Either A Saint Or A Psychopath
I have often been told that I am eerily calm in most situations. That I am either a saint or a psychopath. I do not know which one I am. But I do know that I am not as calm as I appear. Looks can be deceiving.
Most people I meet are so engrossed in their own quagmire of thoughts and opinions that they forget to internalise anything. They forget to observe. Observation is like collecting raw data. It is also the material evidence that feeds your bias.
I do not consider myself calm. Being calm means there is no rage within. There is an absence of incessant thoughts. You are at peace with who you are. There is a quiet balance between your external reality and your internal self experiencing that reality. By the standards of balance, I am calm. I am content, yet ambitious about what I want.
But by the standards of thought, I am not calm. There is often a storm raging inside me. Because it is not redirected towards anyone, my demeanour appears measured. I do not need people around me. I do not have a compulsion to talk. When I speak, I pause to formulate the most appropriate sentences. I am a stickler for using the right word for every situation.
I cannot explain this to people easily, because then they call me humble. I am not humble. I am deeply arrogant in my head. But arrogance does not require me to insult people. I indulge everyone without allowing them real estate in my mind. People can talk to me for hours, but they do not necessarily remain in my head for long. That is who I am in the purest sense.
It was not easy to become this calm, if you want to call it that. Half a decade ago, I was an extremely defensive person. I perceived everything as a personal affront, an attack on my identity. Then I realised my identity itself was flawed. Identity can be anything you choose it to be.
So I flipped it. I started acting the way I wanted to be perceived. It did not happen overnight. The realisation took time. Perhaps writing had something to do with it, especially fiction. When you build characters and give them personalities, you begin to understand your own.
And just as you transform a character by making them believe in a new reality, you can do the same with yourself. Your identity shapes your reality.
Your actions are a direct consequence of what you believe about yourself. A person who believes his word matters will never break it. You do not pretend to be that version of yourself. You become it.
That identity has shaped my arrogance. I believe my headspace is premium. My time is premium. In social settings, including my workplace, I do not mind engaging with anyone. But allowing them into my life requires effort from their end.
I will live an ethical life. If the world thinks I am an idiot, that is their opinion. This is who I am, and this is who I will remain. I will die the way I lived, on my own terms. I will be benevolent to the world. I will be kind without expecting anything in return. Yet I will be ruthless in eliminating what is not worth the effort.
Not every opinion that bothers me gets a reaction from me. The impulse to react does not belong to my identity. As I said, I believe my headspace is premium, and I waste it on no one. Reacting to a comment, except in friendly banter, would mean allocating space to them in my mind. I prefer to move on.
They may call me names. A coward too. But their existence does not matter to me, and neither do their opinions. So what they believe is irrelevant. They are irrelevant.
Most of the calmness I am admired for is not calmness at all, but the ruthless elimination of everything I do not value. I am perfectly fine not knowing what is happening on Instagram reels, or who posted what. I am not popular. I have only around two hundred followers, and yet I continue to post pictures that made me think and that I found beautiful.
I do not care about trends. I do not care about gossip. I read a lot. I write a lot. And whatever time I have, I spend with my family, including my wife. She is the only woman I will ever need.
I am unapologetically a man. I do not offer justifications. I believe in building things. I believe in taking care of my family. And I enjoy cracking the worst jokes with my wife.
This narrowness of focus keeps me calm. This calmness is a product of intense suffering, triggered by personal grief that I choose to keep within me. But at the end of that suffering, I became someone I do not mind living with.
To answer the question of how to stay calm when the world seems to be losing its mind, the answer is simple. Build a solid identity. Know who you are, what you want to do, why you are doing it, and what the point is.
Then live by the principles of that identity. That is why your identity must be true to yourself. Keep learning. That has been my lifelong motto. Keep loving people. The world needs it. Do not hesitate to judge those who commit atrocities. Do not hesitate to forgive those who genuinely repent.
If these values sound religious, it is because I am deeply religious. Hindu scriptures are profoundly philosophical, and they helped me discover the value system I wanted to adopt. My identity is built upon those values.
Focus on the good. Eliminate the worst. And for the love of God, be kind to people, even those who do not deserve it.