Dancing to life's tunes

When you are down and insomnia takes over, you get a tad hyper, but remember each rush is bound to be gushed out, that is the way it is, and you are always 'on the rebound' with life's complexities.

This is true for everything, be it a high from a side effect of some happy hormone medication, or just a high from being alive or life itself. You are bound to come down crashing at some point and realise that truly that melancholy is just the flip side of the same coin.

Perhaps that is why people tend to abuse drugs in their quest of an everlasting high, only to realise, often too late, that such a thing is nothing but a chimera.

I am a self-confessed, trigger-happy person: anything gives me a high! From a basket full of red tomatoes to playing carrom by the roadside with men in some remote village; that's how bizarre and random I am, if I may say so. I equally feel low when I see an elderly woman begging in the streets of this cruel city, or when a cherished plant needs to be chopped down because of a bad bug.

The crux of the matter is that life does hand you bothers that are hard to deal with. Every one of us has some sort of reason to be troubled and be melancholic, but we need to snap out of it simply because that's what life demands!

Sadness, melancholia, or even clinical depression, I feel, is like the flu of the mind; while the common flu can easily be treated with over the counter pills, but the 'lows of life' need to be nudged to get cured. At times, it becomes absolutely necessary to seek professional advice. Yet, most of the time the virus remains dormant before attacking again for no good reason.

Why is it that I don't feel like getting out of the bed or meeting people or even attending the daily chores? Why do I constantly feel that something bad is lurking behind and will be hissing at me from behind? Why am I afraid to giggle silly or even laugh my heart out?

These are the questions so many of us ask, yet we do not try hard enough to seek the answers. Personally, there are moments I am depressed, followed by my bursts of elation, only to be down again; it's the cycle of my being.

The mind is the real deal; the heart — just its puppet. There are many unresolved issues of the psyche that play on your nerves and you lose yourself in them; you become burdened and overwhelmed with how the mind plays tricks on your conscience and how easily you succumb to it.

Blame it on PMS; blame it on mid-life crisis — in reality we are all coping with melancholia in some form or the other. Life does give you lemons with sourness or difficulty, but the reality is you cannot always make lemonade, encouraging optimism and a positive 'can do' attitude in the face of adversity or misfortune becomes difficult at times, especially when your mind is all tangled.

Life has given me a bumper harvest of lemons and I am sore from making lemonades. I am in deed a patchwork person living a patchwork life and it's the tapestry of highs and lows that make it interesting.

So, the next time you see someone down or someone insomniac scribbling gibberish give them a hug and say 'I do get it and it's ok to be sad.'

Chin up everyone, and have a great time reading Star Lifestyle. Today we give you the recipe for a perfect soft-boiled egg on P16 — if not the perfect recipe for life!

— RBR

Photo: Collected