We’re all each other’s exes. If you’re willing to look deep enough, the sameness of humans is a surprising find. We’ve been raised to the idea that ‘everybody is unique’, and like most childhood tales it turns out to be untrue. To its credit, this story is a bit more robust than ‘Santa is real’ (euro-centrism alert). There isn’t and can’t be one event that can make this narrative false. Like almost all narratives, it is an integral part of our culture. Of our stories, interactions, dreams and aspirations. It isn’t easy to change so much about yourself, or at least how you understand the world in a short time, the brain simply can’t keep up. It takes decades to unlearn the idea that everybody isn’t unique. What is harder to digest perhaps is the idea that you aren’t unique as well. You have the same dreams as others, think about the same things as others, have the same aspirations as others, have the same apprehensions as others, have the same interests as others, and have the same ideas as others. You’re the same as others and we’re all each other’s exes.
We’re all each other’s exes
To know a person in the most intimate way possible, you have to love them and be loved in return. What is love if not accepting someone as they are, with all that makes them lovable and also that which makes them unlovable. As a dear friend once put it, “There are a lot of unlikable things about the people we love”. And thus we love them more and more as we know more and more about them. Information is power, and who we tell our deepest fears and insecurities to, is a sign of closeness, of trust, of letting them into your life. Come as you are and I will be waiting for you as I am. If loving is the best way to actually know someone, love enough and you will see that we’re all the same in our cores. We have the same insecurities, the same fights, the same quibbles, the same laughs, the same highs and the same lows. We’re all part of the same continuum, and although we appear as distinct quanta of individuality, we’re still the same. Your individuality and uniqueness is just one among the many lies that you’ve spun for yourself. Nothing lies to you as well and as often as your brain. The process of knowing someone is a bit like working through the layers of false sophistications that people put up to be called unique and different. If you project what is not true about yourself as much as what is, maybe you’ll have others believe you to be what you aren’t, but want to be seen as. And such is life, a continuous story of falsities and deception. “What a web we weave when we first learn to deceive”.
It is a dangerous proposition, to accept that everyone is the same at their core because one of the hopes that carries us through love and life is the idea that we’ll find someone who is right for us i.e. different from all those we’ve been with but couldn’t be with. But if everyone is the same, and you’re same too – then your future is the same as your past. It’s the same continuum. The past is the future, because the future has been cancelled.
The future is haunted by the past
Hauntology is a term coined by the French Algerian philosopher Jacques Derrida. Derrida used the word to describe how we never encounter things as fully present. In all of our experiences, the present is always mixed up with the past and the future. We can only make sense of the present by comparing it with the past and anticipating the future. The expectations you develop for your next significant other are highly influenced by what your expectations were in the past. Your experiences and past choices decide the way you shape your future choices. However the relationship between the past, present and the future isn’t linear, it’s superimposing, which is to say that you re-live your past in your present and you also re-shape your present to what you expect the future to be. When you think about how your future will be, you rely on your past memories to give you a sense of it. The reason you cannot start afresh in matters of love and life is because the past haunts the future, constantly shaping and dictating it. Mark Fisher, the British Philosopher (RIP) further adds to this by arguing that culturally and individually we try to re-live our anticipations of our future by going back to our past. The thrill of a new future is no longer present in the now. With both the personal and political in chaos - we don’t have much to look forward to. So to seek that thrill of future anticipation, we turn to our past to re live the exciting future that became our dull present. The same way you keep going back to past relationships in your head to not just re-live them, but to also shape your future relationships through them.
The fact that more and more media around us is pivoted on the idea of revivalism – remixes of old songs, movies with the same plotlines, books with the same stories, references to old media in new media - is a testament to the idea that as humans we have lost the individual and collective ability to think or experience absolutely new things. The most popular contemporary media like Stranger Things, DARK, The marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Mary Poppins etc. are highly reflective of our urge to re-live our past and the cultural naivety of our future. Even things like new music videos shot on VHS, Polaroid photo filters, minimal and revivalist aesthetic, pixel art are symptoms of the same trend. The reason why the idea of first love is fetishized is because that is the first time when what we anticipate meets what actually is. And after we’re done with it, and have realized that it is not what we thought it to be, we cancel the future. We cancel the idea of loving someone again because everyone is the same and the love that lies in the future is haunted by the love that lies in your past. What will happen is what has already happened and that is why we keep going back to the past to go to the future. In a way the past is using us to revisit itself.
“The corollary of a future that won’t appear is a past that won’t disappear”.
Whether you want to accept this conclusion or not as your truth is up to you, but that wouldn’t stop the past to be the present to be the past to be the future to be the past to be the future… and so on. Welcome to real life.
Jack of All knowledge -
The book(s) I’m currently reading:
Right now I’m reading We, The People by Nani Palkhivala. It’s a great collection of the lectures delivered by the eminent jurist during his time. It offers a great insight into the Indian socio-politico-legal landscape of the 60s and 70s.
The other book I’m reading is The Foundation by Issac Asimov. I bought this book primarily because of the place it holds in the literary culture, and argued with myself that I cannot not read this masterpiece in my lifetime. The book is great!
The Music I’m currently listening:
For this weekend I went back to the Old Kanye, because I miss the old Kanye. I’m listening to 808s and Heartbreak which brings back a lot of childhood memories from the time when my sole source of western music was the VH1 channel on my TV. The other album I’d highly recommend is Gerard Way’s Hesitant Alien. I really love the singles - Maya the Psychic, and Drugstore Perfume on the album.
The podcast(s) I’m currently listening:
I’m listening to Naval Ravikant: The Angel Philopher. I started following Naval since the lockdown and in my opinion he is one of the most profound thinkers of our generation. His twitter feed reads as if Seneca came back to life - It contains some of the most powerful wisdom of the 21st century. Highly recommend following him and watching his interviews.
Please reach out to me with your reaction, thoughts, suggestions, criticism - anything! I’ll be really happy to receive your feedback. I’m on twitter, and instagram.
That’s it for this edition folks! Hope you liked it.
See you again, soon.
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