The chair

He sat on the chair for a long time. He had placed the chair right in front of the mirror so he could see himself sitting idly on it, doing nothing. He wanted to see his facial expressions when he thought of his greatest passion. He wanted to see his face remain untwitched at the mention of his beloved in his mind. He stared at his own image. He thought of her. He thought of how she looked at him when she was proud of him, when she admired him for his brilliance, when she encouraged him to do what he wished to do in his life, when she looked at him reproachfully as he went on compromising on his principles one by one. He imitated her expressions, all he could remember, absently. He didn't notice that not a single imitation suited his face. That his face was unique and compatible to only his own expressions, motivated only by his thoughts. He smiled. He didn't have any reason to smile at, except that he wanted to see himself look happy. He dropped the smile. He kept his face expressionless. He looked dark and
handsome. He widened his eyes. He gritted his teeth. He swelled his nostrils. He looked terrible. He didn't care. He kept that pose for a while. No, he thought, he wasn't cruel. He was not the villain. He just could not be. He looked at the image of his hands. He looked at the fat vein bulging out of the skin of his forehand and bicep. He streched his fingers and looked at them through the mirror. They were long and thin. Yet they weren't what one would call bony. The image somehow showed them smaller to him than they actually were. Yet he felt the strength in them when he stretched them to their full capacity. He looked at his chest. He was wearing a T-shirt with a silly quote on it. He didn't believe in that quote. It just did not apply to him. He had bought that T shirt because he found it comfortable to wear. He took it off. He was now looking at a very lean and slim man with cuts in every part of his torso, ribs silhouetting out of the thin layer of fat, almost tearing out from the skin. He streched the muscles of his torso, and he was pleased to see that some muscles remained well toned, at least. His abs had grown hair on them.
The eight of them flashed themselves proudly as he sat straight, torso out and exhaled stiffly. He looked at himself. 'All is not lost' he thought, 'not yet' he added to his thought. He smiled, this time, meaningfully. He leaned back on his chair, sitting comfortably and watching his relaxed image. He looked malnourished, he thought. After all, he knew he was twenty five kilos underweight. He looked at his legs. He wore trousers, belt tightened. His undergarment peeped out from all sides. He folded his pants from below upto his knee, like he would at the time of crossing a knee-deep pond or river. He looked at the strong bones and the small amount of fat that covered them. He looked at the many veins just as he had looked at the ones on his hands. These ones looked weaker. He stiffened his right leg. The vein looked tightened, seemed stronger to him. He looked at all the hair covering his legs, all of them meant to flaunt themselves on a healthier and stronger structure, he thought. He looked at his feet. There were marks and scars of small bruises - some vanishing, some permanent. He saw
dirt in the corners of his toenails. He tried to scratch them off with other toes. He lifted his left foot and saw its base in the mirror. It looked like a really big foot to him. He was pleased. 'I am meant to take big steps when I take them. Bigger than many others.' The mention of 'others' in his thought disturbed him. He thought of his acquaintances, of his friends, of people he loved, of people he loathed, of people he was jealous of, of people he pittied. He looked at his body again. He looked at his hands, his biceps, his torso and the ribs, his legs wearing hair, his neck showing a cut he got while shaving, his face which was handsome a while ago but now looked ugly to him. He looked at a man in the mirror and thought how ugly that man was. How impertinent. That man stared at him. How dare he? He looked at that man angrily. He glared at him with cold eyes. He found himself focusing on the man's right eye. It looked angry. He kept the glare. He felt a yawn emerging from inside. He suppressed it. He didn't want the man in the mirror to see that he was tired. He found the right eye of the man becoming tearful. He blinked. The
trace of water was now gone. But recognition was now clear. 'However I am,' he thought, 'whatever I am, I have to live with it. I will try and keep trying to improve to the best of my ability and will, and never feel disappointed again.'

He got up from the chair.

Weakness

There is no place for sorrow, grief or guilt unless one chooses kindly to accomodate them. Don't be kind to those who do not deserve kindness. Weakness does not deserve kindness; be that weakness of any form, in any person. It feeds on sympathy. The more it is sympathized, the weakened becomes the possessor and more dependant on the weakness. Dependant for what? To achieve what? The possessor doesn't know. Because the possessor hasn't acknowledged the weakness. Once it is acknowledged, recognised, it should be mercilessly thrown out of the mind and subsequently the body, as one would throw a guest out of the house upon realising that the guest is actually a robber. Weakness robs us of our dignity, self-esteem, freedom, and in worse cases, our senses.

There is an obvious yet thin layer of difference between 'recognizing the weakness' and 'Mistaking something as a weakness'. Some types of Weaknesses, once recognised and acknowledged, become insecure, vulnerable and can soon be
overcome easily. While there exist weaknesses that can never come into existence unless recognised as one.

Let me elaborate with the example of appearance. Appearance of a person, that is, their posture, stature, body structure, length and breadth and shape are all consequences of their health and hygiene related habbits. It is merely a visible symptom of good health. People tend to forget or rather ignore the fact that appearance is the symptom and not the cause of good health. So if I acknowledge my physical weakness of not being properly healthy by examining my stamina and strength, I know I can overcome by improving them -the improvement which once achieved, will definitely give me a better appearance as an incidental consequence. However, if I focus substantially on my appearance to determine whether I am healthy or not, my goal will merely be to improve my appearance by any means possible, which even if achieved - may or may not improve my health. And thus, leaving the real weakness untouched,
undetected and growing strong.

Weakness, of any sort, deserves to be laughed at. It deserves to be ridiculed. All humor is ridicule of weakness. No one dares to laugh at perfection, unless perfection itself is tactfully projected as a weakness. Being ridiculed for being weak in terms of anything leaves us with two choices. Either to ignore the ridicule, or be affected. Being affected leaves us two choices - to cry and whine and blame someone or something for our weakness and do nothing else about it or to get up and improve. Humiliation and ridicule can prove to be the best motivators if accepted by their recipients the right way.

Then again, ridicule may not necessarily be outsourced. In the moments of self-realizations, when we laugh at our current or former methods, thought processes and say 'I have been so stupid all this time!' we are ridiculing our former selves. We are laughing at our weaknesses.

Never pity the weak or their weaknesses.
Humiliate their weakness. Insult their weakness. And thus Motivate them. But don't bully them. Leave and allow them the choice of either being motivated or breaking down. The strong will overcome the weak will perish. The weak deserve to be perished if they choose to remain weak. So do not feel pity or guilt. That is the law of nature. It does sound cruel, but it is just.

I usually prefer not to quote others in my writings. I usually prefer to use my own formulation and sequencing of words. But I think that to quote Friedrich Nietzsche's sister from her introduction to her brother's book 'Thus Spake Zarathustra' will be apt here as an end note :

"All that proceeds from power is good. All that springs from weakness is bad."

- ©Kaustubh Anil Pendharkar