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.
3 comments:
Fantastic post!!!
You said "anticipation is the only fuel that keeps us moving". AGREED. This implies that a very big portion of the pleasures and joys we get out of life comes from the conceptions images and ideas we have in our mind about how things will be once we've arrived at ANY type of destination or goal. Thus, our experience of pleasure (and any other label for our interpretations of sensations and feelings)is generated primarily in the mind. The abstract parts of our 'selves', (or of our "experience receptacle") are actually the foundation for the rest. This also thusly implies that the ultimate point of having an aim or goal is actually within the process of getting there; it's THE JOURNEY ITSELF and not merely the destination alone.
That seems kinda shitty to me sometimes lol. At first glance it makes achievement seem unnecessary and counterproductive. But when that fact starts to scare me, I try to remind myself that every seeming end point is simply a "pit-stop" along the way to the final destination. So we can breathe a sigh of relief that it’s not over when we obtain something, like how I usually feel. There will always be something else to strive for. The difficulty is that dead space between the death of the old goal and the birth of a new one.
The constant "process of abstracting everything we do into something meaningful" is indeed frustrating. It makes me feel as if I'm 'faking it,' or being forced to pretend something is there that is only in my mind. But if all experience comes primarily from mind, then it's all in my head anyway. Maybe I find this uncomfortable to ponder because I've been so conditioned (like everyone else) to believe that any perception of reality that can't be agreed on by the rest of the world must be a mistaken perception and not real. On the other hand, this is exactly the type of conditioning that's produced all those fake happy people in the world. But who wants carbon-copy happiness anyway? When we realize that true happiness is something subjective and created through our own individual judgments, we can stop feeling forced to define everything based on the conceptions of the majority. And if this makes one "insane" then insane I'd much rather be.
Loved this post! Hope the response didn't stray too far from the point you were making here. Kudos, P.
PS. I really liked your term 'moment hunter'. Cool.
M,
When i said, the journey is holier than the moment we are hunting for, i didn't mean to give a connotation that the goal itself is insignificant. Besides, the tougher and unique your goals are the more memorable and "meaningful" the journey.
I wanted to focus on the role of our rationality in adding a meaning to the goal, which i think has to be overcome. Every, moment has a birth and death of a part of your "self". So, how could goals that are static make any sense ?
This brings back to your pit-stop anology, which is very close to what i wanted to say, no goal is an end in itself, and this journey has no particular destination.
As always, you explore the hidden dimensions in my ramblings, and make them seem meaningful.Such a pleasure to read your reflections.
peace \m/
My apologies, P...it certainly wasn't my intention to imply that you were saying the goal was insignificant. Sometimes I just get carried away with my own previously held conceptions and tend to overemphasize certain points unnecessarily.
I'm so glad you enjoy my comments (even when I tend to be a bit off track). Replying to your posts satiates my need to express myself, especially when there's not much going on in my own blog. They help me understand my own stance on many issues. And it's sooo nice to be able to mull these things over with someone that isn't part of the herd.
PS...If I can make your posts seem meaningful, it's only because your own "will to power" has created them that way to begin with. If anything, I can only unveil whats already there :)
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