Grip and Grounding on Grim Days
Gory News, Death Tolls, and Sensitive People Like Us
It is a pleasant morning, a muskmelon and homemade chiwda morning. I think of checking the news. I have been away from the news for good chunks of time since the past year, and the few times I checked the news, it would fill me with dread. Today is no different. I see the death toll, records being broken, and people dying without treatment, sometimes without being tested even. And it's not like the other tragedies - the sexual and domestic violence have stopped for the pandemic. The casteist professors and the misogynist writers still continue oozing their poison.
Things are grim. And we make them gory for ourselves, by checking one more video, another post, scouting for who is angrier than the rest of us, who is shouting out on our behalf, and what is happening in other countries - who is being cancelled and who is being celebrated. By seeking information that could further paralyse us, through sadness, inadequacy, comparison or fear - by outsourcing our genuine rage to the loud-voiced all-caps critics, by clicking on red and orange coloured videos that have haunting background scores to news of post-election violence - we are ensuring the grim becomes gory, the darkness gets dirtier and our eyes stop seeing the good things for good, the handful of things worth living for - no these things are not in the news, not on our screens, but they are there in your colony, your backyard, your kitchen and you - you are the good thing in this grim grime of greasy times.
Get a grip, they say. I have never had grip. Never held my cello gripper at the rubber grip, never used the ridges on my toothbrush, the flattened space on my broom, or the safe thumb area on my knife. I have never optimised my posture for performance, never held my things, my heart included, with much grip. I am just now starting to protect my thumbs from being sliced with onions, holding my pen so that my hand doesn't hurt from venting on paper. I am learning to hone my grip on my mind and body - all at once - by having a grip on their favourite child - the breath. I try to grab my breath when I lose grip over the earth rotating a bit too fast, the number of death adding every rotation.
To those of us who are XS - extra sensitive, our nerve endings are at the mercy of a world on fire. When things were alright, people were fairly alive and cancer was the only deadly C word, sensitive people were still doomed to carry the pain on their skin, their senses were triggered by conflicts of all kinds, along with the shrill drilling noise, the smell of dumping yards, the touching on local trains. Now, sensitive people are hurting a lot more. The apathy of the government towards migrants is as painful for them as their own family’s endangered health, not being able to wash all their utensils properly troubles them. Each problem hurts equally. The pain adds up and overwhelms us.
But hold on. XS people are also XL people - extra loving. Not just loving their people, but extra love for nature, for tea, for soothing touch and pleasant fragrances. For XS + XL people, the world can be delightful if their eyes learn to focus. On the Sikhs, the artists, the teachers, the doctors - offering their beautiful humanity to a sick world. On those tiffin providers whose stories get hidden by the algorithms. On friends who check in when they hear your city is especially distressed. On the person in the mirror - who is handling domestic, mental, physical and emotional hygiene all alone, who is practising a wild love for life, words, and art - so what if she falls and fails a bit every day?
My heart’s candle, Dr Gabor Maté insists on the need to channel our sensitivity. Sensitive people, he says, if encouraged, serve a guiding role in our world. Thomas Hübl says it is not sensitivity that is the problem. It is the lack of grounding. I seek grounding. My White House is lovely. It is safe. But it is still an urban space lifted above the ground. Far from the brown and emerald moistness that gives us life. I will have to seek grounding somewhere else. The body? The present moment? The five superactive senses? Yes. I will have to ensure good music, fresh food, enlivening smell, sunlight, soft chaadar - even if the world is hurting, and especially because it is hurting.
To use these sweaty palms
to have a grip on the sick world's wrist,
to keep oneself afloat on its tide,
and grounded through its storm,
to be well masked
and yet our tired tender selves,
to try hard for vaccination,
harder to keep sane,
and to be only as kind
as humanly possible,
isn't that all we can do?