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Don't let it Fizzle out

December 2019

Action.

Ever wondered how and when we take actions?

If you notice carefully an action is always preceded by an immense amount of discontent. That discontent is what propels one to take action.

However there’s a slight catch, if you Fizzle out the discontent to some ready made means wherein you don’t actively think, then my friend you have fizzled out your fuel to action.

Let me expand on the above pointer.

What I mean by Fizzling out is, channeling our feelings of discontent to take-no-action-land.

Whereas, if the feeling of discontent is allowed to build up then it leads to take-action-land.

The trick here is to not let the feelings of discontent be drained out by band-aid solutions like checking the news feed of Twitter, checking WhatsApp, Reddit, listening to a song, watching a show or any other temporary solution which steers you away from actually observing the discontent.

By diverting our attention to band-aid solutions like the ones mentioned above amongst the many easy go to options, we essentially rob ourselves off the fuel that is actually required to take the action.

For example, an analogy

Let’s say you are in a confused space where you are constantly thinking about a person in a place of discontent, the mind coming up with various thoughts such as,

” I am not with that person right now, how can I get the person to spend more time with me, how can I get close to this person…”

The above are a few of the many thoughts stretching your mind in every direction. Here’s the crucial momentary choice that you make.

Persist in the confusion, discontent, uneasiness OR divert your mind to some comfortable place, something easy, a place where there’s no confusion.

We have always been in such kind of a dilemma and most of the time we choose the latter.

We choose the latter by checking the profile picture of that person on Facebook, WhatsApp or Instagram and get relaxed by the fact that we are seeing the face of the person that we desire.

Or we may choose to listen to a song which makes us remember the pleasant times that we had with that person.

Or we may choose to do anything easy but not be in the place of confusion, discontent and uneasiness that persisted before.

We want our discontent to fizzle out.

What would happen if we chose not to ‘fizzle it out’

Yes, you may feel uneasy, confused, perplexed and disheartened to face the objective blunt of reality, that something is offset with what we desire.

Swimming alone in the turbulent sea of confusion, shadowed by the dark clouds of easy escapes.

But persist you shall.

Eventually sooner than ever, will come a ray of light, a trail of thought piercing through the confusion, which if you choose to tread will lead you to solutions to take action, the fuel needed to take an initiative without any motive, which is more powerful than anything.

Continuing with the analogy, if you persist for a considerable time, you might come up with calls to action like,

“Let me actually write down my feelings for that person on a piece of paper and tell them how important they have been to me, or actually let me take this person to their favorite restaurant… What are the things that this person likes the most…”

These calls actually keep getting refined the more you walk the trail of thought. And here you might see how the space around us changes from a confused one to a place where we are actually thinking about how we can truly love the person or make them feel good and tell them how important they are as opposed to superficially just seeing their profile picture on Instagram, WhatsApp or Facebook and fizzling out our true capacity to actually take meaningful action.

“We think of rebellion as this very sexy thing and it involves action and force and looks good.

My guess is the forms of rebellion that will end up changing anything meaningfully here will be very quiet and very individual.

And probably not all that interesting to look at from the outside.

I’m now hoping for less interesting, rather than more interesting.”

— David Foster Wallace

So, don’t let that discontent fizzle out.

Inspired By

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