If you never start, you never fail

A random stream of consciousness and what Chiaroscuro means to me

I find nothing more intimidating than a blinking cursor on a blank screen. It’s funny how we postpone doing something thinking that the world will not appreciate it enough; I’m not ready yet. I’ve critiqued myself into deleting god knows how many words worth of writings that seemed unfinished, unnecessary, conceited, hedonistic, childish, laughable, cringe-worthy, and I can go on and on listing lexicons in, yet again, a desperate attempt to keep from saying anything meaningful whatsoever.

I’ve been meaning to start a Substack for a few years but always found reasons not to. I’m not introspective enough or I haven’t read enough or I don’t write well enough or people don’t care enough - reasons that clearly stem from underlying insecurities that I haven’t truly made peace with. I don’t think I ever will anyway but the weird thing is, I’m aware of my shortcomings and the reasons that lie beneath, yet I still lie to myself, constantly. What is this inexplicable alternating pendulum swinging between superiority complexes and imposter syndrome? I come across something and I think I can do it better and other times I read something so powerful, it makes me feel physically ill to even consider calling myself a writer. In between “I’m too good for this world” and “I’m the least significant person to have ever walked the Earth” lies all the excuses I make to hold the anxiety at bay. I thought I won’t swear but fuck that. The previous sentence (and the lack of relevance/context) is a close to impeccable representation of how my mind really works.

A friend of mine made me listen to the first minute of a Rick Rubin Podcast recently and it was along the lines of - art being a manifestation of what you feel in that moment and it’s nothing more than that. It’s nothing more than that. It’s nothing more than that. I tried debating this statement in my head but it makes so much sense I don’t even know where to begin.

I’m no artist; I’m just another cog in the machine. If thoughts are forever coming and going, and all we are are a collection of thoughts, do we really have a personality? Are we just all the same beings with alternating thoughts? Is personality just a way of interpreting who you are in at that moment? It’s a carefully handpicked collection of self that you choose to hold on to when it feels convenient. I never really understood what multiple personality disorder really meant because I feel like everyone has it. I’m a different person for different persons - does that qualify as a disorder? Or maybe I’m not smart or educated enough to understand the gravity of it.

We create different versions of ourselves in others’ minds but we’re not responsible for them.

Chiaroscuro is the name I came up with for my Substack. It was either this or ‘Nonplussed’ but that’s already the name of my playlist on Spotify which I don’t even actively listen to anymore. I just listen to the 6 mixes that Spotify recommends. Sometimes it feels like the algorithm knows me better than I know myself. Why and how is YouTube recommending a case study on self-reflection at 2 AM and why am I 30 minutes in when I’m not even fully paying attention to it? Nevermind. Yeah, Chiaroscuro. It’s raw and imperfect, obscure and unfinished, adverse and polysemous. I held onto it for as long as I can remember because I thought (and still think) that I wouldn’t do justice to it. Takuan said, “There’s no light for those who do not know darkness.” Maybe that’s what I want this to be - a collection of thoughts, stories, essays; reflections on life and death and everything in between; the black and white and the grey; the contrasts that give each other meaning; the yin and the yang. I don’t want myself to limit what Chiaroscuro could mean. It’s anything and something, nothing and everything at the same time. Whatever moves me, what I experience, what I read, what I interpret, how I experience time, and what I do with it - I will try to capture everything here.

I had no idea I would be writing this today. It was a regular day - took a shit, took a shower, and then I started writing. I have no idea how this piece will end. I have no idea how this day will end. I have no idea what I’m doing in life, like most people. But I’ve had enough of unpublished pieces sitting in my drafts, collecting dust, most of them forgotten or irrelevant or just victims of extreme criticism. They’re not bad writings, I think, they’re just…unfinished. But everything’s always unfinished. There can always be more. There’s no ending. Life doesn't have an end. Yes, I’m one of those who believes that death isn’t the end. It’s like paying rent for using up energy and we pay rent with our consciousness. Periodically transforming from one form of energy to another, everything is impermanent but this impermanence is not absolute, it’s an ever-changing metamorphosis into being or not being, but still existing, indistinguishable.

