the somewhat documented life

The unexamined life is not worth living; Maybe, but is the unlived life worth examining?

I remember reading this pithy line a long time ago. 

Is the undocumented life ever lived? That is the question confronting me now. Hours, days, weeks, months are slipping past, leaving no discernable mark, no decipherable clue. Ofcourse there are moments of levity, events attended, occasions celebrated, seemingly unsolvable irritations that eventually dissipate but the next day, the next week it's all a blur, afternoons that blend into each other, nights that disappear completely. The only way to reassure myself of their actuality are the material remnants- office emails, credit card bills, objects bought, notes made, and other people who confirm that whatever I think happened has indeed happened, we did it together. Ebert once wrote that one of the reasons people marry is to have a witness to their lives. That at the end of it there's someone we can look towards to placate ourselves that our life was real, that it wasn't all in our head.

When I sometimes flick through the archives of this blog, I feel surprised that I'd once felt or thought that way. It's not as dramatic as in films, I don't feel it was written by a stranger whom I don't recognise now. I don't think I've changed so much, don't think most people change as radically (atleast that's one of the ideas I wanted to share in థియరీ & ప్రాక్టీస్). The surprise is more pleasant, more subtle, that I once spent all that thought and time thinking about that particular thing- a film, a book, an amateur philosiphical consideration. And that I wrangled with something, something, in the stream of my feelings and thoughts, trying to pin it down, trying to both keep up with and simultaneously comment on whatever it was that was going on in the jugalbandi between my head and external reality. 

Writing is a physical process. It is as much an attempt to create a material artefact as sculpture. It is an attempt to hold the amorphous shapes in your head and before they disappear or distract you, to thrust them through this apparatus called words. It sounds like hunting in the dark. I suppose it is somewhat like that. To roam in the wilderness in the dark, hoping, praying to catch the wily, slippery beast, who's contours you don't know, and which'll disappear at the slightest noise. You can choose not to hunt though, to not put yourself through the wringer.

So why write? Or more generally, why document via blogposts, instagram photos, vacation stories we share at the slightest pretext, our highs and, only slightly less freqeuntly, our lows? Yes, we want to leave something behind when we're gone, we want to be remembered, we want to feel like we've lived good, eventful lives before we die. It seems to me that a large chunk of that desire is just ego massaging. There's also that aspect of celebrating our common humanity, connecting with others when we share. Then there are those among us who feel that documenting and confronting are ways of improving ourselves, to 'become a better version of myself tomorrow'. Beyond all this, I see another reason. 

It is a spiritual practice. It feels awkward using the word especially since the bend I took away from all that a couple of years ago. Yet, I have no other way of describing it. Writing, conscious writing (usually blogging) and not drifting along with whatever comes to mind while journaling, for me is a process of genuine discovery. It is possibly the most conscious activity I do. When everything else ebbs away and it is me with whatever it is that is taking up the most space in my head. It is easily the best high I've ever had because I'm both in control but also willing to be guided, goaded into unventured territory. Yes, it is like hunting- to be purposeful and patient, walking in with the barest clue of what I might confront and come out with at the end, and also to be thrilled to the core at the prospect of toil and a well-earned reward.

It is, in the best sense of the phrase, a labour of love. There are ofcourse many days, when I haven't written anything for months, when I wish writing was easier, or that I post something just because its been really long. I'm sure there are days when I gave into that temptation but I think those days, thankfully, are fewer. Days like today, when this post, for whatever its worth, came out of nowhere almost compensate for those frustrations. The world becomes beautiful and the heart flutters in the breeze. In a TED talk I heard a long time ago, Elizabeth Gilbert talks of a poet who would get the whiff of a poem while working in the fields and her ears would perk up with excitement. Before long the poem would thunder towards her like an incoming train and she'd run as fast she could to grab hold of a paper and pencil to jot it down. On some days, stories like those sound like banal platitudes. 

Fortunately, today is not one of those days.