Espresso: Bitter
Notes for a rainy day
When I was kid, I complained a lot about eating bitter gourd. In fact, ‘complained’ is an understatement. I threw tantrums, dumped lunch box content without my mom’s knowledge, and did everything in my power to ignore that nightmare vegetable. And it used to drive me mad when people gave moral justification for its existence. Women in the family threw around philosophical statements like that’s how life is, you gotta get used to the bitter parts. I was young and a budding pessimist. I thought if you want to learn from a vegetable, might as well learn from Potato.
But as I grow old, I understand the vegetable and the life philosophy it embodies better. If you are an adult in your 30s, you do need to figure out a way to deal with the inevitably bitter parts of your life. And unless your super power is being emotionally stable, you have to make a conscious effort to get there.
Here’s a list of things that help without demanding you to be cloyingly positive.
Music helps. A lot. Life feels a lot better when you are listening to SPB sing Ithu oru ponmalai pozhuthu.
Talk to a friend. It is somehow always the right answer. Go for a brunch or rant over WhatsApp. Honestly anything and everything works as long as you have a friend as a part of the equation.
Allow yourself to be unhappy.
Read. Have favourite authors. Discover new authors and genres. Good writing is like wrapping yourself with a comfortable blanket. It rewires your brain.
Be obsessed about a hobby or a topic. Have Pinterest boards and fall down a Reddit rabbit hole. A slightly freakish obsession with a hobby can often be the distraction you sorely need.
Eat ice cream.
Travel somewhere. Leave the bitter pieces and come back as a slightly better person. Travel with strangers. Discover the kind of person you can be when there are no strings attached.
Get off Instagram. Seriously!
Sit by the beach, watch sunsets and sunrises.
Sometimes it takes sheer willpower. You have to grit your teeth and tell yourself over and over that you will not be a bitter person. Just because that is not the kind of person that you want to be.
If you have another nice, low-effort addition to this, I would love to hear about it.
As Sanderson says, “Strength before weakness”. 🐊 (I couldn’t find a bitter gourd emoji and the emojipedia threw crocodile, out of all things, as the suggested replacement. So maybe this is the bitter gourd’s villain origin story)