WISHFUL THINKING Shounak Roy St. Stephen’s College
We seem to be in love with our own sadness. All-encompassing, all engulfing, overwhelming sadness. We walk the lonely drivel-ridden road of Life everyday, we reach turns and make our turns, we reach split pathways and make our choices. We go our own ways, only to reach the same destination. We receive what we want, but never seek. Lee Chandler in “Manchester By the Sea” encapsulates this feeling very succinctly and effectively when he breaks down in front of his nephew, after having lost everything that he ever held dear, and forced to take a path in life he never thought would come across. “I can’t beat it.” He says. “I can’t beat it, I cannot beat it.” I can recall very few instances of such beautiful usage of repetition to generate emphasis. We hear people talk. Sitting in our cars. Working. Walking. Sitting. Partying. Smoking. People talk. They talk about how well their lives seem to be going. Perhaps not completely hassle-free, but they have something to live for. Something that binds them to life, an intertwined mesh of their will to live, and the power to see themselves through every day. They walk into bars to catch a quick drink before heading home, they smile through their sighs, masquerading sadness with their acceptance of inevitability. They walk back home, slowly, amidst soft, unsure rain; eyes fixated on the wet pavement, probing for what’s unascertainable. They look up. Eyes gleaming. The sky has nothing new to offer. They stop under the lonely streetlight for a while. Yellow looks pleasant in the darkness. They reach home, throw their shoes into a corner, pull their socks off and fall on their beds. The room is small. A pizza slice lying on the pillow. The sound of raindrops against the window. They lie still. Stare into the ceiling. Eyes adjust to the darkness. They sigh. Their lives are unchanging, a variable constant, from which there is no escape. There is a clawing pain inside which doesn’t hurt anymore. Tears don’t come, they haven’t for many years. They close their eyes. Nowhere to go. There is no solace. “I have to go in! They are in there!” screams Lee Chandler as he looks, helplessly, at his own house up in flames, his wife lying unconscious beside him, groups of faceless people all around; his eyes have turned a deep red, tears rolling down his cheeks from looking at the fire for too long- his daughters are dead. Lee Chandler’s burning house is Life. We are outsiders, catching glimpses of material happiness going up in flames. Sadness envelopes us. The inescapability of the situation dawns on us. This is it. This is what binds us to Life. This is what keeps us going. We have nowhere to go. We are merely faceless spectators of our inescapable reality, a reality that can never be truly ours.
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