Don’t take it too seriously

The more serious we take ourselves to be, the grumpier we look. A little smile can lighten the mood of a room and make us healthier and happier. It is infectious too. It is the difference between a boring lecture and a witty anecdote. Despite knowing this, we go for the grave appearance and uptight mannerisms to signal our importance and deep thoughts.
Popular culture glamorizes the demure look with a cigar in hand. The disdainful and poker faces signal the gravitas and power. Our smileys are reserved for the light-hearted Facebook comments section. If you need to be taken seriously, you must frown, speak in lower tones, dress sharper and emote authority. Laugh out in the bathroom break, if you must, when the jugular veins get the better of you. But maintain a serious countenance in public. It counts, many assume.
People take on a different persona in social interactions or when they think others are watching or judging them. As if the spotlight is focused on us, we edit every word, emotional expression, and action for public consumption. In other words, we lose our real selves and become performative machines. This tendency is more pronounced in the online space and private messaging groups. Sorry to break it to you; your opinions are the digital detritus which may be loud and gaudy but won’t amount to much in the end. The reason is that the quantity of the content and conversations produced at any given point on the internet is too fast and uncontrolled, and this sheer quantity buries our carefully crafted online expositions in the sea of mindless content. Even if they stick, the discursive fragments may not matter much, other than giving a false sense of busyness and being heard. Taking part in an endless discourse on serious matters, while lying in bed, seldom translates into anything substantial in the real world outside the four walls.
We are not to blame entirely. The tiny scale and size of our identity fail us. Consider the population of Manipur. Its estimated population of 35 (at most) lakhs when mapped against the world demographic map will account for zero significance. To be more precise, our population will barely reach 0.04% of the global population of 8 billion. If you filter it down to your own ethnic community, this percentage will plummet further to sub-sub zeroes. Let’s take the Meitei population, say 20 lakhs (inflated for irony), as an input. The result is 0.02% of the global human voice. Doesn’t it seem ridiculous that we exaggerate the value of our personal opinions when our collective voice seems non-existent?
Likewise, in terms of economy, Manipur’s GDP will not make a dent in the consciousness of the global economy, if there is such a thing. Amusement Funds of big Corporations will easily supersede the State’s cash flow. The annual expenditure of a young and adventurous Dubai Prince–with his lavish lifestyle surrounded by private jets, limousines, yachts, globe-trotting, etc. —may outsize the entire budget allocated for building roads and infrastructure in Manipur.
Even the box office earnings of a Hollywood movie often dwarfs our economy. Recent Hollywood offerings like the Deadpool & Wolverine grossed more than 1 billion $. In INR, that’s a whopping 87000 crores worth of business created by a single film. Theoretically speaking, a hit blockbuster can fuel the entire economic engine of the State many times over for many years.
We can run these thought experiments with various indices and parameters. The result is the galling insignificance of you, me and the walled universe we call Manipur.  Forget about the financials and demographics. Our favourite place for creating, sharing and consuming the media, news and opinions is social media.  Do we care that the GPS location in your smartphone determines what you watch, read and engage with?  We create the bubbles we inhabit like the fishes in a bowl eating their feces in the hermeneutic echo chambers.
There is a constant internal war between the realities of our mundane existence and the grand level at which we contemplate complex issues with ample cues from philosophies, religions and political theories. In a practical sense, we live moment to moment as microbes in a small Petri dish, our actions not impacting beyond our immediate concerns and bothers. Because God won’t feed us bread and buy the groceries, we must rush to the office, navigate the traffic, listen to the 7:30 news, survive the Inga-kalenheat, and go more existentially self-centred. The typical scene in our life is something like this: After debating climate change, geopolitics and alien technology in WhatsApp groups/social media, our train of thought gets disturbed by the noise of water leaking from the kitchen sink, which we must immediately fix.
What do you see when you close your eyes and envision your place in the universe? In the pale blue dot that Earth is, as seen from outer space, each one of us is not even a speck of dust. It’s like asking the ants what they are up to all the time: pushing, shoving, pulling and forever labouring driven by an autopilot force.
For all we know, we could be someone’s ants. So please smile more. Don’t take yourself so seriously. Be grateful that you have survived till now to spread your DNA.