Frust-Bite

Sometimes you watch a movie, watch it carefully for three hours, noticing each and every detail, trying to search for one thing, one thing that you would like about the movie, one thing can make you laugh, one thing that would make you feel that watching this movies was not a mistake. And then, you finally realize that the movie is over without you being able to detect that one thing, as if the thing didn’t exist. In simple words, you feel like an idiot who has just wasted three hours on a stupid movie which does not make any freaking sense. This, my dear friends, is ‘Frustration’.

No dictionary on earth, no person alive can define this term, ‘Frustration’. You don’t know what it means until you experience it yourself. Fortunately, God has been kind enough to enlighten every single human being with the meaning of ‘Frustration’. No matter who you are, what you do, you got to feel this, at least once. God has no double standards when it comes to making people feel ‘not so good’, you see.

Let’s take another example. You meet a beautiful single girl in a party (very rare chances, it’s just an example). You talk to her, she responds very nicely, you make some moves, she accepts them readily, you have lots of fun, talk all night, dance together and end up exchanging numbers. All this time you were wondering that this chick was way out of your league, and that now you have her number, you are the luckiest guy on this planet, and that maybe you have some hidden charisma that only ultra-cute babes are able to see and appreciate. At that moment, you feel like a ‘stud’; everything changes, your way of talking, your way of walking, even the expressions on your face while you pee (which, according to research are the most natural expressions possible on human face). This is called the ‘pre-frustration’ period, which people enjoy the most, unaware of what lies ahead. Anyways, you wake up next morning, again feeling like a stud, wondering if you are friends to the right people, and that whether you should change your friend circle, and that when you will introduce your girlfriend (the girl you met last night, human brain works really fast you see!) to your friends, will you feel awkward, and that maybe your friends will be mesmerized to see her and try to hit on her and betray you and so on. And then you decide to call her, pull out the neatly preserved chit from the pocket of the suit you wore last night, and try her number. At first, the operator says that the line is busy, but you keep trying and trying until after two hours, you hear the connecting beep. And then, after three beeps, you hear the dialogue, “This telephone number does not exist”. At this moment, all the thoughts that crossed your mind since last night till this moment go in reverse order, each being negated one by one, and each giving rise to thousands of other thoughts. What happened to the hidden charisma? Where did the stud go? What happened to your way of walking again? And what about the while-you-pee expressions? Are you really that stupid? Are you a woman repellent? Are you the guy in comic books who you found funniest in you childhood days? And at that moment, you realize that you are an idiot, not just ‘an’ idiot, you are ‘the’ idiot, the biggest and the best in the field. This my friends, is the ‘Frust-o-mix’; frustration mixed with feelings of self-criticism and a huge drop in confidence. It’s the most severe in the business, one shot of this one, and you are off for days (or months in some cases).

But the worst kind of frustration is still unmentioned. You have a job, a family, a stable income, a small house and a nice pet. In other words, you are the hero of ‘American Dreams’. But every morning, while leaving for your job, you wish that your boss is dead. But he’s still there, alive and healthier, ready to ruin your day, pin-pointing each and every little thing in your work that he doesn’t like, shouting at you for unnoticeable mistakes and making your office life hell. By the way, you don’t like your job anyways, because it is so boring and useless, and lacks adventure and innovation (things you didn’t even think of in your college). Then you return home, your wife thinks you are having an affair, you children think their mother is right, you have the regular drama session at the dining table, followed by constant shouting exercises in the bedroom. You ‘are’ the hero of ‘American Dreams’, it’s just that you haven’t reached the climax yet. This, is “Frust-o-roma”; constant supply of frustration in small packets at regular intervals of time.

But what most people do not realize is that frustration is not so bad after all. After watching the boring movie, you tell all your buddies that the movie is awesome, so that they all watch it and enjoy the experience you just had. And while they hate you and abuse you for that later, you enjoy each and every bit of that hatred. And after realizing that you got an incorrect number, you go to the parties again, just to find that girl, get drunk, and puke on her. And while she panics and you are sub-conscious, you have enjoyed each and every penny spent on that bottle of liquor. And when, after many years of your frustrating job and all, you resign, show the middle finger to your boss, and actually have an affair with a hottie, so that you no longer feel bad when your wife shouts at you, at that moment you feel like a stud, a real one. This, my friends, is the “post-frustration’ period, which we commonly call ‘life’.