delight in being alive this springtime is the birdsong that like a sweeping mesh has captured me
A Poll!
Middle School Book Review
your regularly scheduled book recommendation has been temporarily halted. watch this space over the coming weeks so you don’t miss the next one!
find all shared books here.
A Picture!
The Good Side of the Internet
When I was in high school, ambition meant two things: escaping my hometown and becoming a writer. I’d planned to be worldly in a blurred sense that included handbags, passports, and publications. I never planned to move back to my hometown, until at thirty-three I did.
How Normie Twitter Accounts Became the Go-To Source for Breaking Movie News
Inside the perplexing, astonishing rise of @DiscussingFilm, @FilmUpdates, and other mysterious posters.
Two trends mark the Great North Indian Wedding today. The first is gunshots. The second is orchestra dances performed by women artistes. Together, they’ve created a minor epidemic of crime headlines.
Not all new Indian cinema was born in Bombay, Calcutta or Madras. One pioneer helped build the Kannada movie world in Mysore. In the year of his birth centenary, this is the story of Shankar Singh.
The unbearable lightness of BuzzFeed
BuzzFeed built a digital media empire in part by aggregating viral content from social media. A decade later, what’s next?
this week’s Song
Roz Roz by The Yellow Diary and Shilpa Rao
find all shared songs here.
thank you for reading, and see you next week <3
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