Protons, Neutrons, Electrons & Bacardi Rum
Funny story, I grew up in a boarding school very far away from home. My school was a rather strict one. I understood to the fullest the meaning of the line, “house matrons and war chiefs are exactly the same people. In fact they can exchange positions and no one will notice.” (Of course there is no line like that, I made that up. But I bet I am getting a lot of high fives from fellow boarders) Furthermore, my boarding school had no outings and no concept of money (to the students, of course our parents paid their asses off) or tuck shop at least when I was there. And we had the exact same routine everyday for 9 months of the year that we spent there except for mountaineering week (yeah, I have rich parents. Really it’s just the parents). Oh ya, also sick days. I loved sick days, I got to eat rasam and rice with lemon pickle and didn’t have to eat what could only be nature’s puke. The vegetables. But other than that, every single day had the same routine and somehow it wasn’t boring at all. Eventually, I actually grew to like the routine even though it began at some obnoxious 5 am which in the beautiful town of Ooty is nothing but butt freezing!
Now that I grew up and can make my own schedule, I detest routines. I detest routines much more than my father detests the fact that I am not married at 31. Oh! believe me he detests it a great deal. I listen to hell and back everyday. Twice. In fact my marriage (or the lack of it) is the very reason he will not go to heaven (or so he believes :-p ). But more on that later.
Having said that, I do like to prepare though. A lot. I like to prepare everything that I have to do in advance for the day, the week, the month, the year and even the decade. (I barely skid past a day but you don’t know that so yea, I’ll throw in the decade too.) But I don’t like to put myself on a timer every hour of everyday. I am happy to wake up at 6 am (damn, I couldn’t even write 6 am without cracking up) or 7 or 9 am (or 11 or 4 pm) So I do go a lot with ‘I’ll get to it when I wake up’ kind of an attitude. Doesn’t mean I don’t finish my day. I almost always do (I am pretty kickass like that). But I like my sleep and I hate to break it just because I have decided to wake up at 7 am every morning. I am teaching my dog to live with me and so far it’s working out great. Ha!
Now, incase you forget, the traditional atomic model is like the solar system with the nucleus in place of the sun & electrons in place of the planets orbiting the nucleus. The nucleus is composed of protons and neutrons. And now if you don’t know the solar system, just forget it.
Coming back, when we are in a state of equilibrium, we are like the neutrons. Cool & chilling in the nucleus. Imagine a frog sun-bathing on a lotus leaf in a cool pond with his sunglasses on. That’s what neutrons are like.
Our equilibrium breaks in two ways. Good way and bad way.
If it breaks in a good way, we become like protons. Now imagine my dog on a huge float in the pond of course. (He would look like a dork on a float on land) with sunglasses having spotted the lotus leaf with the frog and is being pushed by the mighty winds towards the frog (Yum… Chinese lunch!). Mind you, he is staying put but his tail is wagging the earth off its orbital course. That’s a proton for you. And a Labrador’s tail. Positive atomic particles in the nucleus.
Incase your equilibrium breaks in a bad way, we become like electrons. Now imagine me on land (having spotted my dog who spotted the frog and is moving towards it rather fast) yelling and screaming for my dog to come back because he stole my float and my sunglasses and is about to eat a frog! Of course I cannot jump into the pond, it has lotus which means its a murky pond. Duh! So I am just running around the pond like a crazy person and the humidity has made my hair look like Einstein’s! Oh come on. Just google a picture of Einstein. Now that my friend, is an electron. Negative energy particles circling around the nucleus in an orbit.
Wow! I cannot believe I thought this whole thing up by myself this instant. But give me some credit. It’s bang on!
The point of all of the above irrelevant details of my life before the brilliant analogy was to basically say that, my equilibrium breaks when I have to maintain a routine. Ack!
One of the most recent things that happened is the pandemic lockdown. Any my parents got stuck in Mumbai with me for 7 months. I love my parents. Really, I do. (What? it’s true!) But boy did that not breakdown my equilibrium. When they are away I can lie (un-harmingly) my ass off and prove to be the most disciplined daughter in the world. Things change when you have to turn those lies to reality just to prove a point. And the first one of those was guess what? “The damn routine”. Clearly I have childhood issues but more on that later.
