Merry Christmas
an essay on lies, and the love it engenders
So much of love is tentative. Beginning, middle, or end – when is love ever sure or sure-footed? And when it has little time (one night or one lifetime) to find its destination, what can it do but rely on the messages it gets from deflection, touch, looks, pauses and that primordial instinct which says - against all possibilities - maybe, just maybe, there is something. And beyond all indications, all instincts, all mendacity, all appearances, a connection builds, shimmeringly, like a spider’s web, bridging one aching heart with another.
And in this universe of fragile love, anything false cannot be absolute. Even lies cannot be black or white: they cannot become the definition, the meaning of every feeling, or the inscription of every instinct. The judgement of the lie and the liar needs to be suspended.
In this one life, where second guesses are both logic’s uncertainty and emotion’s mistrust, we have to often decide to move on and flow through, with half suspicion or full knowledge, because we know that this is a moment which we are loving, tomorrow be damned. So many people, and so much of heartbreak, finds immersion in our lives, that our souls slowly get carved out of wet sand. Collapsible to touch, unsustainable in storm. And that’s the reason why we embrace the passing joy, though knowing fully well it might mean nothing in the end.
In trust, we are back to our innocent selves. We start from wanting to disbelief and end with a sense of infinite wonder. Our tattered lives are again privy to past fragments of happinesses. In the infinite ocean of our own hurt, we find things which made us happy, however fleeting they might have been.
Conversations with strangers is then often a confession. We know that even if we are judged, the emotional stakes are low. Because if we are not castigated or engender disgust, we have started something with a truth. And that is more than what one can say for so many of life’s trysts or trusts.
We find men and women doing unreasonable things. Decisions which make no sense, sacrifices which seem to have no logic, promises which have no beginnings. But that’s because we are onlookers, that’s because we have no inkling of somebody else’s emotional histories. Because we are not privy to either their scars or why their senses have numbed. The biggest absurdities are often the only leitmotif possible of a compromised life. Because both light and lightness often emerge in the mysterious darkness of our being.
Because when in one moment we get something which our soul has ever craved, we are ready to let go of everything else. When a whole life is nothing but a regret, a sacrifice is not a scar any longer, it is a healing touch.
Our lives finally stand to mean for something. We stand redeemed.
Merry Christmas is on Netflix. An unusual film of connections, conversations - and a dead body.
Hear this poem? Maybe you will like it!