Nocturnal Nights

I would not call myself insomniac, but I am not the kind of person who can sleep very easily. There are nights when the time seems to stand still, reminding me about it's strong influence over our lives; if the time passes hurriedly, we feel incompetent to enjoy the most of it - and when the time feels to pass sluggishly, we complain about not making the most of it. We, therefore are always under it's control, feeling powerless and demoralised.

The night is a cruel mistress. One can never spend too much time admiring the night's beauty without being left intoxicated in a world, too far from our own, alone and depressed. The night doesn't stay with you for long, no matter how much you beg for it to stay. The equanimity and the serenity which I associate with the night is all but temporary and the morning sun comes blazing up sooner or later, ending the harmonious period of silence, calmness and stillness.

As for me, I feel like losing myself in the abyss of thoughts during such nocturnal nights. I like staying in a vacuum for as long as the brain can take it and then getting dissolved in the night with the body and the mind. The feeling of absolute numbness, when the mind is locked in a world of thoughts, unperturbed by the real world- it is the moment of internal peace. It is the pleasure that hours of meditation or massage cannot bring.

I don't see a reason to let myself go off to sleep, because I have none to wake up to in the morning. I don't want to stay up as well because at times the solitude is a bit too much to handle. As a result, most of the times, I am neither asleep, nor awake. Lost in the transitional gap from being awake to falling asleep. This is the time when the mind is completely blank, thoughtless, emotionless, lifeless. 

People say that an empty mind is where a devil resides. I somehow disagree. An empty mind is where thoughts are left free to wander. These thoughts takes you to places where you do not want to go- to your past and to your future. The past is always a confined place which is a harsh reminder of- where we had been, what we had done, how we had behaved and what we chose to do. Whereas the future that these thoughts throw light on, is the future that our current path will lead us to. It shows us where we are heading. Thus, we realise that we are the real devils. The devils who have the ability to choose between right and wrong, but always choose the latter before the former. We, human beings, the only species to have the power of reasoning, who fail consistently to use it positively. 

The night has turned out to be a close friend and a closer foe in the recent times. It brings a mixed emotion of pain and pleasure. It has helped me understand myself, but has led me to understand others even better, which is not always good for relationships. But whatever I do, I always feel overpowered by this cruel mistress.

"Night, the beloved.  Night, when words fade and things come alive.  When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again.  When man reassembles his fragmentary self and grows with the calm of a tree."  ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry