August 4, 2018
"Write about a recent conflict."
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I do not have a recent conflict; I have a constant one. It is an eternal battle, a perpetual war, one that I wage every day, in almost everything I do. A struggle between what I want and what I need; a fight between what I could be and what I want to be.
I want to sleep in, maybe a couple of hours or at least thirty minutes more, but then I cannot afford that luxury, not when I have to be in office. I would love to have a hobby as my job, but then I need the pay that my job brings me. I would love to write and share my stories, but then the fear of a cold reception freezes me. I would love to laze on Sunday afternoons but then there is a whole week's work pending to be done before the next weekend strolls by.
My life, like most people, is in an eternal conflict, between our wishes and our wants; our desires and our dreams; our needs and our aspirations. Somehow, in pursuit of elusive lifestyles and ephemeral happiness, we have traded our definitely for maybe, our present for a not-so-sure future. Even worse than hankering after material success is the desperate need for appreciation and public applause.
Most of our internal struggles arise on account of this conflict, for what I like and love to do might not garner appreciation. We hope to be applauded, then expect to be appreciated and finally, demand adulation. It is a vicious cycle, where appreciation increases expectation, which demands even more voluble appreciation, in turn fuelling greater expectations till we reach a stage where almost everything we say or do is done with an eye of how we are perceived.
It is an eternal conflict in which our personality and creativity are slowly strangled and sacrificed at the altar of public applause, broken by insecurities and buried by indifference. A conflict that claims 'what we are', destroys 'what we could be' and leaves behind 'what we have become'. We turn from being human and differently unique to a single statistic in a sea of homogeneous numbers. It makes no sense that we are not happy, that being in line with society, makes us hollow inside, for there is no end to the strife.
Maybe that is exactly what life is; a strife between the need to blend in and the desire to stand out, the clash between cold logic and hot passion, the struggle between a thinking mind and a feeling heart. Maybe that is what it means to live, to be alive.
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Word Count 432
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365 Days- Book I
RandomThis is my collection of writings for the three hundred and sixty five day writing challenge - where one has to write something daily, every day, for one whole year, based on the prompts provided - as part of an exercise to improve creative writing...
