Tag: self help

kids and poetry

~ Tanmay ~ Leave a comment

Been a busy three days tending to poetic desires. It is a relief to know that if you keep your head down and put in the work, it’ll pay off.

Writing has offered a steady support for a long time. It’s an exercise that if done for pleasure will furnish peace. There’s endless possibilities of the magic that can be crafted through pen and paper. Once an idea strikes I translate it into an image, and I describe it as best as possible. Slowly I feel that the poem itself dictates how it’ll turn out to be and I am just a medium.

There’s a lot of exploration to do and I will keep sharing what I find as I find it.

-Tanmay

buried alive; logic; reasons

~ Tanmay ~ Leave a comment

Music and loneliness have a symbiotic relationship. Music doesn’t cut away the loneliness but it sure numbs the pain that arises out of it. I remember in my second semester at univeristy I had my earphones resting on my ears constantly, no matter where I went. In February 2018 I was introduced to Logic’s Under Pressure by a fellow music enthusiast and music producer. I fell in love with Logic instantly. He is revered by a lot of people for his honest take on anxiety and depression, almost as if an older brother is listening to you and your fears. I remember sitting alone for breakfast eating quickly whilst listening to Buried Alive, the memory is etched so clearly that listening to the song again now brings back images from that time and a thump in my body because of the physiological changes that anxiety brought forth were sometimes more pronounced while listening to relatable music. It was mostly a wrenching of the gut- up and down so strong that it would force my hip up if I was on my bed.

There was a dependence that I fostered on certain types of music that helped channel some of my confusion with life into energy to get up and do shit. I owe a lot to the artists whose music I listened to then. The desperation of loneliness demands prompt attachment to anything constant. People couldn’t be there in the way I needed them to be, so an only child was still the only child at steel tables, with two hundred of his peers ten meters away. It was almost necessary, the way my life unfolded then; it made me impervious.

Everything happens for a reason and the reason is made clear after the happening; almost always.

-Tanmay

screaming subconscious

~ Tanmay ~ 2 Comments

Sometimes I don’t understand the origin of the pain that seeps into my poems. The knowledge that there have been terrible experiences is not enough to explain why there is pain still. Why is there hurt hidden beneath, or is it in the air around me?

I attribute it to a subconscious that is still screaming. It is still reeling from the jolts that erupted years ago. The subconscious is screaming because it has no one to talk to- but only me to talk through. Manifesting its active pain into my passive actions. The silence that I prefer hides the screams of the void within.

The pain is too romantic to go away. It’ll cling for as long as it can. It’s a struggle to get it off and whether you like it or not there’s going to be a lot of self correction and learning then unlearning and learning again. But it’s a harder struggle per se, so I resorted to numbing myself, and making myself immune to the world, keeping my pain guarded closely in my arms, feeding its ego and nurturing it further. Till life itself became unsustainable and I was on the brink of losing a lot of what wasn’t mine to lose. I had to take charge of myself through the loneliness and the tough nights and work on my mind.

Taming the mind is a long process requiring practice and discipline, repeated a million times only to reach a point much below any semblance of excellence. Life itself is that process. The way you navigate your life is your process, and that navigation is in your hands only when you’re aware of yourself. Deciphering the meaning of the world and the purpose of existence is nothing but an attempt to understand your own life. The process requires many attributes- such as controlling impulses. I react too quickly to impulses rather than analysing how they might affect my time ahead. Reactions might trigger a fall of a long chain dominos that is nothing but a recipe for disaster. Analysing choices offers insight that will add to better judgment in the future. It sounds easy to say all of this, but the truth is we as human beings falter too much for our own good. Sometimes it’s not under our control either; but if you adopt an attitude of servitude to yourself you might lessen the negatives.

Your mind should work for you.

-Tanmay

you’re not special; neither am I; sadly

~ Tanmay ~ Leave a comment

On my 5th birthday there was a clear crisp radiant rainbow in the sky. That was one day I felt I was absolutely special and that there were higher forces working for me to make my day. It felt good.

I don’t know when and how I knew from a certain age that there was no such thing as being ‘special’. Mathematics can prove that. There’s too many of us and the probability that there’s many people who are quite alike you takes away the ‘special’ quotient.

It was good for my ego I think, I didn’t have to learn that the hard way. The metric that we choose to measure whether someone is ‘special’ or not should be our own choice else you won’t be special to the only one that matters: YOU!

You may use the same metric for others or you may pick a different one. At the same time you’ll have to understand that others are also judging you through their myriad metrics etc. So you’ll not be special to everyone.

Think.

-Tanmay