There was a young adult, smart-looking and sharp in mind, trying to understand herself and the meaning of life through her choices, decisions and experiences. She keeps questioning herself, her situations, her acquaintances, her relationships as to understand whether she is leading a truly happy and contended life. This search began especially when she set out to live an independent life offered by the fellowship she signed up for.
Having always been reaffirmed by the society, her parents, friends and peers, she firmly believed that she was from the middle class and she needed to behave responsibly at all times, which meant making compromises, cost-effective choices and choosing a very safe career path. But then, this did not keep her from dreaming to become a civil servant and aiming to break free of the societal limitations, established through our long history and rich heritage. However, she felt so conflicted when she walked into a Multi-cuisine restaurant with her co-fellow and her program head. That place had killer view of the mountains rising and melting, rather gliding, into each other so much in harmony. She fairly understood that the pricing is going to expensive, according to her usual standards. Finding herself so confused, conflicted and contradicting to all the beliefs, values and so-called responsible limitations that have been loaded upon her throughout her life, she found it challenging to rise to the occasion and be her counsel in providing clarity. Looking deep into the woods, she kept questioning, what’s making me unhappy? Is it the place, food or her conscience?
But then, she stopped, just for a second, to think…
If we are always trying to live the life we want, why do we feel conflicted and discontented with ourselves?
Contradictions. That’s the word she arrived at and started seeing in everybody’s life. Given that we are all living in an extremely dynamic and fast-paced life, we have become insensitive to contradictions until one stops to check within themselves for clarity. It starts from wanting to have a masala chai but then settling for a normal chai. It can be our attempt of trying to adapt to the situations, if we don’t let go of that basic aspiration while living our life. But the sad part is most of us forget what we originally wanted or aspired for while striving so hard for perfection in the God-given life. She remembered the words of Hegel who stated that each particular way of conceiving the world has internal contradiction and that these contradictions end when there are no more comprehensive ways of grasping the world 1.
Few of the contradictions that she came across were settling for the food offered by the hotel over the desire to have something else while being very well aware of the differences in taste, texture and aroma; settling for a job that our parents thought were safe or the situations made it look safe over the real passion while being very well aware of the consequences it has to offer; waking up real late while aspiring to wake up before dawn to be able to have enough time to pursue one’s interests or to have a peaceful morning routine; wanting to have a real fit physique while leading a very sedentary lifestyle and procrastinating full on by making poor choices in terms of diet, sleep cycle, digital exposure, etc; suppressing one’s desire to fall in love before getting married to that person for keeping up the parent’s pride and much more.
Contradictions can be briefly described as the state of being in conflict with one’s own self desires and aspirations. This leads to a very disturbed, anxious and a dissatisfied life, thereby killing the joy of living. Simply put, one has to become devoid of contradictions by choosing to be honest with themselves and their most-valued relations. Becoming devoid of contradictions means keeping one’s thoughts, words and actions aligned perfectly with each other. This is called ‘trikarna shuddi‘ in Sanskrit and believed to be very challenging to achieve. Nonetheless, if one begins to strive for this alignment, they shall lead a very simple, less complex, less conflicting life. It will be filled with absolute happiness and they shall stay in peace with themselves.
Looking through her memories, she remembered how unhappy most of the older people were when they made compromises and gave into situations, she decided that she shall always strive to be honest at least with herself if not with everyone. Little does she know about the consequences of being brutally honest at every opportunity – in school, college, job, love, marriage, parenthood, old age, etc.
But that day, she told herself that she was so flustered not because of the place, the food or even the high-cost. It was her conscience or rather that deep-rooted belief system she has imbibed since childhood. Outgoing and broad-minded she was until that moment. She felt ashamed for buying into the class consciousness and not just limiting but hampering her experiences by creating a guilty conscience about it.
It is similar to the situation where a bird is flying freely and another bird is being caged and then taken to places by the bird keeper. Both are having experiences but indeed very different. I hope she figures out the difference.
If you don’t contradict yourself on regular basis, then you are not thinking.
– Malcolm Gladwell (Canadian Journalist & author)
References:
- Stanford Encylopedia of Philospohy – Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Von Schelling – Positive and Negative Philosophy and the critique of Hegel https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schelling/#:~:text=Schelling%20maintains%2C%20in%20line%20with,213%E2%80%934). ↩︎
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