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?