A piece about "Nothing"

I want to write about nothing. Is say this to the one who reads a piece of writing, that means something. Turn your heads away and dissolve yourself in the process of looking for patterns, this is about "nothing". But to the ones who are tired of this process of abstracting everything we do into something meaningful. To those jaded souls, i speak to you.

Try to recollect this single moment on every firday afternoon, in the place you work. The moment where you are looking forward to a sense of relief, this feeling of a change in the monotonicity, a week of work breeds in you. Notice how beautiful that moment is ? No matter how mundane a weekend you have ahead, this moment of anticipation has a beauty of its own. Like the anxious, face of a 12 year old kid, before opening up a wrapped up Christmas present. Hidden inside the layers of wrapping paper was your moment of joy, the hope of a perfect gift, that would make you ecstatic. I am referring to the joy in that short instance of time, before you open the present. It's the same joy the moment i talk about on a Friday afternoon brings to me. Though deep inside your heart, you always know that this gift or this weekend is going to be no different, a glimpse of hope still lingers on.

Subconsciously, we are all tuned to wait for these moments that would change everything from the way it is, to the way it is supposed to be. We don't realize that this anticipation, is the only fuel that keeps us moving, smoothly through the course of time. There are days in our lives we run out this fuel, when the chalice of hope is dried to the bottom, by the gusts of montonous hours.

Hours, that are all the same no matter how far you travel, how many new people you meet. The hours, never different, never filled with the moments you hoped for. In this state you wait and have a constant urge to abstract, the mundane around you in to the "moments" you were awaiting for. Each of us have a varied threshold for how long we could sustain such a state. Some give-in too early, and hit the bars for drinks, on a Friday evening, sitting in the Happy-Hour and wondering what's so "Happy" about this "hour". The free drinks and food, soon cease to fit into the awaiting moment, and you move onto make a conversation with the opposite sex, hoping to dig your moment out. Some even go to the lengths of justifying themselves, may be this was the moment i was hoping to change my course. And they live through the illusion of happiness, till they wake up in bed the next morning, with another moment hunter lying next to them fast asleep. Then the justifications you made last night become glaringly-obvious falsities. And you can feel the mundane wheel turning again, throwing you back in to the civilized forest, in the hunt for a change.

A few of us even try to stay in the illusion a little longer and try to re-capture the moments of the inebriated Friday night, to be the moments of happiness that you always looked forward to. It is not difficult to push your mind back to the state of abstraction, it will spin a story for you, a seemingly beautiful one, about last night. This too will break-away, the hours are cruel, they leave no soul illusioned for too long. Your weekend moves on, your BBQs, your hiking trips, your picnics, your pot-lucks, start alluring you, like those cheesy TV-commercials,calling you to be a part of it. And experience the joy, that those faces on television, seem to be sharing.And just as the gaps between the commercials, make you aware of the flipper in your hand, the period between the so called fun-events, give you an option of choosing the way you want to spend your hours. Your hand is too lazy to flip the channel, and so is your mind, too lazy to think of your own idea of "fun". Think of the times when you were really hungry, and some one has setup the table with all the stuff you would rather not eat, but you know that you are too lazy to cook, you would go ahead and fill yourself wouldn't you ? So are these fun-events that fill your weekend, a table not set for you, but nevertheless the one you eat at every time.

Pardon me my friends, who get offended when i say "you", i include myself in it. But,today i chose solitude, i flipped to a station "I" thought was fun. And, if you still feel, this made no sense, read the title of this post, or the name of my blog again.

..Time machine or just an Elevator ?...

If the world that i perceive through my senses is a grand symphony of molecular interactions;

If a sudden bang set out this chain reaction, this eternal dance of energy particles that are governing every action, every minute change that is happening right "now".

How does some one explain an erratic behaviour ?

To be precise how does a un-premeditated action affect this whole universe, that i am supposedly a crucial part of ?

The Question brings up the issue of premeditation, can anything be premeditated at all ?

For instance, the words that i am writing right now the flow of ink from this pen; The movement of the ball this is taking place as i write is as complex and as inexplicable and unpredictable as the universe itself. One might argue the physics behind it, but since the origin

of every moment of my hand is a result of the electric impulses sent by my brain through the central nervous system. I have little control on what i exactly want to do.

To make this phenomenon that i call an "error" more apparent, let me illustrate the series of events that have led me to actually write this post. I was taking the elevator on the 7th floor of my 12 storied apartment, to do some laundry on what seemed to be a regular lazy Sunday afternoon.

I got on the elevator with a laundry bag in one hand and detergent in the other, voila! nothing great about i hear you say. Yes, you are right.

The "error" happened when i was pressing the floor button, i had to get to the 1st floor, and i clearly missed and pressed "3". Yes, the lazy Sunday afternoons I'd say. Though i corrected the mistake by pressing '1' again. I knew that the elevator would stop at '3' and i will be hitting the close button.

So where am i getting at ? what is the significance of this event ? If the "butterfly effect" as it is referred to is happening with every action we take. What would be the magnanimous outcome of this so called "error" ? Was i pushed in to a parallel universe ? Did i travel light years just coming down that elevator ? Did this small error change the entire course of my life ?

I can never know the answers to these Questions, as i lack the reference, on what my life "would have been" if i hadn't pushed the wrong button.

If one thing is for sure, i.e, i wouldn't have even thought of scribbling down this one a piece of paper. Not Me! i would have just dragged my lazy ass upstairs in the same elevator and pondered over the first thought that would have occurred to me, till i would realize i was going now where with it or have one of those physical urges to please myself in the easiest possible way.

So the Questions still remain,

Did i just travel light years into a parallel universe, was my elevator a time machine, is time travel happening all around us or was i just doing laundry tonight ?