Hands of Midas: Except Everything I Touch Withers

The aestheticization that kills.

It is late. The kind of late that blurs the edges of thought, where exhaustion and introspection intertwine. The world outside my window is hushed, wrapped in the quiet that only exists when most of it is asleep. The soft hum of a fan, the distant echoes of a city winding down—this is the hour where thoughts unravel, where the weight of the day settles into the bones, and where the words I often try to suppress finally demand to be written.

I have been thinking a lot about failure lately—not the kind that arrives suddenly and violently, but the slow kind. The kind that creeps in unnoticed until one day, you realize that something you once loved has withered in your hands. The kind of failure that doesn’t announce itself with catastrophe but with quiet erosion, with the gradual fading of something that once felt vibrant.

We live in a world that demands perfection. A world that insists that every passion must be honed into a skill, every talent must be marketable, every attempt must be worthy. There is little room for mediocrity, for the simple joy of creation without expectation. And yet, what happens when you are someone who only knows how to try and fail? What happens when everything you touch crumbles before it can become something beautiful?

This piece is about that. About the way things wither. About the slow death of dreams. About the weight of reaching, knowing you will never grasp. If you have ever felt this way—if you have ever mourned a version of yourself that never came to be—then perhaps, in these words, you might find something familiar.

The king and the curse

There was once a king who wished for gold. Not wealth earned through labor or time, but instant, effortless abundance. He longed for a touch that could transform anything into something valuable—something eternal. And so, when a god granted his wish, he rejoiced, testing his newfound power on all that surrounded him. The walls of his palace gleamed. The fruit in his orchard hardened into golden statues of themselves. Even the air around him seemed richer, heavy with the promise of prosperity.

But the gift, as all gifts from gods tend to be, was a curse in disguise. His joy turned to terror when he reached for his daughter, and she too turned to gold—beautiful, perfect, lifeless. In his hunger for beauty and abundance, he had destroyed what he loved. What good was a world of gold if it was devoid of warmth? If it could not grow, could not breathe, could not love him back?

We know how the story ends. The king begged the gods to take back the gift, to free him from his own ruinous touch. He washed his hands in the river, letting the water strip him of his power, and in doing so, he saved himself from his own destruction.

But what if the touch didn’t create gold? What if, instead of turning things into treasure, it caused them to wither? What if, instead of instant prosperity, it brought slow, insidious decay?

What if that curse wasn’t a myth, but something real—something I carry in my own hands?

I have often wondered if I was born with this touch or if I acquired it over time. If it seeped into my skin through years of failed attempts, abandoned projects, and aspirations that never materialized. Unlike the king, my hands do not create beauty; they unravel it. Not suddenly, not in a way that would make for a compelling tragedy, but slowly—imperceptibly at first, until one day, all that remains is the hollowed-out shell of something that once held promise.

I have seen it happen over and over again. A passion ignites in me, burning bright and hot, and I believe—just for a moment—that this time will be different. This time, I will be capable. I will follow through. I will make something worthwhile. But as soon as I touch it, the decline begins. The excitement dulls. The colors fade. The momentum slows until it grinds to a halt. What once felt alive turns brittle, disintegrating between my fingers. My touch does not breathe life into things; it drains them. My love does not nurture; it suffocates.

I used to wonder if I was imagining it, if I was simply lazy or undisciplined, if the withering was a self-fulfilling prophecy. But the evidence is undeniable. The unfinished paintings, the forgotten notebooks filled with half-baked ideas, the instruments collecting dust in the corner. A graveyard of creative ambitions, each one carefully laid to rest by my own hands.

And yet, I keep reaching. I keep trying. I tell myself that maybe this time will be different, that maybe I can outpace the decay if I move fast enough, care deeply enough, work tirelessly enough. But deep down, I know the truth. The curse is not in the effort—it is in me.

The Slow Death of Hobbies and Dreams

I have lived my life watching everything I touch erode. Not in the dramatic way of sudden failure or catastrophe, but in the quiet, creeping way of entropy.

As a child, I danced. Odissi, a classical dance form, filled my limbs with a sense of grace, my heart with the rhythm of something ancient and beautiful. I remember watching the older students move like poetry, their bodies an extension of the music, their expressions full of a language I so desperately wanted to understand. I tried to mirror them, to feel the dance move through me. But my body resisted. My steps faltered. My rhythm lagged. No matter how much I practiced, my movements felt wooden, stiff, unnatural. I told myself I lacked talent. I told myself I lacked devotion. And so, I stopped.

