Dichotomy

Dichotomy was one of my favourite words when I started learning this language seriously in my mid or late teens. I used look at it in the dictionary without really being able to grasp the essence of it. So, this word never came into my (don’t know everyone who aspires to write may be having a wish to use a new word he/she comes across) writing.


Recently, it struck me again; I was talking to a friend and out of the blue he asked ‘how do you sustain your cheer?’ (people dealing with me closely do know that I’m not always cheerful, I become sad, depressed, angry and even vicious sometimes), I just said ‘it is my normal state, I don’t do anything special for it.’ Still, the look of enquiry was in tact on his face, so I continued ‘look at the bigger picture, be grateful for what you have, be focussed, try not to think of things that are beyond your control etc. etc.’


Then ‘dichotomy’ resurfaced from somewhere inside, whatever I said was opposite to what we are conditioned to think ‘live in this moment, here and now’. In fact, we reverse the thought process of ‘here and now’ when the individual moments become miserable, fooling ourselves that everything will be hunky-dory once these miserable moments pass. Basically, we are just expected to carry on even if we are miserable in this moment or the future looks bleak.


Isn’t this the real essence of ‘dichotomy’? Which no dictionary can explain...


A similar post is here


I wrote the poem Lost to use the word oblivion.