An elder future

This post is a note to myself; an idea that struck me while I was reading up on the fundamentals of anthropology. The study of evolutionary sciences has showed us that we have traveled through space and time over a million years, beginning from a single cell and, in all probability, effectively hitting a veritable saturation point in the way we perceive the objects around us, animate or inanimate, and in the way we interpret their static or dynamic presence. Nature has always been a precursor when it came to the evolution of the structural definition of systems, and how we, as creators ourselves, could calculate and predict their various possible interactions while assuming that only certain behaviours were permissible. After all, we were and are the children of science and thus will grow up as every such child does. In this perspective, history is a lesson we write everyday just for your children and grandchildren to read about and learn. No, it is not an account of one’s experiences, for it is so only in the miniscule fraction of a second that immediately follows the experience itself. Once the cloud of our probabilistic future looms low and close, the memory of the experience itself becomes translated in our minds into a story of causality. We learn from experiences yes, but they are experiences no longer. It is but nature’s way of forcing the mind itself into succumbing to the forces of evolution.

While I was on this line of thought, I realised that our children, our grandchildren, our forthcoming generations all of them will then be open, in the distant future, to a history more comprehensive and detailed than the ones we have for ourselves now. Cause-effect relationships will not be short and frail threads each sporting an enigma at one end, but mighty ropes of jute that speak of eons of evolution of body and mind. The lessons we have learnt are manifested in the lessons we will come to live, but to a young man who will soon be witness to the sun engulfing our dear planet Earth, his history will have hoarded in him insurmountable mountains of knowledge. In this, I believe that evolution is not only an experience of the evolving, but also of those who serve to be the divine embryo of the causes of evolution itself. When we touch a hot flame, we learn not to touch it again: that is of the body. When we make a mistake and learn from it, we also stow away the relationship between cause and effect in our head: that is of the mind. But when we live and grow and reproduce, the nature that is the great container of all that we see and believe in whispers in our ears stories of the past and the lessons they teach. That is the beauty of this cosmos; the three dimensions along with time are what they are for a reason. For, if they had been anything else, our lives would hold no hope in the remedies of the future.

Gotta Move On

Tomorrow, I turn 20. Tomorrow, I involuntarily quit my teenhood, moving on to years where a pinch of maturity is expected of me whether I like it or not, whether I want it in me or not. I cannot be young again, the time is past. I will have moved one step away from my childhood years, but this time, it seems to be a big step. Rather, a leap. I, ladies and gentlemen, am an adult. And I’m not happy about it. You can’t ask me why. Gone are the days when… oh, I’ll just leave it like that, and you should know what I mean. Gone are the days. I always knew I’d be here one day, but you know how it’s like when the day finally dawns. You always thought it would be part of your future, something that always happened tomorrow and not today, not now. Like it was a question you had asked but didn’t want answered. But now, the answer’s here. Now, I’m sitting cosily in a bean-bag, drowning in the inevitability of the moment. No promises broken, no back tracks: that’s the worst part. You have no one to blame. It’s just that you had your time, and now is when you move on, leaving your actions to be judged by those who will come before you. You were handed a canvas in history, and you painted on it. You scribbled, you doodled, you produced a masterpiece. Well, time’s up. Happy birthday.

