Living in the In-Between

It’s been a while since I wrote anything. There is a turmoil in my mind, in my heart. So many emotions are flooding in, so much trauma being unleashed. With that pain, tiredness and lethargy set in. I force myself to get up and do things. My mind, however, urges me to lie down and not do anything.

I push myself to go to the gym in the morning, even though sadness tries to creep in. I push myself to attend gatherings, even when everything feels pointless. And yet, I am able to enjoy the effort. I feel grateful for the ability to keep moving. I search for ways to address this sadness. I do this instead of letting it swallow me.

This sadness is not just personal. It is deeply connected to what is going on in the world. I feel helpless watching events unfold. It seems like evil is everywhere. Maybe it was always there. At least before, it felt like it was scared or shamed to come out openly. Now it feels shamelessly out in the open and nothing seems to be happening to stop it.

That scares me. Will it get normalized? Will it become more powerful, knowing that nothing can be done to it? That thought alone is heavy.

And yet, at the same time, I am hopeful.

Maybe this is a turning point. Maybe it was never this visible before or maybe I just hadn’t noticed it as clearly. But it feels like, for the first time in my life, it has surfaced without shame. I do see some people getting influenced by it, even supporting it. But I also see many who are as disgusted as I am. And I see many more who are taking steps to do something about it.

That gives me hope.

A few months back, I had a conversation with someone about billionaires and aspiring trillionaires. We discussed how power is concentrating in just a few companies and a few hands. We talked about how that kind of concentration can create a kind of god complex. I said then that, historically, whenever something grows this big and this powerful, it eventually comes to an end.

There is a saying in Telugu: “Peruguta viruguta korake.”

It roughly translates to: “Things grow in order to eventually break.” Or, more deeply: growth itself carries the seeds of its own breaking point.

Maybe this is that moment.

Perhaps what we are witnessing now is not only the rise of something dark. It might also be the beginning of its cracking. Maybe this painful visibility is part of what makes real change possible.

I don’t know what will happen. I don’t know how long this will take. But I am holding on to this hope. This exposure, this discomfort, this collective disgust, and this collective awakening might be the very things that lead to something better.

For now, I keep getting up. I keep going to the gym. I keep showing up to gatherings. I keep writing. I keep feeling both the sadness and the hope.

Because somehow, they coexist.

And maybe that, too, is part of surviving this moment.