Pain is infectious.

Wonder how many times we have shed our tears off of at the misery of the other? Wonder how it makes our blood boil looking at the gross injustice popping upon our news feed daily in an amount which rather makes us guilty of our own not so bad existence? To garnish these lowly human emotions instigated through sufficient information overload we have this innate feeling of having no control over what’s happening to who, akin to us or not. Do you not get into this rut? The rut of misery showering upon you wherever you look at. Does it seem ideal? Catching upon the infection and tormenting yourself through the disgraced state humanity has put itself in.

Speaking upon what is observed, analysed and accepted by the writer, it is a clear case of some unknown global mission to make us sadder and sadder as a collective. They somehow bring you to this world, put you in an education system best fit for parrots and push you into realizing yourself as a capital generating machine. The salt and pepper to these distinctively monotonous stories is your personal struggles with it. We all have had them in many different forms, those who haven’t are still sleeping waiting for it strike them into awareness sometime in the near future as the air around tells. Certainly, I’m talking to those of you who have chosen to embrace the humanity in you despite the vulnerabilities that come along with it.

First off, I’ll congratulate you on the resilience that you show. You realise how many people end up going to wherever they came from just because it’s TOO HARD for them to survive in this world? I wake up to news of kids, elderly, famous, poor, rich, etc. killing themselves. Why do you think this happens? One can go on to study ‘suicide’ at great lengths to find out what’s up but let’s spare ourselves with another overdue misery and agree on one thing. They’ve all lost hope.

Well hello there, it does click upon something strange does it not? All the fiction and fanatic work I’ve come across walks upon the same line. A spark which makes the impossible possible, the ending of an unconquerable battle through sheer determination for a better future, Not giving up the fight even though one is chased by the enemy throughout the galaxy. That’s hope to me. Its archaic understanding defines it in the lines of trust and reliance, just plugging it in since we somehow are bound by the ropes of practicality. The will to live is closely tied to hope, so may it not be that the will to live happily can be tied to hoping for this happiness we so deeply crave? What if, wishful thinking is more than just a debunking phenomenon by the same people who pushed us into this state of existence? I say, wish for things. More than a nudge for you to look at something brighter amongst this doom and gloom, it fires up your will and puts it on turbo. That is something you need not to be barely surviving but to thrive.

We humans are great at learning I’ve heard. Good only, hope we learn to truly live and teach those who need to learn. Let’s pull apart all those ghastly conditionings, in this context not sinking ourselves despite the pain our kind maybe going through. I’ll suggest an alternative, let joy be the infection.

This article has been written by Harshita Meena (Batch of 2024).