Of understanding and accepting

The more I write on these introspection series, the more I realize how confusing it becomes how I often end up admonishing myself for over thinking even minute details. The process by which you can draw a line on how much is too much is very difficult to identify and maintain for any action, leave alone thinking. And if I am not thinking about things that impact me, who else will!! Be it on professional or personal circumstances, I often find myself at odds with my own thoughts and how others deal with such similar situations. At the outset, people easily tag me as an overthinker who is very sensitive and reactive. But when they go through similar situations, they feel their responses are more measured. From my observations, I find that, the very people with whom I open up, often end up being those who tag me as such. Maybe I am bad in identifying people that I can confide in or to get clarity or advice. When I try to segregate my thoughts as those that I can action and those that are not in my control, it feels devoid of control. And that scares me a lot for having been thrown off rails is something that stresses me out. At the same time, stressing over things that I cannot control bugs me. At the moment, I feel like being suspended in a state of travel where my next immediate destination is unknown- be it professionally or personally. Is It the after effects of getting old? Is it what people call mid life crisis? I find that phrase mid-life to be quite arrogant and arbitrary for who defines how long one survives to arrive at that mid point! 

I vaguely remember a story where an old man actively follows obituary section on newspaper on a daily basis. When inquired, he replies stating he is at that stage of his life where getting to know how many of his acquaintances and known folks have passed away has become not just his hobby but also is a reality check for himself. I don’t recollect the whole story but that part of checking the obituary section stayed on mind. I was in the phase of reading every single word on a newspaper, especially the Sunday ones, from wrapper to wrapper. Slowly it has trickled down to browsing headlines at present, where most of the news are either already consumed via different interfaces or found to be irrelevant or false. When I came across the demise of Mathew Perry, best known as Chandler Bing from the FRIENDS series, it felt as if I had come a full circle, from having started binge watching those series 20 years back, to having witnessed the demise of my favorite character from the same. When I started my career, I often used to wonder that there are very few people who have retired as IT professionals having served their full term in the same industry unlike my dad or his generation of folks, who would’ve had lot of references from people belonging to their work domain. Same goes for their choice of celluloid heroes and sportspeople and when their favorite personalities begin to expire, their sense of recollection of their favorite moments about them were unrelatable for me. Now I myself encounter a scenario which is definitely the first of many where my favorite character from my most favorite series have expired. It is a difficult emotion to process for the person who played the role vs the character that I enjoyed onscreen are polar opposites. I felt lot of connection with Chandler Bing, be it the way he used humor to convey his nervousness, how often it was mistook as callousness or the perception of being “light” amongst his own peers who never took him seriously, how he started as a lean guy who put on weight during some seasons and became bone thin only to regain his weight back- all courtesy his offscreen exploits, his repeated messing up of his relationship with his best buddy and how he reconciled every time, his unsure and unsteady mindset about a job which he was best qualified to perform but not where his heart was, his ego bruising on having been ignored or feeling second best to his lady love, the list goes on and on. As a person who made others laugh, I believe any comic character, in any group, undergoes such situations and are always at the risk of not being taken seriously. They feel like they are givers who never receive their due. The comment made by Mathew during the FRIENDS REUNION episode was quite damning and showed how much pressure he subjected himself mentally to come up with his performances. May be success is in itself is so demanding that the cost at times is impossible to bear. 

His demise made me realize that we all want to start as Chandler Bing, live life as Chandler Bing, try our best to be Chandler Bing, only to be reminded by life at every turn that there is a Mathew Perry inside us who struggles to cope up with that image and exercise. May be being Mathew might not have been successful but would you want a longer life as him or a shorter successful one as Chandler is anybody’s call.