Man is Mental

When an enraged father slaps his full grown son, the son cries not because the impact is physically painful. An ego is shaken. Self-esteem nose-dives. The real impact is felt deep in the proud chest, which becomes heavy with emotion, and then brims over and moistens the eyes.

Likewise, the scorching desire for companionship is hardly bodily. It emanates from the profound want for validation, affection and being needed. The comfort lies not in the touch but the impulse behind it. Intimacy is far more fulfilling and lasting than a hormone-fuelled adventure.

Same is the case with dancing, is it not? Physical attributes do not determine one’s eagerness to sway, bounce or spin to pounding beats. It is confidence, attitude, and mostly, just the indifference towards making a fool of oneself: all of them mere obstacles that exist between one’s ears. There is a good reason why it is said that if you want to envisage how a man is in bed, all you need to do is watch him on the dance floor.

Just as well, the real joy of sports is in the mind games. Get rid of the glares, grunts, guts and glory. Play them without the parleys, pride and passion. Contain the cries and the curses. And what you have left is not even a silhouette of the soap opera. The brain is, after all, the real battlefield: that is where all your strength and stamina resides.

Similarly, the greatest journeys are those that transport the mind. Think of the best books you have read and the best films you have seen. The greatest pain is also that which ails the mind. Think emotional atyachaar. Quite simply then, man is a mental being. Divorce the mind from his body and he is just another animal. His superior intelligence and unique ability to appreciate art, rhythm and beauty is what sets him apart from the others that populate this planet. He is capable of contemplation, comprehension, and above all, compassion. The others are just governed by the most basic of instincts.

We have defeated the deadliest diseases and cracked the most complex conundrums. We have built grand bridges and towering trophies of our talents. We have tempered the forces of nature and challenged all boundaries that have confronted us. We have landed on the moon and scaled space itself.

But alas, we are yet to conquer ourselves.

The most compelling irony is at play here - further evidence that a person’s greatest gift is also his biggest curse. Come to think of it, our ‘superior intelligence’ is also what has made us the stupidest creature on the planet.

Which other animal is as discontent and defeated? Which other animal engages in blind chases that last a lifetime? How many of us have got exactly what we wanted and still not been happy, when that is what we wanted in the first place? Which other animal has complicated his existence to such a degree that he’s all but forgotten this simple truth?

Wouldn’t you then say man is mental?

Between the Head and the Heart

There are no two ways about consequences that you do not cause. What’s handed out is what you get and what’s taken away is gone: you simply just have to live with it. It may not be preferred but it is, at the very least, a simple, guiltless conclusion. I would favour that every single time over inflicting myself with the torment of settling a dilemma of the cruelest nature – one that necessitates a choice between heeding to the caution of the head and pursuing the will of the heart – and then endlessly appraising its outcome in retrospection.

I greatly envy those who have it in them to relentlessly follow their heart without giving ‘logic’ a chance. And a large part of that envy is because of the way good fortune agrees with them. Equally frustrating is how some people can actually get their hearts to agree with decisions that they made without its vote. And then there is the third breed (to which I belong): people who constantly engage in the battle of the head and the heart. How does one choose between experience and aspiration? Or common sense and desire? Does one go by conditioning or instinct? Be ‘real’ or chase your dreams? It kills me everyday. Is a pessimist an optimist with experience or just a grumpy, failed man?

It happens at the store. Do you buy that shirt because you have always wanted to wear that colour or that other one because that is the kind you are expected to wear at the workplace?

It happens after graduation. Do you take that job that pays seventy thousand rupees a month with weekends off or do you grow a beard and set off to make those documentary films on stories you believe in?

It happens again. Do you marry that incredibly charming small-time singer who still makes you skip a heartbeat or that successful, boring businessman who can afford the best wine and vacations?

And again and again… every single day. There isn’t a dilemma when something pleases your heart as well as makes common sense. You’d do it ninety nine out of hundred times. And regret not doing it that single time you chose to do otherwise. Likewise, you’d lament going ahead with something that you neither desired to do nor could justify as sensible. In both situations, you clearly ought to have done or refrained from doing something. But it is when the strings of your heart and the cords of your brain drag you in opposite directions that you are tested.

On some level though, I do believe that life would possibly lose its charm if it weren’t for these distressing dilemmas. There is something about the agony and anguish that makes you feel alive. A perfectly content man who does not have any creases on his forehead is almost uninteresting. The state of being uneasy and disturbed contributes so much to the beauty of human existence.

And along the way, we slowly realise that it is neither our head nor our heart that has all the answers. They perhaps lie just somewhere in between.