I have always believed that everything in this world has got a logic to it. Longing for sanity in the insane ways of life, I have felt that nature’s building blocks are there for us to understand, to explore and then to exploit, thereby attaining the ultimate mastery over our lives. Going through ups and downs of life, I have experienced numerous instances of success and failure, sorrow and happiness, using each of them to learn, thinking that some day, I’ll find logic to all of it and become the ultimate master of my destiny. Whenever I have thought that I have reached the abyss of sorrow or acme of happiness, for that matter, life has always proved me wrong. That is life! Limitless and amorphous, defying all logic, driving me crazy, forcing me to give up my quest for mastery.
But I am not the one who gives up easily. So, one fine day, I decided to take up the challenge to crack the code and learn about the building blocks of life. Beginning of my learning journey was marked by learning the way to learn. Once I knew how to learn, my learning curve became exponential. I learned, learned, learned and learned; and after 319 years, I ended up having full insights into what are the basic ingredients of life. I attained full control over my mind. I learned how to feel pain at will, how to feel grief, how to feel joy, how to get amused, how to shed a tear, how to pump adrenalin, how to feel blue, how to feel low, how to feel anguished, how to feel depressed, how to feel nostalgic, how to generate enthusiasm. I couldn't believe, but I was also able to learn how to not think of her. My feelings and emotions started obeying me and I was able to evoke them at will.
I wondered, isn’t this what all sadhus spend their entire lives to attain? The ultimate control over their senses, the ultimate peace, the salvation. Mastering my emotions was some mean feat, so I decided to feel proud and hence, I felt proud of it. Then I decided to feel happy. I closed my eyes and I saw her. My mind was thinking of her, which was not strange as I had not decided to not think of her. Then I decided to feel dead. And it was easiest of all.
What next, I thought. Where do I go from here? How should I, the master of my emotional destiny, go about my life? I could have easily pursued a routine of feeling happy for hours every day by forcing myself into enjoying my life. But the problem was that I didn’t feel like feeling happy. I realized that what I had thought of as mastery over my emotions was actually a resultant state of convergence of all external emotions into internal emptiness. That is, a state of emotional numbness or a mental anesthesia. That was definitely not what I wanted at first place. I was winning, but now I wanted to lose this race with myself. I had finally realized that there was indeed some sanity in leaving the ways of life insane. Otherwise, we would end up controlling our thoughts and action to the extent of an unwanted perfection, thereby transforming emotionally rich humanity into a plain and tasteless robotic community.
Hence, I unlearned.
And now, I do not know how to not think of her.
