Sad Eyes...

"You have sad eyes," she said, as she sat on the chair opposite, in the two-by-two cubicle. As she looked into my eyes, I could see that she was serious, and maybe... just maybe... she had read me well. Too well. I averted my eyes.

No, wait! Don't go. This isn't an attempt at creative writing like some of my fellow bloggers. I probably couldn't write creatively. Or maybe I could, but it's never creative enough. (Is humour creative?) This isn't about reading people either. Then what is it about you ask. Well, I really don't know that yet.

It's just one of those days when I find myself relatively free and then I start wondering about my neglected blog and my sad eyes. So then I think maybe I can combine them and revel in their oneness. But it doesn't happen that way, does it? Life has a way of making mincemeat of your plans. That statement isn't really related to anything I'm saying here, but I just wanted to say it. Right now, another thing I want to say is - "Nothing ever goes away." That was said by Barry Commoner. Quite an optimist, I see.

Lately, that remark has been coming around from unforseen places and nudging me at the most unexpected moments. Not the Barry Commoner one, but the sad eyes one. Like I was seeing Mr. Prune (aka the 29 year old) in Indian Idol yesterday night, and suddenly, out of nowhere, it pops up. "You have sad eyes." Just like that. Yes, I know Indian Idol is pathetic but at least it shouldn't induce quietly unsettling moments akin to mild indigestion. It's just not right. It scares me. Bad programs having the power equal to indigestion. Terrifying.

But back to my sad eyes. What does that mean anyway? Sad eyes? Like how? Teary? Miserable? Piteous? Wretched? (I actually have the thesaurus open. So, hapless? Pathetic? Misfortunate?...) How does one have sad eyes? My eyes are normal. Like everybody's eyes. Maybe more beautiful, but not more sad than others definitely. I suddenly have this image of a droopy sop of a person, sitting with a long face in a corner. I'm big on images. That I am.

...And I have sad eyes.

Sigh. Barry Commoner was right. It isn't going away.

Aloneness

Being alone is not the same as being lonely. Lonely is sad whereas alone is just plain crazy... or so the world around me insists on telling me. Why can't people understand how lovely it is to spend time alone? Am I alone (that word again) in enjoying my solitude?

There are amatuer shrinks who insist on believing that being alone is a sure sign of clinical depression. A childhood friend who moved away from Hyderabad called me recently and during the course of the conversation asked me about other friends we both knew. I said I wasn't meeting them as much nowadays, in fact, I was spending a large part of my time alone. To say that she was shocked would be an understatement. She was beyond shock. And this girl knows me real good. Knows that I'm not much of a talker and do not like to socialize. But this didn't stop her from giving me a half hour lecture, LONG DISTANCE, about how I should be going out more and enjoying. Nevermind the fact that I was trying to say that I enjoy my alone tmes.

Why is it that being alone is considered to be a crazy thing to do? What if I prefer my own company rather than being in the middle of people and still being lonely?

I'm happy alone. I like my books. I like my world. I like my thoughts. I like wandering around in my head behind closed eyes. I'm not depressed. I am not crazy. I will not commit suicide. And I hate the question which goes "Are you alright?" just because I prefer to spend time by myself. No, I am not alright and I probably will not be alright in the middle of a chattering, singing, dancing group of people either. Thank you for asking.

I'd like to think of myself as an e-cluse rather than a recluse. I spend a lot of time online. Some of it with friends, some of it reading. I like it. Is that bad? I don't like visiting relatives. The online world has a lot of like-minded people. So what if they're living in Egypt or Dubai or Timbuktoo (is there really such a place)?

Alone works for me. Is it really that bad?

Needed to get that off my mind... now for the quotes. :p

"Alone, even doing nothing, you do not waste your time. You do, almost always, in company. No encounter with yourself can be altogether sterile: Something necessarily emerges, even if only the hope of some day meeting yourself again."

Emile M. Cioran (French philosopher, b.1911)

"What a lovely surprise to finally discover how unlonely being alone can be."

Ellen Burstyn

"Language... has created the word "loneliness" to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word "solitude" to express the glory of being alone."

Paul Tillich (German born American theologian and philosopher, 1886-1965)

"I lived in solitude in the country and noticed how the monotony of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind."

Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

and finally...

"With a rubber duck, one's never alone."

Unknown

Impressionist Triangle

It's amazing what people around you think about you. I mean, you may not be the person you're perceived to be. Not at all. Like I'm seen as this klutz who's a perfect living example of Murphy's law. Bad karma I say. It's just not my fault. Never is. Like this other day I was trying to lay my aching head on my desk and the chair beneath me slipped out from under me and I banged my head on the desk... wait, you don't need to know all that.

So coming back to the point, I'm perceived as being this person with whom everything goes wrong all the time, but Your Honour, I swear solemnly under oath that I am not that person! It's a case of mistaken identity! Never mind the fact that I just managed to delete my previous blog entry. Single-handedly at that. But, let's face it, mistakes do happen. I was just trying to check something out and clicked the edit button by mistake and I didn't want to edit. so then hit the submit button while it hadn't loaded yet and... *snip* (That was me cutting myself off in mid-sentence.)

To continue what I was talking about, impressions are not very true or accurate. They are almost always based on overt behaviour and that really cannot be the sum total of what a person is. I might be the person who takes around her own personal handful of disaster wherever she goes, but that isn't what I am. Underneath all the falling things I manage to knock down and behind all that stumbling over my own feet, there's this cool, calm, sophisticated, mature young woman. (What?! Can't I even dream?)

Ok, ok. Let's not forget the point I'm trying to make here. Which is, impressions can be wrong. A person has many facets, one of which might overshadow the rest, but that doesn't mean a person is uni-dimensional. Just because a person goes slightly crazy while multi-tasking doesn't mean that the person cannot manage more than one thing. Well, that might be the case, but it might as well not be the case. And if that same person crashed into a stationary lamppost once while backing out of a lane, it doesn't mean that the very same person cannot drive. Plus, if that hypothetical person continually manages to add the wrong people into MSN conversations, it doesn't mean that the imaginary person we're talking about is stupid. All I'm saying here is that you cannot make a judgemental decision (about someone's sanity) based on a few isolated incidences. Well, ok, not so isolated and not very few... but you get my point.

People have a deep personality. (That was such a dumb sentence.) What I mean is, individuals are so much more than what they appear to be. (Ok, better.) There are depths to people which they themselves don't know, and it takes a unique situation to take out that hidden facet. Someone who you think is a clueless moron might just turn out to be the only person who can solve your problems some day. It's just that the time should be right and the particular situation should be just right for it to happen. It's like fitting a triangular key into a square slot. That doesn't mean the triangle is useless, it just has its own corresponding triangle somewhere, which it has yet to find.

Hey!!! That's it!! That just it! I'm a triangle in a world full of squares. Oh, glee! I knew I was on to something when I started writing this...