Twist

My knitting company AK Kerani as featured in the Northwestern Alumni Magazine

Just an hour ago, I was in a pretty down mood - a mood that made me really feel I needed to blog.  I have a few guesses as to why I felt this way.  After all, it has been exactly a week since I left New York City in a questionable state.  But then I started thinking...why do we categorize time in ways to make us upset?  A week is just a week.  If I wasn't upset yesterday, why should a unit of time, meaningless unto itself, cause me to struggle? That's something that everyone I've been close to has at some point asked me.  Why do I intentionally seek out ways to make myself internally suffer?

In Buffy, my favorite TV show, the slayer's Season 4 boyfriend Riley confronts her about her need to feel safer in the dark.  Sometimes our struggles and anxieties become outlets and comfort blankets.  We hate them with all our hearts and complain that they're bringing us down, and yet we won't let them go. We reject the positive outlets right in front of us in favor of catering to our stress.  We let it rule us while resenting it the whole way.

I think I often make myself upset to make myself feel alive.  Without misery, drama or some kind of inner turmoil, what do I have to write about?  What do I have to sing about?  I've always lived a vibrant life based on my ability to escape from the world through song and writing.  But what if there's nothing to escape from?  What if I like my life?  Sure at the moment, I don't have someone with whom I can comfortably and consistently share both my soul and body, but that will come in time.  It's not a crisis poignant enough to write about on a daily basis, mainly because I have the ability to connect with whomever I wish through a variety of platforms across time and space.  I have self-confidence.  I have countless projects going on.  And moreover, I have this blog, which last time I had it, was my stable companion and fulfilled everything I needed to feel comfortable and familiar.

So what can I write about if I don't have turmoil?  I'm tired of writing about feeling lonely, being used or some inane goal I make up to amuse myself and dehumanize someone in the process.  People are not for conquest and life, though it often seems like it, is not really a game.  At least, it's not a game with rules that we can follow or predict.  If I'm going to write, I'm going to have to write about things bigger than myself and bigger than the problems I have.  I'm no longer in the mental state to create problems for myself every day or find new permutations of past regrets to rehash for a new topic.  I must write about what I observe.  I must look to learn something new each day.  I must seek out what tiny slice of wisdom I can impart on both myself and my readers, even if it's not about some concrete intensity or anger.

It's natural to be attached to the darker places of our hearts.  In the daily flow of things, sometimes we forget that we can be affected, broken, drenched in feeling.  But when I have flown back and forth like a forceful pendulum between vindictive anger and spastic bliss, I have lost the ability to sense the thrumming power that fuels my every day life.  It might not beat as strongly as the windy current of my emotions, but it sustains my life force and my identity.  My goal for myself and for all of you who struggle with similar things is to search deeper into the world for what really makes us all tick. Sometimes surface intensity and conflict can illuminate deeper truths, but if we aren't searching for deeper truths to begin with, we're just left with confusion, exhaustion and a lack of self-awareness.

My goal is to end 2013 just a little more self-aware with the trust that a day can be perfectly well and meaningful without a big revolution to report.  After all, each small thought that we have, like each stitch on a knitted scarf, has the potential to become a muse, an adventure, or even a twist of fate.