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It is my name on the byline because today’s writer doesn’t have a Substack. He- admirably I should add- writes exlcusively on his own blog coffee.journal.
I certainly have no issue having my name put to a piece called ‘In Defence of the Mundane’ although I’d struggle to write something as good as this.
This is long term STSC writer Deepansh at his best- lyrical, wise, observant, searching, and with not a single capital letter anywhere in sight. If you have not yet experienced the full delight of Deepansh’s work I highly suggest you dig through his vast, vast archive of short and powerful meditative essays.
Enjoy.
~TJB
in many ways, i should not be writing. there are bound to be mistakes in my words and mistypes in my phrases, but i can always take a step back. i can always glance over it once again, and remove most errors, of course, as one always can, but one of the greatest errors will remain. what i have to say right now will remain unsaid if i do not say it now. it will always remain. it is the confidence, or rather, the audacity to try and talk about it all—talk about the life—that is the greatest error. there is no greater fault. there is no greater misappropriation of ability. i try and string some words together, and i publish them. i think it compares to living, and i fail. that is my most gracious defence against the proverbial grandiose: my failure. it is my defence against the mundane. i am drunk enough to fail to capture it tonight; i am drunk enough to not care about it anymore. i am tipsy enough to write, however. my stumbles shall correct themselves. if not, please excuse them, and if possible, excuse me.
the mundane, the mundane, if i die today, they will say it was my theme, my greatest treasure, as if they ever knew if i was indeed in synchronicity with it or was it just a foolhardy attempt. in the end, like most who think too highly of themselves, they will be wrong. they will claim, as most scholars contend for words they did not write: he loved the regular, the daily. when they do, i ask you—no, i urge you—to reject it. they have not lived the life, and so their opinion holds no ground. it has no significance to me and should contain no importance to anyone else. this will be the greatest, and if not the greatest, the most important thing i have ever said, and if important is too regular a word, then honest. it will be the most honest thing i have said. no, i did not love the every day, but it was okay with me. that is my defence for the mundane. that i have always been okay with it.
my cousin, in a sort of frenzy of messages today, told me that i was always okay with life. that i understood it to a degree, but i have been okay with it, and that has made the difference, the little there is, and he was right. in his genuine excitement, he knew what he was talking about, and at that moment, i knew this was it. this was what had left this piece incomplete. this is why these words remained unwritten. now, i knew. now, i could say it out loud. i was okay with it all. this was my only defence for the mundane: the serendipity of how someone often says what you need to hear without knowing it.
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we sit in a bar, and we celebrate a birthday. we laugh as they tell us the closing time was thirty minutes ago. there is happiness in this moment; there is sadness here, too. one of us is growing older. it depresses me. i am ecstatic about it, too. no, not his growing to be old, but that i will follow suit soon, that time has indeed passed, that life has happened, and most of it has been about nothing. in the end, this depresses me, but it also enlivens me. that it has been about nothing. that most lives amount to a sum total of nothing. it brings me great joy and sadness, and it is, in the end, my greatest defence for the mundane. it has all amounted to nothing and seldom does, even if we are lucky, even if we rarely are as fortunate.
in the end, why do i keep saying this? my defence for the mundane? because that is my obligation. that is my curse. to be alive is to defend the pointlessness, and somehow, if you are able and have the tenacity, the capability, to make it count. i am alive. i should have nothing else to say about it, but they ask! they ask what your life was worth, and i make my defence in front of that grand jury of strangers!
i tell them that the world i live in is beautiful. i tell them that the world i live in works by rules and that on most days, i abide by them; that most of us abide by them, that we do not order an after-hours drink, and we do not pry when a stranger tells us to leave them alone, that on most days when i see someone searching for something in the dark with a flashlight, i ask them if they need another set of eyes, that on most days, i try my best to live, even if i feel terribly alone, especially then. i take a walk, and that is the beginning and the end of it. and while on it, i try to notice the trees, the golden, the green, the brown leaves on them, that i see them and acknowledge the time, the seasons, and the mystery of it all. in many ways, my life is my defence, and if i ceased to exist, it would all be a fool’s errand. i would lose. i would stand without evidence. but i still try. that is my defence—that i try, still, despite the futility of it all.
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if they asked me, "what is the final, the great meaning of life?" i would not be able to point to anything at all. but like a child who has long forgotten the image of what they are seeking, but not the feeling that they are seeking something, i would look for a cup of coffee. i would seek it if my life depended on it. my face would betray me then, like it does now. "what are you seeking?" they would ask me then, as they do now. and i would cry, "i do not know. i do not know. it breaks my heart, but i know there is something. i am sure of it."
i hope, i genuinely hope, at that moment, or even eventually, i find it. and if i do not, if i am at a loss for words, and if i have long forgotten it all, i hope this defence stands. it is all i have; it is all i know. i stand on the balcony tonight, alone under this hazy sky. i know there is something here; i know what life means. i wish they see this moment. i hope they can.
but in the end, it is all i am, faults and all, and it is all that i see at this moment, which matters little, that matters the most. this is my defence for the mundane. it is my only plea. i am guilty of having lived. my days are my testimony; even if they do not lead to anything, they will still have been lived. is there any greater meaning than this?
i am guilty of being alive. i will take whatever punishment time has in store, even if it amounts to nothing at all. it is a punishment i accept gratefully, like how an ant is often so ecstatic to see a cube of sugar, it calls everyone it knows. every second i am alive is that moment. every second i get a chance to look at this world, i invite everyone else. “come inside,” i ask them, “come on, we will have some drinks or if nothing, i can make you a cup of coffee, and if coffee is not what you like, i can keep you company.”
surely, that has to count for something. hundreds of pieces about life, thousands of days should at least amount to this. i hope they do. i hope it does. i hope it all is eventually for something.
i know, deep inside some crevice of my heart, that it is.
"i am guilty of being alive."
This. And thank you for sharing your inner cosmos.
"what are you seeking?" they would ask me then, as they do now. and i would cry, "i do not know. i do not know. it breaks my heart, but i know there is something. i am sure of it."
this. so much this. I guess I'll also defend the mundane.