Here is a commonly held belief: Our actual lives are so much more boring and mundane than what we put on display online specifically and with friends and the outside world generally.
This statement seems to have mutated into some kind of axiom simply presumed to be true by most, without much thought.
However, something a friend shared with me yesterday (his excellent, though a little sesquipedalian [SWIDT?], story that was published in a very respected magazine), along with the whole ‘Father’s Day’ experience that my daughter had planned (I shall share her first ever blog post on this later in the week) throughout Sunday, and the various records, photographs, films, letters, documents, clothes, and books left behind by my father (and by his father), which I am clearing and sorting for the past 2 months, have got me thinking about this, about our lives, and what we choose to show, and therefore hide, within those years of our presence here on Earth.
You see, we have numerous experiences in our lives, from childhood to our deathbed, but we tend to keep many of them unshared either by design or even without any intention to hide, but just because we think they are too small and irrelevant to anyone but us. I mean, there was a time my grandfather was 7, and then 8, and then so on till 13, and then so on till 18. He was 20 once, and 25 too.
I am sure that he too was young and foolish and probably did many things he never spoke of or saw the need to speak of, some to us, and many to anyone at all. I am sure he saw and heard stuff that would have been scintillating storytelling to someone, but perhaps did not seem as important to him. I can guarantee you that he would have such experiences that would have been uniquely his and probably worth recounting and even recording, but simply forgotten or shoved and buried under an avalanche of memories, lost forever when his body (and brain) ceased functioning.
How much do I know about him if I don’t know about those years? How much has he shared with me about the things he did, saw, heard, spoke, and felt in those years? How much has he chosen to either actively hide, or simply skim over because he thought it unimportant?
Ditto my father. And ditto me, like all of us.
I mean, this is not limited to ‘regular’ folks. I can give you odds that there are things about extremely famous people, whether prophets or royalty, artists or politicians, generals or entrepreneurs, saints or serial killers, even diarists and historians, whether ancient, medieval, or modern, whether male or female, whether from the first or second or third worlds, whether famous or notorious, that we do not know, and that the percentage of things we do not know is much higher than the things we actually do, even for humans living under the greatest of scrutinies on this planet.
So, imagine the amount of stuff Kymaia knows about me, and will know about me by the time I pass, even with all my writing and recording, photos and blogs, social media and little notes, and texts, emails, and messages, despite all the humungous amounts of records I am creating, and how paltry it will be compared to the actual amount of experiences I have (and will have) had and the life I have (and will have) lived.
Imagine how small a fraction of my life she’ll have a window to, from which to interpret and understand me, and if she so wills, learn and imbibe (or discard, for that matter).
Imagine what a small sliver of those experiences we are actually sharing with our friends & family, whether in real life or online.
Imagine how bland and monochromatic, single-dimensional and flat, and boring and colourless we would be if all that we could (or would) be was what we choose to share (for example, on social media).
Imagine how dull and uninspiring our lives would look as compared to what they actually are if all that we were was what we (mostly wrongfully) determine is worth showing.
It will never stop surprising me as to how rich, beautiful, and bountiful all of us are, but how poor, ugly, and meagre we choose to appear when we interact with this world.
So, where am I going with this? It is towards this: I am one of those lucky blokes who have absolutely zero regrets about his relationship with his father. I hugged (and was hugged back in return) enough (though indeed it is never so, we’ll just say we did it a lot). I told him (and was told in return) that I loved him. I travelled with him. I had conversations. And drinks. And fights. We went out together. We partied. We celebrated. We mourned. We discussed. We debated. We disagreed. We laughed. We pulled each other’s legs. We learnt from each other (me, perhaps, more than him). We recommended books and films (not music though; he called himself, ‘Aurangzeb’ when it came to arts). We exchanged tips on motorcycle riding. And on careers. And relationships. And life. And sometimes, on nothing at all.
When he passed, of course, I wished he lived longer. I wish I could have had his company for longer. I wish I could have learnt more. But I never did regret that there was something I wish I had told him or done with him while he was alive. I am indeed the luckiest kid in the world.
That said, the point of this post is this: I wish I had known even more about him. Because as a father now, I realise there are just so many things I’ll never be able to tell Kym, for reasons not always clear. And I need to get comfortable with the fact that regardless of how much wealth I leave behind for her (and I do not mean money in this case), there would always be more I could have transferred. The process will always be incomplete. And I just got to live with it while striving to impart as much of it as I possibly can. So that when one day, after I pass, Kym writes about her relationship with me, she can say (and mean) what I did: that she has no unsaid and undone stuff with her Baba bear and that she is the luckiest kid in the world. Like her dad.
Happy Father’s Day.
