I have been asking myself: What is courage?

I saw a TED talk video of a lady who was asking a similar question and I realised as she spoke that "courage" etymologically has been used only in context of epic acts of heroism, saving lives, rescuing distressed women, so on and so forth. Courage is never spoken about when we are talking about our everyday actions. Courage in little things. 

Standing up to a bully takes courage.

I have been asking myself this question that demanded to understand the nature of courage, because I feel I will need a lot more of it because I have decided to stand up to a bully myself. This bully looks like me, talks like me, and is a far superior creative being, focussing all his energies into one thing: to hold me back. I have listened to him for far too long. But I have now outgrown my beliefs of self and I wish to be more.

So, what is courage? What does it feel like? What inspires it? I have tried listening to music that makes your adrenaline increase exponentially, I have tried watching anime that can be inspiring (that one scene in Haikyuu when Hinata does a perfect receive in the match against Inarizaki gives me chills every time), but I am worried that I have no idea what courage looks like. Another reason why talking about courage in an epic setting is helpful to no one. 

I had had a strange thought in the evening, a few hours back, that perhaps there is a connection between courage and patience. At least for me. I don't think I'm a patient person. When I was younger I thought I was a patient boy. I had perhaps hoped to grow up to be a patient man. But I realised I'm not. 

But what if, courage, for me, looks a lot like patience? That somehow, holding back my emotional responses, waiting for the pieces to fall where they may, so on and so forth, is courage for me? Is that all there is to patience?

And now I ask myself: what is patience?

 There has never been a more useless, more pointless pursuit than to find the purpose or meaning of life.

I curse the one that asked this question in the first place. That everyone asked after them. Most of us have or inevitably will ask the question of ourselves. In fact, we all might. It is the ego of the adults. Because we spend so long looking up at these people who may be bigger than us, stronger than us when we were children, that when we inevitably become those big people we feel the need to be bigger in all aspects. In our mind we grow so big that we become the center of our own universes. That we must need a defined purpose or we are the anamoly in an otherwise perfect universe. That we are the mistake in a cosmos that did not make mistakes. Or if we do "find our purpose" we go about doing it with a smug glow about us, because we "have done what others couldn't", so of course we are gonna look down on those poor souls. With benevolence of course. Fuck it all.

It is by far the worst fate to ask yourself the purpose of your existence. 

"Why are you here?"

Because two stupid people had unprotected sex and made it your problem to deal with consequences.

"What is the meaning of Life?"

The meaning of Life is to churn our idiots who buy into the illusion of profundity by asking vague pointless questions like this in an endless loop.

"What is my Purpose?"

To die.

Everything dies. Fuck the rest. Fuck purpose, fuck meaning of Life.

I asked myself 'Why?'

We are all passengers on a flimsy raft headed for a cliff
For a brief moment we will fly
We will get to understand what a bird sees
We will get to understand what souls who search for dreams in rusted spoons and syringes feel
We will get to understand what a rogue comet experiences.
The rest is as irrelevant as it is inevitable.

The War cometh...

.A cold breeze blows
Sending chills down my spine and the deep dark crevices of my being
A vulgar fear grips pulls and stretches my nerve strings
and plays a song of dread
A war is coming
Can you hear it?
The drumrolls out in the horizon
Can you feel it?
The flinches of mothers at the sound of gunshots and warcries
A war...
Between mindless Belligerence
And ruthless Cunning
The war we wished to outlive and outrun
It's coming...
The first casualties will be innocence
Lock up your babies for they will be maimed
And you will not hear their wails
For the poison doesn't hurt but kills
Their mouths shall forget giggles
Their eyes shall exile awe..
Next, it will be the lovers
Flowers will lose their color and scent
Chocolates will lose their taste
Kisses will lose their passion
And Beauty will lose its home...
In the end it will be all of us
The war comes for all of us
And will not end until all that's left are the ghosts of a million stories untold
The burnt remains of imagination
And the tyranny of an endless cycle of struggle...

War

Fathers fight

for sons and daughters

they have never known

Men fight for wives

they have never loved

People fight for a land

they have never tread upon

What is war?

What is this struggle,

that we fight for a future 

unbeknownst to us?

What is war,

but a struggle in vanity?

What is war,

but a battle for a man's superiority

over his own kin?

Repressed Voices

My backpack sits at the corner with a thin layer of dust that has gathered over it. I look at it at least once a day and whenever I look at it I feel it taunting. I can almost hear it screaming, endlessly. Beckoning me to pick it up and start walking. Just start walking. No plans no roadmaps. Walk where my heart commands me to walk.

But no. Seemingly saner minds prevail. I manage to shut that voice out and turn my eyes away from my backpack.

I begin to dress myself for work. And a similar occurance. This time there was no screaming. Just soft sobs. This time it was not my backpack. It was my shoes. I hear it sobbing muttering to itself. "It's the same places every day. Same footsteps. Same dirt and the same duties". It does not say anything more just those words over and over again. And it continued to sob when I started for work.

Again, saner minds and repressed voices. It takes every bit of resolve I have to smile and wait upon people who either want to try something new or who want to remind themselves a little bit of home through their food.

Somehow amidst all the turmoil there was one who was surprisingly silent. So I asked him out of curiosity the reason for his silence. Is he, my heart, content with this routine I call a life?

He said, "if I were content with this then it would mean your worst nightmare has come to pass. And it will never end." And he told me what he wished for...what all my senses wished for...

Oh this heart of mine! It yearns to make the open road home, the fresh free air food and the damp earth bed. He wanted to escape this world of lies and deceit and become the priamal self again. My eyes, he told me, wanted to peek into the corners of the world that few have looked upon. These feet of mine wanted to grow old walking. To be one with the world as the birds, as pollen, as wind itself. And to keep moving until I glimpse the Light the world was blessed with.

Contention

The sadness of always being at a distance from things, either above or beneath...

I lay in contention on the warm seat as the light streams through my closed eyelids. A smile creeps upon my face as the clicking of the train against the rails, sound within me and outside of me, much like a heart beat. Contention. I had forgotten this word in sometime. Nothing had ever been enough, nothing had ever been  satisfying. But I find this word again today as my head hangs from the edge of the seat, as the blood rushes to the tips of my ears and as I feel the sun smile upon my skin.
Raucous laughter rise from the compartment next to mine and I see a bunch of kids that enjoy the summer as much as I do. In the seat next to mine sits a lady. Her wrinkles speak a million stories but her face speak one thing, as she sits by the window, eyes closed, a gentle smile playing around her lips: Contention.

Upside down...the world looks the same, but something is afoot

What we fantasize about what our lives should be? What we imagine our fates could be? And how sad it is that we loose the very essence of life chasing a better one? How we have lost sight of this moment that I am basking in, and how we chase that which may or may not come to pass? How pitiful our lives become as we delude ourselves into believing that we search for a good life?
I let the sun light wash over my body, purging me of all that is irrelevant, cleansing me of all delusions, and caressing lovingly every inch of me, as a mother would. I smile without opening my eyes, and cuddle up inside this wonderful feeling, and I realize something.
That this moment would cease to exist the minute I open my eyes. That I will be forced into a world where we are the rats and the blocks of cheese and the cats; where we are all of them and none of them. That we would end up devouring ourselves in the pursuit of something that exist within ourselves all the while. I realize all this and I smile. Who said I should wake up?