A Stunted Plant

The philosopher in me tells me that life is all about thinking rationally and moving through time in a just and kind manner. The runner in me tells me that life is all about setting goals and tolerating all the wear and tear of training required to reach those goals. The curious person in me tells me that life is all about asking interesting questions and working out the answers to them from the first principles. Most days, one of these three personalities help me see the big picture and keep moving. But I think they may have reached their limit today. I feel like I am lying on the ground because I am actually stuck. It’s an annoying feeling, because while I like to believe that I am moving in a straight path, the path seems to be circular in reality. 

All this reminds me of a story my father used to tell me from his own life, when he was a single young man living away from his family to make a buck.

It is a story from mid 1990s. My father often used to eat breakfast at a diner near his hostel, which was managed by an old lady. Just besides the entrance of this diner, there used to be a tiny plant apparently. My father noticed this plant for several months and this plant didn’t grow even an inch. One day, he just stood outside the diner looking at that plant with a dull expression, and the old lady from diner asked him why’s he looking at it so sadly. To which my father replied that this plant’s lack of growth over several months reminds him of his own life, how despite all the grueling long hours he’s been putting at work, he’s still stuck with no room for improvement. I really hope the old lady let him eat at diner for free that day.

My father usually puts a positive spin on this story, that he eventually had his breakthrough. That universe will reward all the patience and silent hard work someday. But I am an expert in taking bad takeaways from stories, so I will mainly choose to focus on that stunted plant for tonight. But, I of course have my own ways to rationalize all this ordeal.

One way is I can just start thinking that in this vast scale of universe, I am a very ordinary and insignificant part. It doesn’t really matter to the universe that I feel alone and depressed at this moment. Billions of people have felt this way before, and at this exact instant, probably there are at least a million people across the globe who are sad. The weight of this world’s sadness as a whole isn’t heavy enough to slow down earth’s rotation by at least a millimeter. It’s both fascinating and annoying how indifferent universe is to how I feel.

I can also remind myself that this is a path I willingly chose. I was running away from certain societal norms and expectations when I took the flight away from India for the first time. But this means I also ran away from certain comforts. I take pride in the fact that I had the courage to start this journey, just on the basis of a deluded self-belief, with no financial safety net. I breathe a sigh of relief now, because things worked out and I am debt free. Feelings of loneliness and not belonging anywhere is probably a price I need to pay though.

I have this trait of thinking through concepts in depth when I don’t understand them. This makes sense academically and at work, but I am not sure how useful this is when it comes to matters of life. Because no amount of thinking is going to resolve certain matters that are out of my control. The best I can do for now is to just sit with all these feelings of grief and loneliness, and hope that my brain will become tired enough to let me sleep for six hours. I hope I can skip to tomorrow morning directly, when I have an 8-mile run planned.