Dipika Kohli
By Dipika Kohli
I started writing this three times, all of them on a Discord call with a small artist community in Manila I met a year ago, virtually.
It was my first time trying Discord, and I was all thumbs, being a Gen X’er and a Zoom voice-only person, usually, and also someone who never had a smartphone of my own. Sure, I am not very zippy and snappy with new-to-me communication channels, but they were quite forgiving of this technical backwardness, and I was grateful. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again, as they say. Little by little, I got the hang of it. My equipment is quite rudimentary and falling apart, so there is that, but it still works. Mostly.
Reflecting later, I remembered how it feels to start a thing when you have no idea how, no experience with it, and you are diving in cold. Not a simple thing to do. After all, there were people who already knew each other. There was a very large chance I could be judged, or worse, shunned. It happens when people don’t know how to place you. Or you know, they just don’t like you very much. Or they’re bullies and stuff.
Social inclusion and wanting it is a huge deal when you are young or even not when you are young; but I’ve come to understand that the more times you try to break through these barriers of self-inhibition (‘What will people think?’) so as to cater to the more-of-the-moment, the more likely it’ll be that you’ll get closer to the you of you, the real you, who you truly are.
The curious people I’ve met in life on travels to different complex cultures and immersion in some of them for a year or ten, they’ve taught me this. I’m not sure how to put it, but I believe that the more you go, the more you find out, and through these exchanges with new others in the world, the more real you can become with yourself.
It has taken me a long time to put pen to paper and say this directly. But being liked is pointless if you don’t like yourself.
A husk of a self isn’t a self.
Do your own thing. Please don’t pretend like you don’t care about what other people think if you actually do. It’s okay to care, we all go through that. But then, what’s important is working out what’s really something you want to keep about this way of living that you’ve been autopiloting for a time, and what’s not of value. According to you. That is discernment.
It kinda needs to happen at some point if you want to make great stuff, I feel. Art wants to be opinionated and state things, but the artist must also consider learning how to be sensitive to others, so as to invite them — viewers, readers, persons receiving expressions of emotion — to see in these works something of themselves. It works brilliantly when people can and do. There is sharing. This kind of relating feels, to me, like art. (Relational art, even. It’s a thing.)
When you want to fit in, so badly, with the wider world and with the aesthetics-as-approved-by-the-people-who-decide-that, something can get lost.
Something real, and something that’s your own. Mimicry and pandering get in the way of being honest. I say try not to fret about being ‘liked.’ Easier said than done, I know. But the ‘likes’ of your neighbors and ambient community of the people right around you whom you see every day are just as valuable. A smile, a wave, a hello. It matters.
An art of the moment, I think, starts with staying curious. Being open to new possibilities while freeing ourselves from trying to match ‘expectations,’ or mold ourselves into fake versions of ourselves simply out of fear of ‘what people will think’ if we don’t.
Could it be that this is my idea of what freedom is? Choosing our way, choosing our choices. (For a time, I had quit. I guess it was a ‘pause’.) We all need time to introspect, to figure out how we feel, what we think, and ultimately, who we are becoming next. Better versions of ourselves, hopefully.
That’s what I will bring up next time I call those artists on Discord. How we gotta stay open, keep learning, and be us. I like the standing invitation so much to show up, as I am, with what I’ve got, to participate as I choose. Younger people have taught me to enjoy this. I feel lucky.
Dipika Kohli is an author who is based in Phnom Penh. Discover her books at kismuth.com and other projects at dipikakohli.com.
