lathe biosas

Another year begins. Another blip on the fourth dimension, the temporal dimension on which we can only move our three-dimensional selves forwards. There is no going back. Which means we live with awareness, so there’s no regret, no longing to go back to correct something.

Ever since I began delving into the geological history of Earth my world has become immeasurably larger and more ancient, more awe-inspiring, more precious. The sense of continuity the fourth dimension brings is indescribable. It’s a whole new perspective.

I see myself as a short-lived life form, just one of the trillions of creatures that routinely float across the earth’s surface like soap bubbles and disappear. Our lifespan of a few decades is nothing compared to the earth’s age of 4.5 billion years.

From the time COVID started, this awareness of deep time has become more intense. It’s become the wallpaper of my life. It informs every thought, emotion and judgment. But it’s also a sort of relief, like laying down a heavy load. So much is not in my hands. Not indifference, not nihilism, just que será, será.

Psychic numbing caused by the big COVID numbers of the last two years has added to the befuddlement created by elastic time, time that is marked by random corona outbreaks rather than by clock and calendar. I feel like a child looking hard at the sky to see where it ends.

So much has ceased to matter. Taking the narrower view of life, the health, safety and happiness of my family, friends and myself do matter, and I have been worried when one of them came down with COVID and I couldn’t travel to be there. Thankfully, a good friend, an infectious diseases specialist who lives in the same city, held the fort.

I have had minimal contact with other people for a long time now. Over these two locked-down/social-distanced years I have unconsciously withdrawn emotional investment in human beings and formed some sort of happy connections with elements of the landscape of Karnataka over many road trips and hikes during the last 15 months, like a series of mini peak experiences! If something goes out of your life, I guess something else takes its place, and life goes on.

Lofty boulder-strewn green hills, forests, smooth winding roads, wayside coffee shops, small towns, trekking trails, wild flowers, bird calls, hilltop views, village temples, backwaters, clouds, hill shrines, flocks of farm animals, tiny rills and waterfalls in the ghats, the occasional squall, are like a screensaver in my head now.

I feel I belong with them more than I belong to Bangalore city. I’m very, very surprised by this realization. Life right now is like living in a child’s picture book! It’s like what people say about being invested in characters in TV shows that run into many seasons, and vicariously living those lives.

Day-to-day life is the same, though. Lathe biōsas* works for me. It’s quiet. It’s meaningful.

At my stage of life the present is the future that I had envisaged in the past. I’m here, in the future. This is it. I’m not interested in leaving a legacy of any kind when I depart because, for what? The kids are perfectly capable of making interesting and happy lives for themselves. As for the world at large, it has enough people leaving legacies; I have no such duty or wish!

Lots of people have helped make my life easier. For example, I don’t have to keep a cow in my building basement and milk it everyday as someone somewhere keeps cows, and the milkman gets me half a litre of milk every morning!

The dairy folk and the milkman are glial cells to my neuron, just as I am glial cell to someone else’s neuron. Neurons need support, protection and nourishment from glial cells for complex thought processes . . . We are all connected and need each other, like neurons and glial cells . . .

It’s unthinkable that glial cells were dismissed as packing material for neurons when I was a medical student . . . The universe is a network. Nobody exists merely as someone’s packing material or exclusive support; each one has an identity and is the nucleus of some other subsystem.

Yet, in my current state of psychic numbness, these nice people are only their roles, mere cardboard cutouts. I feel grateful for them, but wearing a mask means unseen smile and muffled speech, so it feels like a video call with a bad connection every time. I miss the warmth, wholeness and rapport of engaging with unmasked faces.

I hope 2022 will be different.

A happier new year to all!

*One meaning of lathe biōsas is to ‘live in obscurity, get through life without drawing attention to yourself, live without pursuing glory or wealth or power, but anonymously, enjoying little things like food, the company of friends, etc.‘

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