I haven’t been so uncertain about things in a long time but somehow I feel at peace. It’s better than being comfortably numb which I had been for a very long time. I’ve come to the conclusion that discomfort with a hint of uncertainty is better for growth and somehow also better for my mental health. I know, this is not a revelation, but some realizations are more profound in an individual context than through vicarious experiences. I know some things and I know some things. The difference is the experience; the difference is knowledge and wisdom. There’s a constant unsettling feeling but no premonitions, no imminent disasters around the corner or anything, just a touch of “let’s see what happens” coupled with “there’s only so much I can control”. I fear not being enough but not in a personal sense. Having grown up in a typical middle-class Indian household, where being average wasn’t a privilege I was awarded, I still somehow grew up average. And I fear not living up to the expectations of my parents who clearly think too highly of me. It’s an illusion, a facade of all the things they want me to be hiding all the things that I’m not. Some days I feel the crushing weight of these expectations and what my purpose is. Most days I don’t even live for myself but that’s something I’m trying to change. I sit ruminating in my room, with the hopes of making it big, with the hopes of my Substack blowing up and me waking up to 100K subscribers overnight, with the hopes of becoming successful when I don’t even know what success means to me, with the hopes of my parents saying they’re proud of me, with the hopes of finally being enough.

Originality is dead. And we’re to blame. Everything feels like a copy of a copy (courtesy - Bojack). One of the reasons why I held off on starting my Substack was this - the idea that everything I have to say has already been said and is most probably articulated better than I’m capable of. A comparison that compares me to something I don’t even know exists. I mean, when did it come to this? How am I undermining myself based on what may not even be true? But wait a minute, it’s all perspective. Originality doesn’t lie in the idea but in the execution. Maybe how the same thing is represented makes all the difference. What I’m saying isn’t new, but perhaps how I’m saying it is. That’s the originality that I can create and be responsible for. Maybe originality is not dead, maybe it’s just become too uncommon. I don’t know.

As you grow, you look back at some of your most difficult moments with more elegance and warmth. These were the formative moments of our lives, these were the times that molded us. In fact, we’re molded by things we don’t even remember. It’s fascinating to think that I’m a collection of experiences that made me who I am yet if you ask me to note down these moments in excruciating detail I most probably won’t be able to. Memories are just recycled recallings of these moments, conceptualized, bent, and rewritten to fit our narrative. Maybe that’s a good thing. I used to have a bittersweet memory of what might’ve been one of the most difficult years of my life but now, as I reminisce, I can’t help but smile at those times. But it wasn’t easy back then - waiting at bus stations, getting lost in a sea of people all headed somewhere they were not sure they wanted to do, grim expressions on faded faces hiding ambitions that were forced to take the back seat, souls that were lost long ago and now only the body remains floating weightlessly through time and space. We stopped doing things for ourselves long ago. Go stand on a street and ask the first man you see what he wants. Go ask the first woman you see if she ever feels like running away from her responsibilities. Go stand in a metro and ask the first person you see if they’re satisfied with where they are in life. I can tell you what these answers are and that's alarming. It’s like everyone’s living the same life. And yet there are countless nuances. And yet, we have unique experiences. Whatever said and done, people never fail to amaze me, and that’s the beauty of it. Life can be mesmerizing if you see experiences not as good or bad, but simply as moments. Moments are meaningless until we give meaning to them. That’s what we are - the emperors of our fate. It’s all perspective; what felt like rock bottom to me now feels like a cosmic joke; two sides of the same coin; Chiaroscuro.

I don’t feel intimidated anymore. The blank screen before I started writing this is now a stream of my consciousness and I barely notice the blinking cursor. I don’t know if anyone will resonate with this. Matter of fact, I don’t even know if anyone will read this but if you are reading it, thank you for making it all the way. I don’t know what I’ll write about next and I want to keep it that way. I don’t want this to turn into work like everything else in my life. This is my escape. Find yours. I suggest you go grab a drink, possibly with a friend, and relax. I’m about to go do the same.