Discontent, as defined by the dictionary, is the dissatisfaction with one's circumstances.
"Dissatisfaction" is too mild a word to describe the trauma of the past few months, but discontent as a title is catchy, and I might as well use it for the cliche.
Winters are my favorite part of the year. It goes without saying that one prefers sitting warmly clad in a sweater, than sitting red-faced and sweaty. That's my preference, and I don't care whether those around me hate it.
Life is like the progression of seasons. There is a cold time and a warm time, a time with festivals and a time with none. But no part of the year is truly happy or sad, unless you make it to be that way. For feelings are relative, like everything else in the universe. No weather or experience is ever absolute, apart from the deepest sleep, and the blackness of death. But it is only the experience that is absolute, not the feelings of others towards it.
The days are short and the nights are cold. But the winter itself is long and unforgiving.
A tacit knowledge is that death abounds in winter. The cold kills the leaves, the greenery, and those that breathe. The air turns against those who use it. And while steps can be taken to ensure survival, it's ultimately never guaranteed.
The same can be said about any other season, but winter is special. There is a certain charm to it that attracts tourists and warmongers alike. Many major battles have been fought in the winter.
You can argue that it's humans who bring that suffering upon themselves by fighting in the winter. And while that's partially true, men went to war for protecting their people from famine and starvation. Harsh winters provide that tiny, maddening impulse to fight. Fight for food, for life, and for those who you hold dear to your heart.
In modern times, we don't care that much about the cold. But it comes in, the silent killer that it is, and steals away what little health we have.
Quite a few of my relatives died during the timespan from November to January. Of them, though I didn't know one person, the news was enough to keep me numbed for a day or two.
The end, as seen by those who go, is just slipping away into an eternal sleep. Burnt to ashes, or six feet under the ground doesn't matter to the one that dies. The relatives, however? They care. Why? Because they still live. And to live without people that were important to you is always misery. The misery of separation, and that one nagging little feeling that you didn't treat them right before their final nap haunts you.
Yes, we know that death is a passage that all who live on this earth must undertake. So many philosophical and religious discussions have taken place about it that you couldn't even number them. Every single philosopher of both the Occident and the Orient has something or the other to say about the end of life. While they're all true in their own ways, they still cannot stop you from mourning. I can confirm, there is nothing that you want more than the unattainable bliss of turning back time and telling them how much they mean to you before they go. It's not for their peace of mind however, it's for yours.
The human mind is both simple and complex. We all have a survival instinct, but we have different intensities of emotions and feelings.
Deaths stress me out. I don't know why, but if someone close to me dies, I usually don't recover from that numbness in my mind for close to a week. It makes everything else I'm doing just a fight to stay on top of things. Even worse if I'm attending any classes. Nothing goes into my head, and nothing goes out.
I cannot use my mental state as an excuse for anything I say or do, I know. But how much ever effort I put into nullifying the effects of something like this, it comes back twice as powerful and bites me in places I thought it couldn't bite.
There is that small thing in the back of your head, telling you everything that you could've talked to them, and everything you did talk to them when they were alive. And now that they're gone, you have nothing to say to them. And even if you did have something to say to them, you couldn't, because they would never speak to anyone ever again.
But what can one do? What can one do against that which is inevitable? What, indeed, can you do to prevent the flow of time?
Kāla, in Samskrit, refers to Time andor Death. Death is as inevitable as the progression of time. For you, wherever you are, as long as you are not moving at the speed of light, you will age. As you age, you will shrivel up slowly. You will go senile. But it depends on you if you don't want to go gentle into that good night. You can rage all you want, but you will not stop the light from dying. It has to die.
Such is the law of the universe, of entropy, of time.
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