Life is nothing but a half truth

How many times did you want to say something to somebody on his or her face and could actually do so? Well the answer would be a ‘no’ most of the times. Quite often we want to say something but end up saying something else. Or maybe choose to keep quiet.

Bestselling books on assertiveness notwithstanding, the fact is that we seldom, rather very rarely, say no when we want to say no. Why? Well, life coaches and personality development gurus ask you to put your best foot forward. And we, too, believe in it. But in trying to put the best foot forward, we usually put the wrong foot forward.

But that is one part of the story. The other part is that life puts you in such situations where you have to be politically or socially correct, whether you like it or not. Only kids do not care two hoots about being politically or socially correct. But these days even that little class is nearing extinction with the so-called play schools giving them courses in window dressing and training them in the art of make-believe. The real world gives way to the surreal. An oft-stated monologue of Jacques from the famous play of Shakespeare, As You Like It, is worth quoting: “All the world is a stage and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and entrances. And one man in his time plays many parts.” If we see around us with eyes and ears open, and with head and heart in tandem, we realise that we are all actors, playing to the script written by someone else. The problem is not that we don’t realise this. We do but then there are compulsions of appearing right rather than being right.

So you love him or her, but you cannot say. You cannot even say that you hate him or her. So rigid are the trappings of society to which we are all tied. This was the crux of Rousseau’s famous words, “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”

But can there be a way out? Difficult to answer but yes at least do not indulge in self-deception. Be true to yourself. Yes, a lot of struggle is required for being true to one self. But it is worth it. These beautiful words of Nietzsche sum that up neatly: “The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by tribe. If you try, you will be lonely often and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning one self.”

This requires a good bit of training. Training of the mind to listen to the heart. Training of the heart to tame the mind. And if we can achieve this we will cease to be miserable and discover our real nature. Ecstasy is our very nature, to be ecstatic is natural, spontaneous. It needs no effort to be ecstatic, it needs great effort to be miserable. The irony is that we prefer to choose the latter over the former. The simplest fact of life is to be, but we rather strive to become.

And in the process we neither succeed in being nor becoming. Being is not possible because we try to become. We can’t become because that is not sustainable.