You know that time between two moments, that
feeling of nothingness? The time when no thought occupies your mind and no
sense penetrates your brain – no particular sound, no definite vision and no
decipherable taste. That time when you just feel BLANK.
Most parts of my last few months have been like
that. Blank. Admittedly, it was not my favorite state of being. Ironically, the
indifference bothered me.
I am not a slow person. Or so I’d like to
believe. I comprehend everything around me. Surely, a sign of an intelligent
being. However, no response to any stimulus from my part seemed needed. It seemed pointless
and even meaningless. To add to this, just like the pages of diary rendered
blank as the pencil marks fade away with the passage of time, my memory seemed
faded. Distant. Need I also comment upon the uncertainty of the visions of
future?
So as it always happens when I hit rock bottom I
texted my friend describing my predicament. “Blank is good,” came her concise
and severely frustrating reply.
How can blank be good? Blank is uncertain.
Uncertain in unknown. I fear the unknown. Everybody fears the unknown and its
many manifestations such as darkness, future or even people from unfamiliar
races or places.
And yet now I am starting to see the wisdom in
her words.
It is good to be blank because you free from
the burden that too much information imposes on you. Let me break it down
further. Every day you make many decisions. In today’s world so much
information is at your disposal that in an attempt to make the best choice you
try to assimilate as much knowledge about a particular topic as you can before
finally deciding upon it. The result is that your brain is constantly in a
state of deliberation, trying to sort out the information. Without a second's
rest you proceed to the next task which means even more information.
Now with all of us trying to make the most
informed choices, the scope for going by instincts reduces significantly. The gut
feeling is replaced by the statistical truth. Of course this reduces chances of
mistakes but this is done at the cost of experimenting. So most of us end up
following a life trajectory that has been tried and tested. And since the
market is providing so many “customized choices” which are safe for the
individual, necessity being the mother of all inventions gets shut away in a
corner.
So blank is good. It is full of possibilities. It
is good that pencil marks fade away. Because then you can fill the blank pages
with new stories. Who wouldn’t prefer a diary with words scratched midway over
book with mathematical formulae printed on it?
It is good to be informed. It is good to think.
It is good to make a wise choice. But it is better to fall back sometimes, get
a perspective and plunge head first into life. Because then you can have the
pleasure of surprising yourself.
