Illustrative image.

If you wish to really enjoy life in all its shades then there should be a very clear and willing suspension of respect for social mores. The mores have to be done away with, a path of your own has to be created, a heart-pumping passionate vocabulary of your own has to be developed and you should try and ensure that your circumstances are not allowed to relegate your life to a dispensable parenthesis. And you are left to supervise your existence and no one is permitted to invade your life in the name of ethics. It is universally acknowledged that this world is full of crooks. And we have to constantly fight them.

I am suggesting what I am suggesting because I strongly feel that the root cause of all unhappiness is conventional wisdom, which forces the self to abdicate in favour of people who have little to do with that self. And it doesn’t permit us to employ in full and in all its splendour our biggest desire: freedom. And the man in fetters can never be happy, which is the monarch of all feelings and the sole goal of this mysterious, but unavoidable journey.

…You should try and ensure that your circumstances are not
 allowed to relegate your life to a dispensable parenthesis.

Most of us prefer sucking up to settled values because it is safe, but when we take the beaten track we are satiated, when we traverse the path laid by us — watered by our seamless dreams — we are complete.

Let us uncoil fast because we just lost a year. Time is running out. Let’s not waste too much time on the drawing board. Planning definitely kills what life is all about. It is about letting yourself go, go the whole hog and throw caution to the wind (not to be confused with immorality). It is about listening to the man within. I am referring to the heart in you, not the flesh holding it. I am referring to the individual in you, not the sheep.

Granted, in suggesting what I have been doing in the face of stinking opposition you could lose materially and substantially at that. You could land up owning a smaller dwelling than your friends, you could be left with a less stylish car than your neighbour and fewer domestic helps than your relatives, but I can say and with conviction that you will be happier than many of them. Nothing nurtures the sumptuosity of life more than establishing the primacy of the individual. Give it a try and set up an environment where unlocked instinct will be allowed to play the priest and the nudging needs of an unclamped being will be given a lavish reception.