The Human Experience.
Months, it's been months since I have been able to write. For some reason, even when I had things to say I couldn't write them. I sat in front of my laptop and nothing, absolutely nothing occurred to me, I couldn't think of anything. But I had a lot to write, a lot to say.
I was thinking about how there was no way I was ending the year without writing about something, but what that something should be, wasn't hitting me. Everything that I wanted to write about seemed saturated. It seemed like whatever I typed was boring, I kept wondering. My friends keep telling me to be consistent, but I keep telling them it isn't consistency I'm looking for, it's a piece that satisfies me. The real reason I haven't been able to write is simply because I thought whatever I was writing about didn't seem good enough.
Enough ranting, since the year is ending and a new one is about to begin, I thought I should write about endings. Or beginings. But then, I had a realisation: they are the same. Both come with anxiety, strong feelings and the power to change you. However, one is considered to be great and the other a tragedy. Beginings make you smile through the night with joy and endings make you cry through the night with your heart feeling shattered. In either case, you're awake all night.
While reflecting on beginnings and endings, I realised what my biggest takeaway from 2023 is.
All throughout this year I interacted with quite an interesting bunch of people and heard fascinating stories and for some reason, I thought all the stories while being different in flavour, were the variations of the same dish. That dish that was my takeaway from 2023, was the human experience.
Human beings have always valued individuality, we like to believe that all of us are different, and all of us are unique in our own quirky little ways. In many situations, it does turn out to be true. For example, the way we sound, the way we smell, the way we look all differ so greatly from each other. However, no matter which social class or geographical location you belong to, one thing never changes, our emotional core. In my opinion, this core is the reason I believe in the fact that all of humanity is equal.
Now, before someone attacks me saying that how could I possibly reduce every human being to my so-called human experience, that is not what I am trying to do here. All that I want to say is that people, no matter where they come from or who they are, feel the same things. Their reason for feeling things can be infinitely unique, but the things that they feel are the exact same as you and I feel.
Sometimes this similarity is hard to accept. The other day, I was talking to my friend about how I felt that my purpose in life was telling stories. Later, I stumbled across a reel which had almost 30-40 thousand likes and shares, and the man in the video said almost the exact same thing that I had told my friend, about how he wants to just tell stories and doesn't really care about greatness or success all that much. After I saw that reel for the first time, I noticed that it had a lot of likes and shares, and all that I could think about was that is there nothing unique about me? Am I just average? Being average is the worst. Don't ask me why, it just is.
I felt like there was nothing that distanced me from the other millions of aspiring writers who all wanted to tell stories, just like I wanted to. I started to think that if all of us had the exact same emotional core, how could anything that I write actually impact anybody? That's where my fear of my work just being saturated and the same as every other writer before me started to seep in.
I felt like the fear in my head had been granted permanent residency there. It felt like I could never write again.
Then, I got my answer. The things we feel may be the exact same as millions of people before us, but how we feel it will always be a 1/all of humanity experience.
Let me give you a demo, like my favourite rancho baba (I fucking love 3 Idiots, that movie shaped me.) Whenever me and my family go out to a nice vegetarian restaurant, we usually order paneer butter masala and some butter naan. Thousands of reels on Instagram later, I found out that thousands of families are the same, all ordering the same butter naan and paneer. At the surface level, it seems like the generic middle-class experience.
When we dig a little deeper we realise just how different my experience was from everyone else's. The variables are insane: my mood, my parents' mood, the way different waiters behaved, the restaurant we were visiting, the weather on the day of the visit and hundreds of other variables that I can't even list here made every bite of that naan + paneer combo that I usually down like a glutton a 1/all of humanity experience.
So, what I'd like to say is that every experience you've ever had will always be yours no matter how many other people have felt it.
Suddenly, it didn't matter how many other people wanted to write or tell stories because no matter what, my anger, my sadness, my love and all the other things that I had labelled as being saturated will always be special because no other person will feel these emotions the way I do.
I now genuinely believe that even if two people write something with the exact same plot, the story will turn out to be different.
Humanity is such a funny paradox, we are as similar as we are different. Anyway, that's all I wanted to say to end the year, I love New Year's. It is the representation of the fact that we always have a chance to reset ourselves. I hope all of you have a wonderful 2024 and that's all from my side for now folks!
With love,
Pranav.
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