Destructive Distillation

Nothing lasts forever. Actually some things don’t last long enough. Some last too long. We go through various phases in life. Is it we who desire change or the times that change us? Could be none, could be both. Everything keeps changing from time to time and our whole lifestyle itself every few years. If you look back at your life you will definitely find certain such phases where there was some distinct difference between the You in every such period. Some are common to all of us; some are very personal and can only be defined by the individual.

From my active memory possibly the first of such part in life would be all of it till the end of primary school. There was the bliss of innocence and the gift of nonchalance. Nothing in the world was very important and the world was quite small. As primary ended and the high school began, so did the next phase called discovery. The world is not as small as I imagined and the magnitude of it is too large for any one man to comprehend. But I being the very curious and nosy the days of learning began. The basic things began to have a meaning and as number of things kept growing the blank innocence withered away and another kind grew; the assumption of ideal behaviour from everything. Everything is as I read and everything is as my elders told me. No one lied and the bad people were only in the stories or being constantly fought with, captured and put away.

But I soon realise there is no Santa Claus and I was utterly wrong. The world works imperfectly and it is the best it can. Nothing is ever pure, there is no such thing as free will or true democracy. Our education is like the ideal gas equation, easily put down and easily dispensed with very conveniently shoving the “ideal” assumptions under the carpet. It is what the world says, not does. This phase was all spent in loss of innocence. As school ended I had put away the debilitated cotton coat of ideals and principles and being replaced with the mink one made of goals and achievement.

So there I was at the end of that phase thinking it is ok that the mechanisms of the world may be strange but the true assets of civilization are its people. Love everyone, trust everyone. Fraternity, equality and liberty were the tenets of our society. If not as a whole, each of can be what we are and not pretend, deceive and lie for recognition, power and status. Money is valuable and you better have enough of it. People aren’t that innocent as they seem and everybody has to earn respect or pay for it. You need to swim in the stream or the stream takes you where it desires. As I passed through graduation I had these epiphanies and I learnt that you need to be somebody else to be really you. Or you could be you and not care for anybody else and all that. You really could be whatever and whoever you want. Just not the Mahatma Gandhi’s or the Karl Marx’s of the world. Dont get me wrong here I do not subscribe to either of their views or say any of this out of contempt as most people I know do. I say with belief that this is how it is. Either put up a fight and change it or believe in what you have learned about it.

Graduation has ended and so did another phase. Each time the fundamental priority in one’s life changed it was one of these phase which ended and another began. We had a gang (or rather a set of friends if you please) at school, another in “junior college”, and some other in college. One gang at a workplace and some other at another. Yes we still have friends from each of those times, some close and some others not so much. We meet them from time to time but when you hark back to a particular phase it is those who you were with at school or work who define that period of life.

There is another thing with these phases. Life through them is a breeze as more or less life has a particular routine and the factors remain the same. It is however hard at the beginning of the phase with the new environment and people. And it is hard at the environment with inertia against change and nostalgia kicking in. It’s particularly hard and painful if you are stuck between two phases, one which has ended and another is yet to start. It is like walking from one station to another; very lonely, boring and possibly painful. All those who were with you got down at a station and changed trains or moved on to next.

P.S: Yes some phases also depend upon non fundamental things and could interlap with others, like going to a tuition, or the weekly club you attend etc.