Then came painting. I remember the thrill of mixing colors, watching reds and blues blur into deep violets, watching light reflect off the wet sheen of fresh paint. The first time I held a brush, I felt powerful—like I could create something worthy, something that mattered. But soon, the colors dulled. My strokes hesitated. My hands felt clumsy, incapable of capturing the images in my head. The beauty I wanted to create remained just out of reach, and with each failed attempt, the joy shrank. Eventually, the brushes dried out. The canvases gathered dust. And I stopped.

Music followed. My fingers traced the strings of a veena, the wooden body heavy against my lap, the vibrations beneath my hands a quiet promise of something greater. I practiced until my fingertips ached, until the notes should have been second nature. But the melodies never came alive under my touch. The songs I played sounded mechanical, soulless, like something essential was missing. The veena, once so full of possibility, became just another relic of my failure. And so, I stopped.

Then writing. I thought, maybe, words would be different. Maybe, this time, I could mold something beautiful out of the raw material of thought. I wrote in notebooks, on the backs of receipts, in the margins of old textbooks. I filled pages with ideas, with half-finished stories, with fragments of poetry that felt alive in my mind but lay dead on paper. I would read back my words, searching for life, searching for meaning. But all I found was emptiness. My sentences lacked breath. They fell flat, skeletal, unworthy of being read. And so, I stopped.

Again and again, I tried. Again and again, I failed. It was as if I had been born with hands meant only to let things slip through them. As if the moment I reached for beauty, I was doomed to watch it dissolve into nothingness.

I am an artist who cannot create. A lover of beauty who can only witness its decay. And there is no undoing this touch, no river I can wash my hands in to free me from the inevitability of erosion.

The tragedy isn’t in destruction. It’s in the expectation of beauty. If I had been born knowing my hands carried ruin, perhaps I would have learned to accept it. But I wasn’t. I was raised on the same promises as everyone else—that if I worked hard enough, dedicated myself fully, and loved something deeply enough, I could make it beautiful. I could build. I could create. But no matter how many times I try, my hands don’t bring gold. They bring dust.

The Curse of the Almost

I have spent years chasing the ghost of potential—the flickering mirage of "what could have been." It appears in the quiet moments, in the spaces between regret and longing, shimmering like heat on an endless road. Always ahead. Always unreachable.

I see glimpses of it, that alternate life where I was sharper, faster, more disciplined. If only I had started earlier. If only I had tried harder. If only I had more time, more talent, more courage. Then maybe I would have become the person I was supposed to be. Maybe my hands would not be cursed. Maybe they would build something worthy.

But I never do. I never reach that imagined self—the one who could paint flawlessly, write masterfully, speak eloquently, live meaningfully. Instead, I exist in the purgatory of "almost," where effort is made but mastery never arrives. Where passion flickers but never catches flame. Where I am always on the edge of something beautiful, but never quite inside it.

I have tried. God, I have tried. I have stayed awake in the hushed hours of the night, my mind racing through all the things I could be if only I were better, if only I had more control over the slipping sands of time. I have stared at unfinished projects, willing them into greatness, only to watch them crumble under the weight of my own self-doubt.

Do you know what it feels like to grieve a life you never lived? To mourn a version of yourself that only exists in the whisper of a "what if"? To wake up every morning knowing that the person you were meant to be is out there, waiting, but you will never reach them?

That is the weight I carry. The weight of what I could have been, and the unbearable knowledge that I will never be that person. It is a grief that does not announce itself loudly—it is the quiet, steady ache of knowing that every attempt will only confirm my limitations. That every effort will fall short of brilliance. And yet, I keep trying, keep reaching, keep touching the fragile edges of creation, hoping that maybe this time, something will survive my hands.

Dying Under the Weight of Aesthetics

It is not enough to exist. One must be beautiful while doing it. One must make the struggle look effortless, turn suffering into poetry, make even pain marketable. We have not just been asked to live—we have been asked to curate our lives, to present them in a way that is digestible, consumable, worthy of admiration.

But what happens when the aesthetic collapses? When the paint peels, when the words stutter, when the body sags under exhaustion? What happens when you can no longer package yourself into something that fits the world’s expectations? When your art is ugly, when your life is messy, when your existence is un-shareable?

The world does not care for unbeautiful things. It does not want to see the half-formed, the imperfect, the unpolished. So we learn to hide our failures, to filter our realities, to pretend that our hands are golden even when they are covered in dust. We perform competence. We masquerade as creators, hoping no one notices the rot beneath the surface.

