Brownian Emotions
Sometime back, I had written something titled - Calmer Sutra.
It was my attempt to acknowledge the highly necessary need to stay still in a world going headless with breakneck speed, losing its shit over shit and generally trying to catch up with changes that are both bewildering as well as relentlessly superfast.
Add to that our bottomless want, mindless grasping and matchless discontent and you will get the picture that masquerades as ‘more’ but is actually a celebration of the ‘less’ and more ‘less’.
A lot of people I know had asked me then, after the piece was published, what the fuck was I thinking when I was writing it? What on god’s earth was I smoking when I was thinking of it? And how dare I write something that was so blasphemously obvious? What right did I have to make sense of a sort that was soaked in the paraffin of common sense and hurled into the burning dogpile of meaningless accumulations that makes for upper middle class urban life today?
Some strangers cooed sweet nothings at it too. But I prefer the rants of people I know to the candy floss balderdash of people I don’t. Rants from friends and well wishers are gold. Air kisses from strangers and phonies are farts. So.
Anyway, given that so many people I knew were so disturbed, I had to write this. It is titled Brownian Emotions for a reason. For those who were busy flirting with the science teacher (like I did) or entirely skipped basic science class (like I also did) Brownian motion is defined as:
But what the hell is Brownian emotion? Where did that come from? What does it even mean? Do emotions have an adjective? Aren’t emotions supposed to be what makes us, us?
I have no clue, by the way. Just because I am raising questions in a faux rhetorical manner doesn’t mean I have the voila answers up my sleeve. I always roll up my sleeves anyway. But to truly understand Brownian in the context of emotions, I attempted to observe many, many people, animals and things for a long, long time. And hoped, when I started out, to empirically arrive at some places that are illuminating. For me, at least. You guys go figure your own shit.
I realised, after watching the following:
1. The rich
2. The very rich
3. The poor
4. Dogs on the road and living in houses as pets
5. The lady who helps me keep my home in a human-habitable state (often referred to by dickheads as ‘maids’)
6. Various young people
7. My colleagues
8. Countless posts on Instagram and Facebook ...
... that I can draw some broad conclusions.
For ease of reading, they have been bunched in bunches of three. No, that’s not true. They have been bunched like that because there is a relational connect among them and also because 3 is just about what the modern mind today can handle at a time.
So here goes -
1) People are not generally happy
2) Dogs are. Always
3) Unless those dogs are staying in close proximity to unhappy people. In which case they are stressed out, anxious and usually always on the edge
1) Rich people are usually bitching more, worried more and engaged in the celebration of pettiness more than poor people
2) That does not mean poor people are Christs. They are just too busy being able to afford breathing to do the above
3) And poor-ish people (like the lower middle class) usually become worrying, anxious, petty bitches when they come into some money
1) Young people are really smart
2) But also dumb in a selfish sort of way
3) Not really their fault. Youth is wasted on the young
1) Talk is cheap
2) But Facebook is a multi billion dollar motherfucker
3) So, getting other people to talk cheap or cheaply on your platform really fucking pays. Provided you are white and a first mover
1) Instagram is beautiful
2) Not just because it has beautiful pictures
3) It is because it has far more beautiful people who are honestly trying to put their best foot forward. Not their fake foot, like on Facebook
1) Having said that, we are all varying degrees of lonely, dumbass morons with low attention and low patience thanks to social media
2) Which is kind of ironical as social media is supposed to be social, not its opposite
3) But social media hasn’t made us like this. It has only added pure oxygen to a slow burning fire always burning inside us, to aspire to become fuck-all versions of ourselves
1) We are largely becoming a people with dangerously low emotional stability
2) Stability I think is nothing more complicated that the ability to be still in the face of headlessness. But we are the headless. So, you see the problem
3) This has happened because of tremendous over supply of choices, unbridled sanction to use and throw anything from spoons to people and a technological advancement that has unknowingly yet permanently pedestialised for the first time in human history, the machine over the man
1) So, with low emotional stability and way too much choices and technology, we are pitiful wanderers in a maze of commerce and white noise
2) We are over stuffed, over supplied, over attended to and over gadgeted. But under loved, under duress, under fulfilled and under informed
3) And we continuously confuse pleasure with happiness, pain with sorrow, moments with meaning, comfort with clarity, things with value and consumption with growth
If we now try to put this all together, like I did, Brownian emotion is nothing but the random movements and unplanned, continuous dislocation of our emotions inside the cosmic fluid of our selves. These emotions of ours are no longer only the synaptic and electro-chemical gymnastics of electrical pulses and hormonal squirts like evolution intended them to be but an artificially induced paranoid randomness brought on by deep and ill understood unrest in our society, our selves and our surroundings. We are so empty and so jumpy that our lives are like a zombie movie watched at 10 times the speed through static.
Any idea, what to do?
I have no clue, alligator. But before I never see you later, here are some of my thoughts. And they are not bunched in any groups of three. If you are in a hurry, then I will say it quickly. GoFuckYourself.
*** Be still for some time every damn day. Just. Absolutely. Still. Still of limb, still of sinew and still of twitches.
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*** Resist the urge to fuck around too much with your self. Especially your insides. A tattoo or a nipple ring is one thing but impaling your insides with unfamiliar yet fashionable needles just because you can, is just plain dumbass.
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*** Delete the amazon app from your smart phone.
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*** Every time you feel like buying something, don’t.
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*** Get a fucking dog. Immediately.
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*** Try to read a book. A book made of paper, with no pictures and having more than 100 pages.
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*** Finish that fucking book.
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*** Delete the Facebook app from your smart phone also.
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*** Tell yourself - words like ‘gluten-free’, ‘organic’, ‘cold-pressed’, ‘wood-fired’ and ‘grass-fed’ are as useful as putting a zero before a real number. If the point is missing then it is really just a place holder. And by chance if you see the point, it will only serve to reduce you. Serves no real purpose except to make you an adjective whore.
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*** Also tell yourself - words like ‘brown bread’ and ‘ego’ are like Maya. It doesn’t exist except in the shared collective myth of people chasing it. If you really want to chase something imaginary, at least chase Catwoman.
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*** And try to avoid using words like ‘bae’, ‘spirit animal’, ‘throwback’, ‘meh’ and ‘boo’ too much. Everything trending is not mind bending.
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You think that’s all?
Nope.
You also need to have many selves inside your self, be ready to walk away from anything, respect the moment you are in as if that’s your eternity and your universe and eschew both regret and fear as if they were a particularly virulent strain of leprosy.
NOW you think that’s all?
Nope.
I don’t have all the answers. I don’t even presume I have any answer. If you have read till here, then thank you very much but I am no supermarket ascetic. Go find your own fucking hack. The Buddha, Eminem, Jesus and Dolly Parton did. Why the fuck can’t you?