Writing, Among Other Things
The World is in a mess. Hope has become a rare commodity. Uncertainty about the future is the prevailing sentiment.
These are not lines from the introduction to a movie or from a blurb for a dystopian novel. These lines represent the present state of affairs in the world around us. And like movies and books, times like these call for a Hero, don’t they?
Things change. They have to. It is the law of nature. But, sometimes change can be an illusion. Just sometimes, we like to believe that things have changed when they really haven’t. It is easier that way, especially since it helps us feel better about our mistakes and shortcomings.
Life today is much more complex than it was, let’s say, fifteen or twenty years ago. The number of decisions that we have to take on any given day is staggering. From the kitchen to the office, everything has changed. But, has it really?
I once attended a meditation camp, where a monk was supposed to deliver a lecture and teach the participants the basics of meditation. While he said a lot of things, some of which I remember and some of which I have conveniently forgotten, there was something he said which I was reminded of today.
The monk, who must have been in his late fifties and looked like he had been practicing meditation all his life, told us that there were days when even he did not feel like meditating. Days when meditating felt like a chore more than anything else. I don’t know about others, but this came as a shock to me. I mean when you see a monk, you assume that meditation and the spiritual practices are a second nature to him, or her. But, the monk assured us that it was not the case.
Recently, I was in a discussion with a friend about what difference can one human make in the larger scheme of things. When we were talking about large, we were talking about universe large. We concluded by deciding that one human was too small an entity to make any difference to the universe.
But when I got home, I got thinking again, and I realised that we had got it all wrong.
One human, any human, can make a huge difference in determining his, or her, own fate, the fate of the world, and perhaps even the fate of the universe.
One morning I woke up with a start. I checked my leg thoroughly for bite-marks. There were none. Yet, I felt like getting a vaccine for rabies, just to be safe. I had dreamt of being bitten by a rabid dog. The dream was so vivid that I had a hard time convincing myself that I had not been bitten by a dog.
We all dream. Even though we dream every night, we are usually not able to remember our dreams when we wake up. There are exceptions, however, when we are able to remember our dreams, and, sometimes, these dreams feel so real, so fantastic, that one has the feeling of living through an adventure.
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