But, as my parents would say, these are experiences that just mould you. You’re a genius when you’re 80 only if you’re a bundle of experiences. All those proverbs, soliloquies, fables, morals and all the other advices and lessons you learnt, now come the moments wherein you use them. I guess this is what life is about: you learn, and then you teach. You can’t learn all your life. I will be paying for my mistakes now also, but I’ll be paying up with my head held high. I’m me now, and that has been decided. Like when you’re in school and physics seems so easy. One fine day, you’ve passed your tests, and now, physics sucks; like when you’re in college but not worried, when all of a sudden, the sun dawns and you have your job interview. They just never seem to happen, but they do. People always say, “live in the moment”, “speak the truth”, “take things slowly” and much more. But only when you’re living it do you know what it takes to live. “Live in the moment”: there’s so much to do, so much to decide, so many people to face, so many responsibilities. so many expectations to live up to. You’re not alone in this world, and that may seem comforting during the occasional rough patch. But you have promises to keep, “miles to go before you sleep”. “Speak the truth”: a conflict at times will have you taking sides, choosing for yourself what is right and what is wrong. Inevitably, it will come to bite you later on. But perhaps, this is what sculpts your maturity. “Take things slowly”: the worst of all. When you’re not faced with the big picture, taking things slowly will have you making impulsive decisions later, when you finally realise what’s going on. But having a big picture when you’re young can leave you dazed as to the magnanimity of it all, good as well as bad. Ultimately, it all comes down to you. There so no absolute here: you do what seems right to you. All the advice will amount to nothing more than supplementing your decisions, but those decisions are your call. 

I don’t know where I’m going with this post, but it just seems to be flowing. There seem to be so many complaints. so many regrets, so many opportunities missed, so many more stolen, and so few earned, so many tears shed, so many smiles borne, so many frowns suffered, so many downfalls experienced, so many wake-up calls heard, and it’s all one big bundle to look back and smile about. You weren’t told you were packing your bags all these years for one long journey. And you didn’t take care to leave a few things out, a book, a photograph, out just to look at and revisit. Maybe this is not the ideal Birthday Eve recollection as it were, but it seems like the death of my past. And it’s only natural that my life is flashing before my eyes. Tomorrow, the 23rd of December, 2008, I will be 20. Wish me luck!

An Ode To Hard Times

AN ODE TO HARD TIMES A friend is someone whom you can be your worst self to. This Thanksgiving, I am thankful for them. A few in number, but an army in its presence. Life, at this point of time for me, is raising its worst hoods – I have been intimidated by circumstance, abandoned by reason, guided by experience and sequestered by companionship. The reason I can find myself standing again is that I did what was necessary for me to move on, and for ever, it shall remain right in my mind and justified in my discretion that I behaved like that. These are some of the moments I will never come to regret, and the times will constitute an ode to hard times.

When you grow up in the face of many an atrocity inflicted on you – be it tangible or otherwise – you cannot always blame the perpetrators for it. After a certain period, you just come to think you are useless in creation and meaningless in purpose. Rooted it will all be in your deepest beliefs, for as much as you can fathom the reaches of the human mind, you cannot divulge from it its perception of the world. If the things I am doing have kept me going for a long time now, then don’t you agree there is no valid reason that I should stop doing them? Who are you, my friend, to ask me to come out of my shell when I think I am much better off than you are, or would have been in such times? But no. That is wrong. Whatever happens, life has to go on. And lying cowering inside some hollow beliefs is not what fills your life with your actions, your responsibilities, your duties, and your destinies. This blog entry of mine is just a communication that couldn’t have been held inside of me, my mind, because it also seems like a rhetoric that the world must hear. But after all, this is just an ode to hard times.

This Thanksgiving, I am thankful for troubles, mishaps, downfalls, embarrassments, hubris, misunderstandings, and more, for they have rooted me in the fundamentals beliefs of man, his expectations, and his misgivings more than anything else. It is never a matter to learn of these things as you grow up, but to experience them. And past such an experience, they will have seemed the greatest lessons of your life. Your parents, your loves, even your friends, will then seem overwhelmingly meaningful to you. And now is when you are a man. The doubts you will now begin to have will constitute more than just reason: they will begin to question your beliefs themselves because of the authority that maturity seems to give you. The life you live from this point onwards will be lived in full knowledge of the consequences of your actions, and the life you have lived will seem to constitute mistakes more than experiences. As for me, only time will tell if I am already a man. But since life as I have known it has changed, my past is just an ode to hard times.

And I am thankful for it all, and more than anything else, for the people who made me realise where I really stood in my life! Happy Thanksgiving!