Dealing with an Unexpected Situation

I stood still and unmoving. Quietness was encompassing me. It was a hot day, but a good kind of hot. The only thing I could say about the day was that it was perfectly normal. It was clean. No sweats. No problems at all. Everything was fine. I was comfortable as hell and expecting the unexpected. Then, cold water washed over me.

Comfort fled; I jumped in shock. Now, I was sweating. It was a different kind of sweat – no, it was rather a tingling feeling. From the tip of my fingers, to my now wet palms to my heart, the tingle spread. A millisecond later, extremely quick numbness took the tingle’s place and froze me. I felt as if I was standing at the end of a long tunnel, watching my life unfurl like a flag, or play out like a movie at the other end, instead of living it in reality. My mind, or whatever was controlling it, had snuck inside, deeper, so that I felt lost at the wake of the moment.

I realized a clock-tick later that I was not drenched. Neither was I wet, nor was there any water, cold or hot. It wasn’t the change in my body temperature, or the serious shock from the cold water that had me in cold sweats that one could not see physically, but simply feel. It was the situation.

I was in a situation that made me afraid. An uncomfortable one. An unexpected one. It made my tongue tickle, it made my skin crawl, and it left me phased out. It didn’t matter what the shock was. Hell, it doesn’t even matter what the situation was. It could be an unexpected person I never want to see who had appeared in front of me, or it could be a test result that had just popped up that showed ‘Failed.’ It could be anything from terribly good to delightfully bad. It doesn’t matter. This is not about that.

This is instead about what to do next. How do you face the fear? How do you snap out of it?

Let me take an analogy of my friend. He recently went through an awry friendship fight. He happened to see his friend a few weeks later, in a public place. And he just froze. Right there, a thousand things must have popped up in his mind, a thousand levels of changes must have happened in his body. He must have frozen predictably because of the unexpected situation. And hours later, he confided in me that he felt guilty for feeling this. And that is when he asked me the question that made me write this: Why?

Why do we feel so phased out when the unexpected intrudes our path? What is it about the crappy situations that we are forced into that renders us speechless? Why, oh frigging why, do we have to stare in numbness at the thing we never wanted to happen (but has)?

I, sadly, do not have the answer to this. Perhaps one day, I will. But for now, I become as phased out as the next man. I find myself under a shocking situation that I did not even think about occurring, I stand there quietly. I stand there motionless. People could mistake me for a pillar.

But the one thing I learnt, is that, the more you grow, the more you learn. And the more you learn, the more you are accustomed to such situations. A few years ago, if you had seen me in such a situation, I would truly be an aforementioned pillar. But as I have grown, as I have experienced, I realize so much. I have learnt to expect the unexpected. I have learnt to deal with situations in a much more non-frozen (forgive me for making up a word) manner. I embrace the shock, and move on.

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Hey, Bleedsters!
This is my 41st post! I have finally completed 40 posts on my blog and have successfully crossed the milestone. It feels good, and I need some good. Why? Because Engineering exams have ensued. Its like a battle between the different parts of my brain. Its exhausting. This post might be a little crazy, one of the intellectual posts I have ever done, but it is new kind of writing. In no way is it actually intellectual but I thought I would share my views on it anyway. 
Those who do not have exams right now, must be enjoying their summer. Happy vacations to them.
Love,
Kunal.

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