I recently had to strip my entire wooden cupboard which had gotten infected with termites. When all the furnishings gone and the room barren and empty, the room seemed fairly large but what struck me was the echoes. In the beginning I just went to that room and said things to hear my own echo. My kids were also a little intrigued as to how the same room didn't sound before, the way it did now.
I went on a tangent of thought. I think echo happens when there is a sudden vacuum where there was something or someone? Then the place is larger and staying in that place is noisier because everything reverberates.
Now, what happens when someone is gone from your life, a lover, a child, a parent?
These are close people, when you talk to them you don't hear yourself back, it is comforting to have people there responding to you, tending to you, making you smile cry and laugh.
Sometimes, they go without notice which is most painful, but whatever the reason, the fact that they go and leave behind a vacuum which creates an echo is what I am concerned about.
How do you deal with that echo?
Some people shut themselves from their self because they don't want to admit that there is a vacuum and there is a pain of a loss. They go into self denial, create barriers around them so that no one else can enter and they never have to feel the echo of someone gone again.
Sometimes, one starts to look for some"one" to fill in and sometimes one goes on a frenzy of making too many friends, thereby drowning the noise of the echo inside them by superficial external noises. This is also not a permanent fix is what I believe, but perhaps better than the first option of creating barriers and isolating yourself.
When you find that someone whom you can be as close, you perhaps rush into it, thinking automatically that the other person will fill in the vacuum just as a perfect glove fit. When this doesn't happen as it is bound to, one goes on a frenzy of making friends still trying to find someone to fill in....a perfect glove fit!
Neither should one stay forever in isolation and neither should one try to find the perfect fit.. the one who is gone is irreplaceable because you will see in nature there are no two leaves which are identical even if it sprouts from the same tree. This expectation is turning you to your own worst enemy!
I believe at times, one has to let go and it is not your fault, you cannot suffer for one mistake or one unfortunate event forever, you make a mistake, you punish yourself and then you move on, but going on punishing yourself forever, is not right, and is unjustified.
Too much of isolation makes one more fragile and any contact with people is stressful and too much of socialising is numbing and makes one out of sync with their own emotions.
The mountains are isolated places and hence fragile so what happened to Uttarakhand was because of too much stress with too many people thronging and causing immense stress to a place in need and habit of isolation..
I know it is easier said than done, but what's easy is boring too and life is nothing but boring no?
Some things are beyond our control like the supernaturals and that is what is beautifully brought out in the movie I watched last night. People who don't believe in God or miracles, have the hardest time in letting go, so perhaps if they met a spirit...they would change :)
Last night I was watching
Talaash, the movie talks about spirits who move around and look for people who have deep pain or as I call it echoes inside and try to connect with them. I think I have become one such spirit!!
