Sutured Dreams

It only takes one tragedy (that everyone will likely forget about in 6 months time) to get everyone talking about mental health issues like never before. The good thing is that people are finally talking about things they normally don't want to deal with. But unfortunately it also kind of shows how little even seemingly very educated people know about such a common problem. One would have thought that in 2020, after several celebrities around the world have committed suicide and even in India where Deepika Padukone has opened up about dealing with depression, that educated people would be able to comprehend that depression and suicide ideation are not things that are exclusive to the poor. It's very easy to hide negative emotions in a society where very few people will be comfortable talking to a person expressing their pain. It was only as recently as last week that one of my classmates from school shared a meme which said something along the lines of "You don'...

Recently, an acquaintance called me to ask for some advice after one of their elderly relatives fell ill. "Do you think she can survive?" "The prognosis is not very good at all," I replied. I then learnt that the doctors treating her felt the same way. Her family decided she should spend her last moments at home instead of the ICU. It was a personal decision and a completely understandable one. But I could tell that my acquaintance was not in a good place. I use the word acquaintance because I really didn't know this person very well, having had only a couple of conversations months back. But I still felt the urge to call and check up on him to see how he was doing. He wasn't good. But he was happy I called. Responding to pain Emotional pain is an extremely common problem. It's guaranteed that someone you're close to will go through it at some point in their lives. It's inevitable. Unfortunately, very very few know how to respond to ...

Names of certain individuals have been changed to hide their identity.  One of the frustrating aspects of life is that some pretty important lessons are only going to be properly understood when it's probably too late to use that wisdom effectively. We as human beings are inherently too ignorant of the consequences of our own actions  and those of others to properly protect ourselves from them. I suspect many of you reading this will not like what I have to say here in this post because it calls into question some of your own actions in the past (or because you genuinely think I'm an idiot who doesn't know what he's talking about), so don't say I didn't warn you. The reason why I write this is that I recently recalled a conversation I had with a friend, Tommy, many years ago and was a bit surprised that I have a completely different opinion about some of the things he said. A Random Conversation in College 5 years ago seems like an eternity to me. So ma...