Absorbing time

I don't know if the phrase that i have used in the title exists but i couldn't think of any phrase that would describe more aptly what i have been doing for the last week or thereabouts. Perhaps its just a polished way of saying i have been doing nothing of any consequence. But now i have doubts if i should do anything of consequence. If i can do 'so much nothing' and be perfectly happy that way, then why not stick to it? In fact, this is one of the questions that came up during a discussion with one of my wiser friends. Isn't it a sad irony that the more knowledgeable people are, the more unhappy they become? Perhaps that is a very misleading statement. It isn't because they are more knowledgeable that they are more unhappy but because when they are more knowledgeable they also have more expectations and, hence, more unfulfilled wishes. So ignorance is bliss after all and if the purpose of so many of us is happiness then aren't we actually working against our very purpose by this relentless pursuit of knowledge? Are we not better of living a life with more faith and less scepticism. With less questions and more beliefs? With less knowledge and more ignorance? Being less humans and more animals?

I am reading 1984 now and i find that somehow i like almost any dystopic novel. Its not so much the specifics as the very idea of the a dystopic novel that appeals to me at some level. The negative utopia is somehow more imaginable to me than a utopia. Besides, i wouldn't even call it a negative utopia. If one minuses the few exaggerations made for market value and removes all the veneer of words made by the powerful people in this world one finds that the novels actually depict the naked reality to a large extent. It is sad that writers and patrons of such novels are dismissed as cynics and sceptics.

As we are coming to the close of our lives as UGs someone had asked me whether i ever feel as if suddenly every routine activity is so full of significance? Whether every mundane conversation is full of meaning? I had said a spontaneous no, but i realise i was wrong then. I suddenly feel i am going to miss a lot. Its only when one draws a comparison with things that are worse that one realises the value of what one has. Having stayed within the protective walls of the campus for so long the campus was my world and little did i realise that it is in utopia that i live. I haven't even been reading the papers so that i never got a chance to compare with the hell outside. But that brings me to this important point that the significance of everything is in the way one perceives it. I have been in utopia so long and i had nothing to compare with so that it didn't seem like anything special. Even so, there was this bizarre cricket match recently with almost 900 runs being scored in 100 overs of an international match and i happened to see nothing but the last 40 balls of the chasing team's performance in a jam packed common room. It was incredible to see how every one in the room was excited to a frenzy, furiously supporting either SA or Aus, and forming cliques shouting at each other and at the rival of the team they were supporting and how every run generated so much noise and yet, how it all made so little difference to me. It just occured to me that had i been there from the start i was sure to have been as excited and passionate as any one of them but because i had not been exposed to the excitement of the match the climax evoked almost no excitement in me. It also brought me to the important issue of discretion. There is too many things that the average individual can expose himself to during the course of a lifetime and the individual must exercise some discretion in his choice so that it all contributes to his greater good and to his greater purpose. Of course, if one has no such purpose, then one can happily expose oneself randomly to whatever experience pounces upon one and get moulded without direction. Only, then, one would be born clay and die clay, having been moulded into nothing recognisable, nothing acknowledgeable. In short, one might as well not have been there. Also, the issue of dying out from the institute made me thinking of death and i guess it must feel the same. One reaches a stage when everything becomes significant to one. Everything is so full of memories and meaning and life and the thought of death is so painful that one wants to jealously take in all one can for the life after(?).

Hmm....this is as flighty as thoughts can get. Feels good to have blogged after a really long time.