With no choice left but to live with them I had to get into a grand routine that I always told them I followed. That made my hair bigger than Einstein’s! I paced about like the electron every day of the 7 months. As for the rest of them, the neutron was my mother. The proton was my dog, Oreo and my parent’s help, Rita. The other electron with me was my father. Thankfully we were on different orbits. If that wasn’t the case we would have a 7 month long nuclear fission that no boron could stabilize. Yup. We are a charged up family. Guys, I love my family. I really do.
As for me, I knew the situation was temporary so I survived being an electron for so long. Now that they managed to go back and (touch wood) are well and safe, I have gone back to being the sun-bathing frog. Believe me, I laid down on the couch the whole day after they left like the sun-bathing frog with a pair of Ray-Ban just because I could. That god forsaken routine went down the dumps on the drive back from the airport. (Shhh… they don’t have to know that!)
The larger question that comes to mind with the disclosure of my utterly disturbing relation with my parents is that we as a generation of people have found ourselves in a little bit of a soup. We have way too much stimulus (much more than the human composition is capable of dealing with) that strikes us off balance rather quickly in small and big ways. Staying in a constant proton or an electron state for too long can only mean two things for later. An utterly bitter old age or a deliriously happy one. Neither is or can be good.
Well, I am going to inherit dementia and mix that up with my earlier mentioned childhood issues and I’m in for a party when I am 80 but don’t worry about me. I have an estate back in Assam and the world’s most lovable big brother who is only 5 years older to me (he is going to say 4.5 but what the hell is 4.5 years anyway! so let's just stick with my 5 years) and Ahem! the previously mentioned rich parents so I think I’ll manage. And if you do too, you have just read a whole piece for absolutely no helpful information. But for this to happen, I need to survive till there first!
The amount of pressure I put on myself everyday to get it right & do it right & be right might just make sure I don’t reach there anyway! Ouch. That’s morbid. But come on. Take it lightly please. I mean it lightly. Really.
Sometimes it’s unfair what we put ourselves through. I am a person who regularly studies life and science (surprise surprise) and keep working on bettering my today of life & living. So far it blows. I never said I am an expert now, did I?
But if nothing else I do recognize the issues and do deal with them. How do you think I reached here in the first place :-p.
Other than the fact that we live a world where even the sky is a rather small limit (Uff! such an original line) the ‘being’ and by that I mean the ’state’ of the human being is a rather small concern.
In the introspections and retrospections that I keep doing for myself and my life (self indulgent much?!) I have figured that at some point a lot of my being was out of fear. Fear of not getting it right. Fear of not being appreciated in family and work, fear of staying unknown, fear of being mediocre (this one was killing me) & the list goes on. Trust me, the only thing you will get by doing anything out of that many fears is going to be seriously mediocre or just nothing. It’s so damn unnecessary but you can turn that around only if you first recognize it and then get over it and then make it a habit to keep recognizing it and getting over it all through life. Well many wise people have said adult life is boring. Here is proof. This is just a larger learning in my life where I stayed in elongated electron & proton stages and I'm pretty sure you can understand from reading just this much about me that 'I have issues!'.
But now, I can tell my self, "Hey, you are entering electron stage, back off and don't take any decision right now". Spoiler alert, you might land up with lesser hookups therefore lesser breakups and therefore lesser shoes. Damn!
What I actually intended to say is maybe we need to identify our proton, neutron and electron states. Maybe we can help our loved ones when they are in these states that you have identified them to be in. So they can de-charge. Is that a word? Ah well, you get the point. Maybe, just maybe we can focus on a better quality of life instead of Einstein's or your own hair. And just maybe I can get myself to using my parent’s estate after all! Now you see why I needed to break down the state of human beings? No? Well read this again in a few years. And then again in a few years after that. You might not understand it but you will definitely help my state by adding some ‘views’ to my post and at some point of time, you will get it. When you do, you will also learn to watch out for it and 'de-charge'.
It’s some beautiful words, these ones. “Be, what you wanna be, taking things the way they come, nothing is as nice as finding paradise and sippin' on Bacardi Rum.”
For the record, I like scotch.
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