Social media has only amplified this phenomenon, making it impossible to separate creation from consumption, art from commodification. We do not simply make things; we make things for an audience, forever aware of the watching eye. Every hobby, every interest, every fleeting passion must be honed into a skill, must be transformed into something valuable. Even our personal lives are subject to this scrutiny—our happiness must be photogenic, our struggles poetic, our pain palatable.

But what of those of us who cannot perform? Who cannot translate our experiences into something that fits the frame? Are we rendered invisible? Worthless?

I have tried to keep up. I have tried to polish myself into something worth looking at. But I have found that my hands, no matter how much I try, cannot create gold. Only dust. Only fragments. Only things that are never quite enough.

Dying Under the Weight of Aesthetics

It is not enough to exist. One must be beautiful while doing it. One must make the struggle look effortless, turn suffering into poetry, make even pain marketable. We have not just been asked to live—we have been asked to curate our lives, to present them in a way that is digestible, consumable, worthy of admiration. Every moment, every experience, every fleeting joy must be captured, refined, and displayed. The rawness of life is no longer enough; it must be aestheticized, filtered through the lens of perfection before it is deemed worthy of existence.

The world was not always like this. There was a time when hobbies were just hobbies, when imperfection was accepted as part of the process rather than a blemish to be concealed. There was a time when art was made for the sake of expression, not for an audience, not for likes, not for engagement metrics. But that time feels distant now, a relic of a past where creation was personal, where effort was enough even if the result was flawed.

Now, perfection is demanded at every level. It is no longer enough to dance—you must dance flawlessly, gracefully, in a way that is shareable. It is not enough to paint—you must paint in a way that is marketable, worthy of a time-lapse video with soft, ethereal music in the background. Writing is no longer just an act of thought—it must be polished, quotable, packaged in neat, bite-sized wisdom fit for social consumption. Even joy must be staged, grief must be poetic, and pain must be palatable enough to be worthy of attention.

Social media has made this expectation inescapable. We do not simply make things; we make things for an audience. We do not simply experience joy; we make it photogenic. We do not simply exist; we perform existence in a way that is palatable to others. Every moment is lived with the awareness that it is being watched, and in that watching, the authenticity of experience is lost. A walk in the rain is no longer just a walk—it is an opportunity for content. A meal is no longer just nourishment—it is an aesthetic display. Even personal growth must be transformed into something visible, trackable, something that can be documented and praised.

But what happens when the aesthetic collapses? When the paint peels, when the words stutter, when the body sags under exhaustion? What happens when you can no longer package yourself into something that fits the world’s expectations? When your art is ugly, when your life is messy, when your existence is un-shareable?

The answer is clear: you disappear.

If your struggle is not poetic, if your grief is not beautifully articulated, if your joy is not visually appealing—then it is not worthy. It is not real, not valid, not seen. And so, those of us who cannot perform, who cannot translate our experiences into something that fits the frame, become invisible. We become nothing.

I have tried to keep up. I have tried to polish myself into something worth looking at. But I have found that my hands, no matter how much I try, cannot create gold. Only dust. Only fragments. Only things that are never quite enough.

What Remains After the Decay

Albert Camus once wrote, "The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy." The story of Sisyphus—the man doomed to push a boulder up a hill for eternity—has always resonated with me. There is no resolution, no triumphant moment of arrival, only the ceaseless effort. And yet, Camus asks us to see him not as a figure of despair, but as one who finds meaning in the act of trying.

Perhaps that is what remains after the decay—not the promise of gold, not the illusion of mastery, but the defiance of continuing in spite of it all. Maybe art is not about permanence, but about the act of creation itself, even if it crumbles. Maybe worth is not measured in finished works, but in the reaching, the striving, the belief that something—anything—can come from our hands, however fleeting.

I have spent my life watching beauty slip through my fingers, watching passion fade, watching the weight of perfection crush the joy of creation. And yet, I have also spent my life reaching. Reaching for a stroke of paint that feels right. Reaching for a phrase that holds meaning. Reaching for something beyond myself, even when I know it will never be enough.

And maybe that is enough. Or maybe it isn’t. But it is all I have. And so, I reach.

Till next time, bye

Mukta<3

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IMP: This is the longest I have yapped here, please do engage and support. Since past few weeks, I have been losing my will and interest to post or write, with the writer’s block and the lack of response towards the hard work, it becomes difficult to stay motivated. So if you are seeing this and if you like it, do share, restack, like and comment to let me know of your views.

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