Decompress

There has been so much information going inside me in the last few days. I started a new job last week, had my first weekend class of transactional analysis (TA) in organisational development, and had my birthday too.

There are so many thoughts on everything from terms in TA—contracting, ethics, developing a new product at work. Plus, of course, it's cancer season. Can I blame my signs for my birthday blues? Not sure. The only thing I know is that I want to focus on one thing at a time.

Its something that everyone knows, yet the credit it gets is the same amount of salt. It's called the process. Why process? Because in the passing moments and experiences, we go through something—a push and pull of here and there.

Process is the time it takes us to get used to something, acknowledge it, and accept it. Process is cultivation. It happens with our emotions, beliefs, attitudes, behaviour, and character.

Why is it so important? Allow me to tell you.

I make coffee the traditional South Indian way: filter coffee. One has to pour hot, boiling water on the pressed coffee powder and seal it. The coffee mixture drips into a thick water consistency, which serves as my decoction. It is similar to an espresso, but not really. The decoction is enjoyed with a mixture of milk and sugar while bringing the contrast of coffee. Espresso's are made in high-temperature, pressurised water pushing through coffee ground powder. I'm getting carried away by my love for coffee here.

Anyway, so to make such a thing, I have to do it overnight. It takes some hours to form the thickest, most intense coffee I'll ever know, or I can do it in 15 minutes, which would be less intense. In our minds, when we let something sit with us, we go through it and then send it outward. It usually makes it easier for us to digest, irrespective of its hardness scale. It can also very well be compared to digestion. I process whatever I take in to actually know what I really want; sometimes I look at an object and think I might really need it, but I probably don't.

My commute helps me process this. Ik Ik, it's weird. It's usually exhausting. But as someone who uses public transport, with my earpods on, this is my time to put my thoughts in one place. This repetitive melody of songs, along with a focus to put down my thoughts, pulls threads out of me and neatly presents themselves in assembly lines on my e-notebook. I call this zone music bubbles. My entirety is vacuum-sealed in a certain sound, and I find myself thinking meditatively.

Picture - Me stuck in traffic for 45 mins in a shared auto

This is honestly therapeutic because a lot has been happening inside of me as a reaction to so much stimulation, so much information, so much everything—a given if you live in a metro city. These become compressed balls of small energies locked up inside me. I want space. I want to breathe.

To do just that, I must decompress and take these out of me. A ritual cleaning of taking out the trash, you can say.

The Wikipedia definition of a process is a series of steps taken in order to change or preserve something. As they say, change is inevitable; this is what they mean: we are ever changing, and in turn, to change or hold a certain piece of us dearly, we need to be mindful of that process. To know what's happening inside us, what am I inclined to? What am I being overloaded with? How do I unburden, and so on?

Everyone processes differently. Something that can be universally accepted, though, is the routine stuff—the no-thinking activities that allow us to think more clearly—be it cleaning, cooking, or folding clothes.

I believe writing this piece has allowed me to process all that week's worth of junk and good meals I'm sitting with. I hope it helps you do the same.

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The background to this piece are the muted sounds of honks and a loop of any song.