“Theory of Musical Masochism”

I just came across a thought that should have crossed my mind a long time back. It would have definitely saved me a lot of precious time and tears. I named the phenomenon I came across, the “Theory of Musical Masochism”.

This epiphany took place, one day when I had hit a major low point in my life and I dreaded everything and every person around me. The only thing that made me feel better was the playlist of tragic songs of love and deprivation that was playing on the infinity loop on my MP4. I was sitting in a park, with a beautiful backdrop of high rise towers, green turf and happy kids playing and giggling incessantly, but it just seemed to make me feel more miserable. Trust me, when you are feeling doleful and people around you are making merry, your job of self soothing becomes a thousand times more difficult. Well, I am getting ahead of myself here. Coming back to the epiphany. Seven songs down, while I was desperately trying to hold my emotions back, the eighth song started playing. It was Shania Twain’s “ Up !” For those of you who haven’t heard this country classic, it tells you that when you have hit the rock bottom point in your life, it can’t get any worse, since you are already in the pit, and it just upwards that you can go now. So go ahead and live it “Up”!! Well I was not ready for this song, because I was hell bent to make myself feel more miserable but for some reason I let it play. By the time the three minute song got over, it had spelled magic. I felt the burden shift off my heart and mind at the same time. I gathered some courage, contemplating whether I should or should not listen to some more happy songs, since it was making my job of remaining sad and debarring myself from every happiness, difficult. Finally I decided, to listen to some more happy songs. Within the next ten minutes, I was feeling much lighter, and it took me a couple of minutes more to understand what I was doing to myself.

I have seen this as a trend that many follow. Whenever we are upset we line up all the tragedy songs and listen to them one after the other and torture our souls in a manner that it wasn’t even tortured by the circumstance that caused the pain in the first place. We forget the fact that it’s not difficult to be happy but somehow we deny happiness and then tag it as elusive. That day onwards, whenever I feel low, I tune in to songs like “Koi kahey, kehta rahe” instead of a “Tanhayee-tanhayee”. Dwelling on a much happier playlist now.