“For those few like me who live without knowing how to have life, what’s left but is renunciation as our way and contemplation as our destiny?” > - F. Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
I have been at the sidelines all my life, and perhaps will be for the remaining so. My shortcomings play no small role in that, but the great filter here is simply the fact that I cannot envision me as a protagonist. What do I need to possess to feel like that? Numerous things do come to mind, but the question remains, what can I have and do that could not be still more, would I ever be satisfied then? In any case, I do not wish to continue along this line of thought since the disconcerting reality is that my dreams, vast and grandiose, are simply bounded within the confines of my own physical means.
Lately, as of writing this page, I’ve been reading “The Book of Disquiet” by Fernando Pessoa. And while the thoughts that I’m going to jot down here are a product of my own, or atleast I believe so, I can’t help but notice the parallels. Perhaps it is me projecting, seeing what I want to see, but most definitely I’ve stumbled upon a kindred soul across time. One whose literary talent far outshines mine and whose words give me a sense of tranquility and clarity over my own scattered thoughts. And I’m saddened as well at the lost originality of my own thoughts, but I always had an inkling they were never original to begin with, that whatever I can think of or write about has already been done, but this melancholic burden has always been mine to bear.
I will still seek the oasis though, or chase the mirage atleast, as I bid my time here on earth. Simply because it gives me a mental refuge, against the realization of the futility of it all, which though I’m inured to now, does swallow me somedays.
I’ll get back to the title now.
The Noble Question
What meaning then exists that
- is universally applicable to anyone who can reason
- withstands solitude
- isn’t tied to actions out of reach of most (reflecting back on this, I have doubts on the usefulness of this)
- does not rest on an unquestionable faith aka seeks the divine (this idea has always been so obvious to me that I even forgot to mention it here at first)
The False Answer
My proposed solution is of the simplest kind and yet I find it so beautiful. I don’t expect you to relate or feel the same way as I do about this. Perhaps you will find it as comforting as I do, but even if you don’t, that’s fine as well.
The greatest and most noble pursuit that one can undertake in their life is simply to document your life. Your deepest confessions, everyday struggles, dreams and aspirations, the good and bad parts alike, everything. You don’t have to be exhaustive since that’s hardly possible, but the more the better. Writing down your thoughts, naming your days, jotting an account of it, that’s enough, this way “that” particular day just became very different from all of your other days, albeit just for you, but that is enough.
There’s an uncanny solace in the very act itself but it goes beyond that. This way there’s a meaning behind the smallest of struggles and the most mundane of days, for it will never be just another day. No failure would be worthless, not because it teaches you something, perhaps because you were incapable of learning anything from it or maybe there really was nothing to learn, but that’s beside the point. The sole significance lies in the simple fact that it happened and hence will now be part of the pages of your life, not forgotten, but carefully blotted on paper, forever, for no reader but you perhaps, but their very existence alone is enough to shoulder the greatest of pains.
The enduring charm of writing, the almost permanence of it, has a curious beauty to it. What I write would be me as I see myself, not someone else’s understanding of me or some other distorted perspective. An argument against this can be made by contrasting this with “living though others”, that I have hope that others would read this as well, and though the idea is appealing and I certainly won’t mind for that to be the case, the very foundation lies on the Archivist being content with writing for no one but himself, which is the case for me. What I pen down often requires a lot of careful thought, hours of refinement, revisiting countless times to get to a state of me that could jot this down and is in touch with the words. I often find myself perusing my own pages, and though the me reading this at a later time would be different, simply for the fact that he did not spend as much time on this as the me that wrote it and hence has a different state of mind when reading it, I can still get somewhat in touch with the older me and his state of mind, reflecting on it.
As I title and jot down each day that slips by, I can look back and see what significance each one of those held, howsoever inconspicuous they seem, because after all its not just about one page, it’s about the whole odyssey of it. The life of a nobody.
I confess, I’ll be offended if you don’t find the idea appealing, the same way a devout is offended by an atheist, for I too am blinded now. Any existence of faults in the idea, make it even more beautiful, since whatsoever I find, whatever refinements I make, would all be part of the journey.
Another argument as criticism could be a reductive comparison of this idea to the way people take pictures/make videos to post it on the internet, a baseless pursuit of shallow vanity, only that it could be argued that I’m doing the same just in a different form. Now before continuing, I must mention that what I mean by documenting is not limited to text. Pictures, videos and audio are very much a part of it, it’s just that text is simply more convenient and allows you to have time to reflect while writing, which is even more important given the fact that the Archivist must document his state of mind. With this further dulling of the boundaries, I present the single biggest point of difference between my idea and posting stuff on social media sites. The difference lies in the audience, or the lack thereof. Here, the significance is not defined by or wanes in any way depending on the witnesses, they may bring a warm company but that’s all, for it is you who is the primary focus and the most crucial element of this whole ordeal.
More so, the difference and true worth lies in the nature of your endeavors, your very own intentions. Is what you document really a faithful mirror of your life or just an outward shallowness, with no real substance to it and offering no greater understanding. The very test of value is simply the question: does it allow you to embody the author’s thoughts, stepping into their shoes, unveiling some fragment of their life’s journey? Does it present some new idea, something to think about? And most importantly, does the text represent you as you are and is something that you would want to revisit to know yourself if you ever happened to lose yourself, not as you want to be known, but as you really were like, which is why it can be very personal, with a lot of it definitely being unfit for uploading online. (Such a litmus test can/should also be applied to content you consume in general)
As long as you have a document that you can look back to and say, “Hey, that was me”, irrespective of however good or bad you think it is, one that makes you remember the fleeting days and your joys and suffering with it, you’ll have fulfilled the Archivist’s role. For every day is an experience, that no matter how mundane, must not be forgotten. For if you do, all you would have at your deathbed is no testimony of your life and no recollection of the time gone by.
After all, what is a life that is not even remembered by the one who lived it?