I don’t know exactly when and how Pink Floyd grew onto me. I just knew them as a very successful rock band, well-known for the innovative sounds that appear in their songs. It took me a while to get to know the songs like Comfortably Numb, Marooned, Another Brick In The Wall etc. I had always read that their work is marked by the use of philosophical lyrics, but never really felt it as being so hard-hitting until I heard the songs Comfortably Numb and Time in a proper way.
Agreed, these two songs do tend towards expressing depressing sorts of feelings. But if you come to think of it, don’t most of us feel like that some or the other time? For the record, I do like to think that the glass is half full rather than half empty, but there are some moments in life when you do tend to introspect and realize the sad undercurrents in our lives.
(For those who haven’t heard the song Time yet, here are its rough lyrics. Reading it along with the song should give you a better impact, I think. The way Pink Floyd have composed a combination of hard-hitting notes (1st & 3rd stanza) and the feeling-rich sound (2nd and 4th stanza) is truly remarkable.)
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way
Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun
And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death
Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say
How brutally real is that! I can even identify myself with that to some extent. When I was younger, may be in late school years, I so strongly thought that life is really a pretty long journey. Those cool days at school, playing with friends in the evenings, lazy Saturdays, fun Sundays, occasional picnics, annual exams, results, the small wanna-be-grown-up sort of celebration parties...School days were passing happily…
Better things were yet to come though. Soon the college started. Felt like the entire world had opened up for me. So many new ideas, inspirations, anxieties, what not… Sounds bookish now, but yeah, that time one does feel all these emotions in one go. You can’t wait to enter and live the college life that is ever so romantically described in books & films. You can’t wait to bunk your first lecture and go for a movie with your friends. You can’t wait to catch attention of a pretty girl and have a nice little conversation with her while walking around in college campus. You can’t wait to dress fashionably and dance in the college festivals. You can’t wait to grab every opportunity that may take you one step closer to a successful career. You feel like the king of the world who has finally arrived at the scene just to take the matter in his own hands.
I still can’t forget those lazy monsoon afternoons that accompanied the beginning of every academic year. Every year came and went with its fair share of successes and failures. Yet, the monsoons always felt like some kind of a reassurance. While hanging around in the campus, wandering aimlessly in the city, practicing music with your friends, it always felt that there is still more to come. Felt like there is still time to take that biiig step of becoming a grown-up.
Zip!!!
Suddenly one day you realize that actually ten years have got behind you. Your college is already finished about 5 years ago. You are no more a promising 16 year old college-entering teenager. You are a 26 year old grown-up (well, physically) with a baggage of some missed opportunities. You find yourself suddenly in the middle of a crazy battlefield where everybody is hammering you with issues like educational qualifications, career growth, jobs, hobbies, passions, physical/mental well-being, relationships, long term financial planning - even to the extent of it being for your children (which you haven’t even thought about yet!) and guess what, your eventual retirement!
If you think objectively, yes, the sun is the same. But now there doesn’t seem to be any opportunity to take a small time-out and take a fresh breath. You may have taken good steps to productively use your time so far, you may not have actually missed the starting gun. But back then as a kid, your entire sphere of life was very small. Now that you are exposed to so many diverse (which sometimes include depressing) aspects of life, it indeed feels like having missed the gun and everything just slipping away at insanely high speed like the sand in a closed fist. What is worse, that you don’t even have the choice to go away from all this, at least in 99% of the cases, because by now you have already become a part of the system where you have subconsciously accepted your fate.
Take a look at these lines from Comfortably Numb:
When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse,
Out of the corner of my eye.
I turned to look but it was gone.
I cannot put my finger on it now.
The child is grown, the dream is gone.
I have become comfortably numb.
You can’t help but feel that all those dreams (that you thought you would achieve no matter what) have so systematically started fading away. (It is also possible, that you no longer want to pursue those dreams after realizing the harsh realities surrounding you.)
Yes, it does bring me to the feeling of disillusionment that I sometimes feel. A mini-figure of Woody Allen quickly starts hovering above my head like a Hollywood-style American military chopper with all his philosophies about meaninglessness of life.
But during times like these, what I love to do is introspect. I start to think: Is it really entirely my fault that I am feeling this way? Ok, I may have delayed taking some decisions and some times may not have worked as hard as I should have. But then there were so many things that were out of my control too. Sure, it feels sad that those priceless days of college-life won’t ever come back again, but then, what I have actually gained out of those days isn’t too bad either.
John Lennon once said: Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. So why not just respect that? Rather than worrying whether the world is going to end in 2012, why not just look forward to a nice Sunday lunch with your old buddies from college?
I think one really understands (rather should understand) the importance of balance in life in such times. Just like you need to see the negative side to keep your feet on the ground, you also need to see the glass half full, once again. No matter how painful the reality is, you should understand that there is no choice but to make peace with it and with yourself. (A lesson I learnt partly through Woody Allen’s film Deconstructing Harry.)Because at the end of the day, I do feel hell lot luckier than so many other people in this world who unfortunately can’t even afford to buy one square meal.
As clichéd as that sounds, but I really have started to enjoy the smaller things in life - like the company of my close ones, an occasional game of Gulli Cricket with the kids in the neighborhood, a sudden phone call to/from an old friend, observing a kitten that generally runs away from me as if I were some murderer but rather happily eats the food that I bring for it…
The point of saying all this is that there is actually no point in all this. It is in fact what my friend Anand Kothekar may refer to as routine non-sense. But it is surely refreshing (as ironic as that may sound) to visit these depressing aspects of your life once in a while to realize the brutal realities of life, but at the same time, also to know how lucky you still are and how much more you still can do with whatever that is still left with you.
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