Shifting Gears
By: Shivam Sharma
Tags: Gears, Watermelon, Perspective, Life

My world may have fallen apart.

For roughly 20 years of my life, I have lived and thought a certain way; internalised certain beliefs about the world and made some things permanent that were temporary from the very beginning.

It feels as if I’m driving a car, and that now I must shift gears. Except, I don’t really know if the concept of “gears” exists; what it is in the first place; and — if it does exist — how many gears are there in all. Nevertheless, this is a fitting analogy.

The first gear of your car is supposed to get it going and maxes out at 20 to 30kmph, which when given a thought isn’t fast enough to get you anywhere. In fact, you’d be wasting time and fuel if you drove only in the first gear.

Similarly, I feel the first 20 years of your life, your mentality is in the first gear. Shielded from the elements of the world by your parents, elder siblings, teachers, etc. your worldview seems to be kind of flawed [1]. You don’t have the first idea about how to go about doing anything really, and the blissful ignorance afforded to you by age only exacerbates this issue.

Having crossed two decades on this planet, every single day I am utterly reminded of how my worldview is massively flawed. Relationships with the bestest of friends seem, to put it politely, different. Expectations of how life would be at this stage aren’t even close to reality. My biases and my patterns of thinking — which kept me in my deep slumber of unconsciousness — are now evidently clear. In short, the world as I have known is turned upside down. The “rules” I thought I knew were wrong from the very beginning. Heck, they weren’t even rules! And my age? Oh god, just the number 22 seems so, so unreal.

In retrospect though, it’s actually kind of hilarious. Did I not accept the reality that one day I would not be a teenager anymore? Did I not accept the fact that my procrastination and anxiety of taking action would catch up on me? Of course I didn’t. That was the fun part, and I write this with moist eyes and a chuckle— the kind you get when you girlfriend tells you she cheated on you, or the kind Archimedes must’ve got at his eureka moment. Or whatever.

But I gain my composure in a jiffy. Things seem clear and that gives me some respite. Seasons change, Governments change, popular opinions change, and in the same vein it is imperative that people change too. Work half done is still 50% done, which is a lot more than 0% done. There are no rules — no really, there aren’t any — but you must try your best to abide by the law of the land (though with deep pockets I feel this stipulation can be overlooked as well).

In the way the past two decades have passed you, many more will pass you by as well (hopefully). The old people you see on the street or in your home? The ones that aren’t cued in to pop culture? The ones with not so good skin? You will become one of them. In fact, you already are on your way to become one of them. Oh and also, you will die someday. I do not mean to say that in a stoned-unemployed-skinny-dude-trying-to-be-cool fashion or a liberal-arts-major-yeah-I-study-philosophy fashion [2]. I say that as matter-of-factly as saying — you will feel hungry if you don’t eat for two days. Or that you will break your bones if you jump from a plane and try and land on your feet.

The worst part of all this is the realisation that the entirety of my existence exists in conversations that I have with people, that people have with each other and that I have with myself. If from childhood I was the only person I knew, and I didn’t know any language, then… wow I can’t even think what that’d be like!

There were always multiple persons [3], whose interactions with each other directly contributed to me hammering my keyboard right now and typing this. They also contributed to you reading this sentence at this very moment.

It is all a narrative, a story and there’s no escaping it. In fact, there’s no need to escape because it doesn’t exist in the first place! Yet I must learn to — on one hand — not only accept it and live with it, but also — on the other hand — be aware of it at all times and not get trapped in the stories I live everyday. It is a tough ask.

My world may have fallen apart. But I’m old enough to take on this challenge of existence.

Time to shift gears.