miserable and magical by Fatima A. '25

then what to feel 

with every shard of grief, 

and every speck of beauty, 

it is as though with this overwhelming pain and love and beauty,

i have never felt anything before, 

but i am not feeling anything right now 

 

a lot of the times, i am my first invalidator. it is easy to justify happiness for being happy but not sorrow for being sad. i would be feeling overwhelmingly sad and decide i am being ~cringe~ and that it is not a big deal. but to pull out of the details of the context and think, do i really need to list out everything going wrong to feel sad? why is it that i don’t feel entitled to sorrow?

 

the first thought is that growing up, i came up with this defense mechanism of choosing to be happy, even when things were going wrong. i didn’t want to be sad because there was the fear that if i allowed myself to be sad, i would always be sad. then, somewhere along the way, i lost ownership of sorrow. 

 

my last words stifle in the knots of my throat,

so i knew i was never to write

 

every feeling of sadness is overshadowed by the question of whether i am entitled to feel sad, whether i have reason enough. it is weird to say that even sadness is a rich feeling. 

 

i am still a proponent of choosing to feel happy. it helps me deal with stressful situations more calmly and clearly.  i am still a proponent of not taking myself too seriously. it helps me be embarrassed, and be cringe, and be myself, and care a little less about what i don’t (or shouldn’t) care about. it helps me ground myself in the truth that if i zoom out enough, this will not be as big as it seems. 

but this does not have to nullify any part of any experience. just because i am calm in a situation does not mean it is not a stressful situation anymore. just because something isn’t ~a big deal~ in the long run, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be a big deal to me right now. it is just that when things are going wrong, having that awareness helps me get some clarity and hope. 

i am just as entitled to sadness as to happiness. there is no justification needed. i can simply wake up and ~decide the sky looks sad~ and toast to its sadness. when there is something that is actively stressing me out, i can allow myself the opportunity to be sad. i can be a nuisance to myself and take up space. i can treat myself as more than a productivity machine, grinding problem sets after another, making sure i am really learning, making sure everything is in place. i can let everything around me slip and then catch it back. 

when i suffer great loss, i can allow myself the opportunity to celebrate the grief. i can weep and scream and sigh until i no longer can. i can stop everything in my life for this great blue and then, when i feel less of it, i can allow myself the opportunity to stop. reflect. and catch new joys. 

the joys after a sorrow need not be overshadowed by guilt. you being sad, being unrecoverably sad, does not lose you entitlement to happiness. 

i can allow myself the opportunity to make every sorrow and every following happiness and every normal day and every big day a big deal. 

 

in fact, most of the point of life is that everything is a big deal. 

 

wouldn’t it be heartbreaking if at the end of this beautifully broken life, we find that we never saw anything well? 

then, let us drown, quiet and untroubled, into the depths of this brave, blue sea. the last we will remember of us is our smiles, and isn’t that all? 

 

recently, i have found myself succumbing to this belief of an end — this beautiful, shining trophy past everything that is now. in some world, i would graduate from MIT, and go to graduate school, and become a professor somewhere, and then get tenure, and then, life will be okay. or in a different world, i would graduate from MIT and get a high-paying job and then, life will be okay. and so on. there has been an increasing sense of trying to control my life and how the future unfolds because uncertainty is scary and it is valid to want to guide how the rest of your life goes and it is valid to want financial security and professional success.

but i believe that no matter how much i plan and decide, in the end, what happens, happens. yes, it is okay to plan but it is also completely okay to crumple up a thousand plans and trash them and make new ones. 

and then, the more important feeling is that, really, there is no end. the want to progress is innate to human nature. there will always be something new to do. if the ‘everything is okay’ phase of life is pushed past everything that ‘needs to be done,’ it might never come. with every trophy, another one comes into sight, the glimmer of each one more alluring than the previous. 

to me, true, constant happiness is an illusion. what i really want, what i really want to stay with me, is peace. and then hurdles will be okay. and feeling occasionally awful will be okay. and failing and losing will be okay. this begs the question, how does one even define peace, let alone, find it? today, i feel, the only answer is that the more you learn to become yourself and live with yourself, peace will find a way into your life. it will define and announce itself. 

happiness is a more fleeting concept. it is this high energy, excited state, which is great to be in, but eventually, it will wear out and you would go back to the ground state. 

and so, it doesn’t make sense to run after this glorified image of what happiness is, but taking in the joy of these fading moments. perhaps, just the fact that it is so fleeting makes it so precious. it is like the dandelion flower you plucked. one wisp of air and it is gone. and it is beautiful. 

 

when i walk past the river, i will race it, 

i will fail and give up, 

when i walk on grass, 

i will feel feeble melancholy,

who would ever walk on roses,

 

when i walk past the field, i will walk in crooked steps

to not step on the fallen leaves, 

i will pluck a leaf from a bush

(i will claim it called to me)

and bring it to another 

 

today is the tenth snow of winter, 

i will try to eat it, 

when it falls on me, 

i will claim it loves me, 

 

in my hands-on astronomy class, we are learning to be more observant of the night sky. every Wednesday, we go up to the roof of the building and mount our telescopes and configure our camera, but in the end, all we do is we look at the sky. it is a beautiful feeling. it is beautiful to think that humans looked at the night sky and stared long enough to draw things out of the glimmering stars. it is beautiful to think that the human brain came up with scales and models that estimate the universe incredibly well. it is also beautiful, to just, look, to forget the value and the science and the history. beauty doesn’t require literacy. or thought. it only asks for you to look. 

the truth is, happiness is perhaps the most welcoming feeling in the world. it is everywhere. there is happiness in beauty and in loss. in all the things that happen everyday. joy breathes in the same air as you. there is joy in rusty old jokes, in sparkling new friendships, in boring work, in exciting discoveries, in careful music, in unkempt laughter, in that fried egg i want to eat tomorrow and in the cup of chai i drink every day. any or all of this is enough to fill a man’s heart. 

 

rinse, repeat.

rummage around your heart, find a cause,
take all the grief, put a ribbon on it,
shoot it with raging arrows of anger.
if you breathe out ashes, ask yourself
why you insist on breathing in fire?
when you are past easy, made-up
answers, ask yourself again.
this time, trust not us,
especially
not
if
we
sing of
broken hearts.
if true happiness exists,
it is waiting for you to jump out
of your nightmare to dawn’s peace,
resting on wounds like dew on roses.
it waits for you to be eager, to let go of
the meteor in your fist, accept warmth
as the perfectly bright future, and
let waves of breath-taking hurt drown in it