…Clueless

I won’t be teaching you something new or radical. It is just an explanation of what I did to stay happy when I was surrounded by strangers. Strangers here does not just refer to unknown people but also people with absurd thought processes which you cannot seem to relate to no matter how hard you may try.

Around a week back, my feed reader alerted me of a new comment on my blog. The comment was from a reader karen on a very old post on this blog :

how is collegge life now and you? im a collegge student for almost two years now, and i seem to have a problem where im not happy with my friends, but i try to stay happy and sometimes faking it to other people and just dont want to show that im upset you know.

As I sat there reading those few lines, I could completely empathize with the person. Around 2 years back, when I entered college, I was face-to-face with a very similar situation. Even though my college is jus 16KMS from my house, it used to feel as if I was on another planet altogether. I tried to befriend different people, spent time with them and judged them. But the more I stayed with them, the more I felt suffocated. I felt lonely – all alone in the middle of nowhere. The only time I felt happy was when I skipped college (my attendance must have been below 40%). The atmosphere in college was pathetic. It did not seem like a place to study and it sure was no place to enjoy or freak out. I always knew that films showed the half truth but my college life was far from what I had imagined. Looking at my sisters getting nostalgic when talking about their own college days, I felt even more depressed.

Then this realisation dawned upon me. There was no point in cribbing. There was no point in just brooding over the fact that I could not find even a single person who was like-minded. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em! Or atleast pretend that you have. That is what I did. I let them be. I opened up my head to their thoughts. These thoughts and views really did not matter to me. My brain was on auto-pilot. It filtered out what it thought was a bit sensible and discarded the rest. This way, I had no load to carry. I had nothing to worry about. I was completely detached.

I did not need friends. I did not want friends. I already had loads of ‘em. I wanted company. I wanted to hear somebody blabber something for those 8 hours I was in college. It broke the monotony, it provided me relief and best of all I had no problems with the people that surrounded me. I realized that there was no point trying to fight a losing battle. There was no point trying to find that one needle in this haystack. Just pretend that you always had it. Or you didn’t need it at all!!

I followed this philosophy. I went to college, passed my time, had pure fun without worrying about anything else. Even though sometimes I did not really relish it, my brain just discarded that thought. I quit worrying and cribbing. I stopped thinking about my past and where I was currently. I stopped comparing. I stopped keeping a count of my gains and losses. I just let them be. This way, I welcomed everybody with open arms and by the time I knew it, I had an army of people to keep me company. I shed the prejudice that I had and in the process I gained relief. I gained company. I gained mental peace. I gained satisfaction. I gained friends (yup, friends and not just company). I gained happiness.

Now, I’m actually happy when I go to college. Had I not taken that step to welcome everybody, I’d still be cribbing and ranting here on this blog. But now the situation is different. Now, I’m not seeking company. Rather I’m enjoying the time that I spend in college.

The only way to overcome difficult situations, the only way to feel wanted when you’re alone, the only way to stay happy when you’re not, the only way to feel at home when you’re in the middle of nowhere, is to just change the way you think.

1. When you just can’t stay happy : I’m in college right now. Sitting in the lecture hall. Just when everything was slowly settling, a new controversy erupted in college. Routine bashing by the teacher for bunking but since I’m in such a crappy mood, it sucks! Nothing’s going normal these days and I don’t have a clue as to what the fuck is [...]...
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