Obscure sorrows

And I’m back to the blogosphere after a three month hiatus! Honestly, I am bewildered at the number of people who continue to read and follow my blog, despite the frequent sabbaticals and sheer inconsistency of posting anything half decent here.  A big shout out and genuine thank you to everyone in Russia, United States, Saudi Arabia and Latvia (I don’t even know where that is on the map) who read, follow and re-blog my posts. 

I stumbled upon something interesting lately- the dictionary of obscure sorrows. Ever experience the moment when you are overcome with a flurry of feelings and a contrariety of emotions but somehow, can’t put your finger on them? Or at a loss of words as to how to articulate a particular emotion? The dictionary of obscure sorrows is the solution to your problem. My personal favourite and the one most pertinent to me is:

‘Kairosclerosis - n. the moment you realize that you’re currently happy—consciously trying to savor the feeling—which prompts your intellect to identify it, pick it apart and put it in context, where it will slowly dissolve until it’s little more than an aftertaste.’

I tend to do this every so often. For the longest time, I have maintained there is something sad about happiness. It’s like a breath of air – you can’t hold it in your mouth for too long. Try as you will, it will eventually escape, leaving behind a void that craves to be filled. The moment I realize I am happy, I try to give context to it, try to savor the feeling, try to cling as long as I possibly can to the cliff hanger we like to call ‘happiness’. But how does one even give context to happiness? How does one explain what it feels like to be ‘happy’? Trying to capture or describe that feeling is like trying to describe what water tastes like – It is an impossible task. And all my efforts to let happy times linger are in vain once the law of averages kick in and a happy spell is followed by a terrible lull.

As follows are other words that are relevant to me (In descending order of importance):

Astrophe - n. a hypothetical conversation that you compulsively play out in your head—a crisp analysis, a cathartic dialogue, a devastating comeback—which serves as a kind of psychological batting cage where you can connect more deeply with people than in the small ball of everyday life, which is a frustratingly cautious game of change-up pitches, sacrifice bunts, and intentional walks.

Anchorage - n. the desire to hold on to time as it passes, like trying to keep your grip on a rock in the middle of a river, feeling the weight of the current against your chest while your elders float on downstream, calling over the roar of the rapids, “Just let go—it’s okay—let go.

The bends - n. frustration that you’re not enjoying an experience as much as you should, even something you’ve worked for years to attain, which prompts you to plug in various thought combinations to try for anything more than static emotional blankness, as if your heart had been accidentally demagnetized by a surge of expectations.

Apomakrysmenophobia - n. fear that your connections with people are ultimately shallow, that although your relationships feel congenial at the time, an audit of your life would produce an emotional safety deposit box of low-interest holdings and uninvested windfall profits, which will indicate you were never really at risk of joy, sacrifice or loss.

Slipcast - n. the default expression that your face automatically reverts to when idle—amused, melancholic, pissed off—which occurs when a strong emotion gets buried and forgotten in the psychological laundry of everyday life, leaving you wearing an unintentional vibe of pink or blue or gray, or in rare cases, a tie-dye of sheer madness.

Xeno - n. the smallest measurable unit of human connection, typically exchanged between passing strangers—a flirtatious glance, a sympathetic nod, a shared laugh about some odd coincidence—moments that are fleeting and random but still contain powerful emotional nutrients that can alleviate the symptoms of feeling alone.

Flashover - n. the moment a conversation becomes real and alive, which occurs when a spark of trust shorts out the delicate circuits you keep insulated under layers of irony, momentarily grounding the static emotional charge you’ve built up through decades of friction with the world.

Sonder - n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.