obsession: an obsession with obsessions

I presume that most of us have our pet obsessions. For some it is cricket, for others romance, while for most success, but the list can go on endlessly for sure. It could be some gizmo, certain people, or cultivated activities, just about anything by which we are profoundly influenced. But immediately, we must make a correction to our claim that humans have obsessions. We call things obsessions not because we have them at will, but precisely because they have us at their will. They invade our privacy at their whim and fancy, and destabilise our lives with a laugh. They make us take decisions that we would not normally have taken and force us to a variety of actions that would not have been if not for them. So calling them our obsessions is a lame attempt to domesticate what in fact controls us. They can ruin a really great day by toying with our fragilities, or shine light on a depressing day with their ecstasy. These obsessions definitely have a life of their own! Come to think of it, humans come and go but they live on – live in and through us, and continue with their existence even after they are done with us.

So how do obsessions work? It is as if one is possessed and made a slave of, tossed about like a boat by stormy waves. Of course, the proverbial boat represents the poor ‘us’ – the humans, who are always at the deep end, in high seas and left to the mercy of these storming waves. But interestingly, the obsessions are not the waves, doing all the hard work of tossing, but can be compared to the moon, whose gravitational force works the waves that is laboriously doing the tossing of the boat. So now we have a mechanism of three – three things in connected operation – the moon exerting her force, the waves energised by the moon’s force and finally the boat seated on the waves, driven to and fro by the ecstatic waves. Imagine this picturesque sight, maybe on a postcard – the moon’s beams shining down at dusk on a near-empty sea, seeking out as it were hidden treasures lost at sea. And behold they find your boat, the only object for horizons. As you zoom down on the postcard, the waves that looked calm begin to reveal the contours of their excitement, even as they leap up and down, forward and backwards, in complete insanity. You lift your gaze from the waters and look hard at the boat. You thought it was a peaceful ride this boat was having. But close inspection proves otherwise – these waves are sure rocking your boat! No gentle rocking like that of a mother rocking her baby in a cradle, but this is indeed hard stuff, similar to the vibrations that send a crowd into frenzy at a rock concert. Poor you, clinging on for dear life! You think it’s going to stop now, and yet another tirade of waves hit the rain-soaked sides. Of course the boat has a captain! It is you! You wear your ironed uniform, prominently displaying your ranks. Hat in place, you hold the steering, yelling orders to the mates. But what good is anything – the maps strewn on the table, hands on the deck or even the flask of rum tucked tightly at the hip. You are helpless, powerless, purely at the mercy of the waves. She makes you dance, hop-step-and-jump, throb violently, and there you lie sheepish, watching, rather painfully, the wicked grin on her face.

What to do with obsessions? The ancient adage has been to overcome them, to fight them till one’s last breath, to practice rituals of self-control that will strengthen one’s resolve against the obsessions. It will maybe be meditation, or some freakish mind-game or perhaps a recitation of texts, incantations supposed to possess magical powers, powerful enough to break the power hold of these obsessions. The whole idea is to fight back, fight against. But wait a minute, what are we fighting against? Let’s slip back into our picture, now dark and grotesque, with the lives of the sailors in great peril. Are we to fight the waves? What does that even mean? We are on the waves, the very ground of our existence and being is the waves, so how are we to fight it?

I think this ancient piece of wisdom is just as useful as the Ptolemaic view of the location of the earth as the centre of the pre-Copernican universe. We have to improvise and maybe even radically revise this wisdom of the old. The problem with the wisdom to fight obsessions is that it naively takes the waves to be the obsession. So obsessions are seen to be what occupies our time, for example, cricket, alcohol, a satisfying job or a certain habit. So the advice is kick the habit, don’t be over-ambitious in your work, control your drinking if not stop it, but cricket - can’t live with it, can’t live without it! Come on, get a grip of yourself! Domesticate these obsessions! Dusk has turned to night. With the sun completely vanquished, the moon rules the skies. She definitely looks more pronounced now. She is still, quiet, simple, silvery and beautiful. You can’t detect any motion about her. But it is her power that makes the waves dance. It is her force that rocks your boat.

The question is what does the moon represent in the human experience of obsessions? Are humans ever going to be able to eliminate the moon? Should that even be the objective? Or maybe we have to re-configure how obsessions actually function and find new ways of coping with them. Maybe new wisdom is required to learn to dance, a change in perspective to understand rocking as a form of enjoyment. Maybe we will have to learn new skills, innovate new technologies, not to lessen the force of the waves or to fight better, but to make the most of it, to put it to good use – to consume it and in consuming, gain mastery over it. To be able to look at the moon in all her glory and be grateful for the light she sheds and the beauty she brings – she is definitely worthy of being an obsession.