I slept at 6:00am in the morning and woke up at around 10:30am. Sleeplessness has become a real bugger lately. So anyways I woke up with a strange kind of tension in my mind. To define it, it’s the discrepancy between my desired state and my actual state. I don’t know what my desired state is. 15 minutes latter I got out of bed and made a phone call. My “Desired” number was powered off. With a bit of disappointment I got ready and left for campus.
Its awfully hot and humid in Karachi today. Campus is a 15 minutes walk from my Hostel. During the course of this little journey, my mind must have gone through a 1000 weird thoughts. Be positive. No don’t let your hopes drag you into some kind of unrealizable dream. So don’t be positive. But life is such a drag if you don’t have hope.. so be positive….don’t be positive.. be realistic. Practical. Don’t think too much. You think too much……. Its 11:45am and I’m at campus. I go straight to the library’s periodicals section. My eyes are continuously sifting through the neatly arranged magazines on the shelf.
There it is, “The Daily Psychologist”; 50+ pages of psychology, antidepressant drug advertisements, and everything there is to life these days. This was the first time I had come across this magnificent compound of paper, ink and other chemicals and I must admit that I was overjoyed. So I took it out, grabbed myself a chair and started going through the pages, occasionally reading a few lines.
There was this one particular ad which deserved more of my attention than usual. “Discover Yourself”. 5 DVD Set by some acclaimed Zen Master. Discover the meaning of life. Make your life meaningful and what not. If we are alive and breathing I ask, is it not meaningful enough? Is it not meaningful enough to be human, with our eyes, ears, hands, brain and short comings? Define meaningful.
Its 12:45 and my phone rings, compelling me to take my eyes off the “Zen Self Discovery Process”. “Desired” number calling. I pick up and two minutes of conversation lighten me up.
Thoughts flood my mind. Why are we here? Why are humans the way they are? Why is self discovery so important? At times after looking at such advertisements, it seems to me as if the entire world is some kind of a mental health facility with all these scientists designing solutions and testing them on us. Its all a big mess. Human beings have systematized and institutionalized everything. The system suffocates me. The institutions scare me. Aren’t we all just highly intelligent animals. I think we’d be better off If we had not evolved into being the way we are today. Perhaps if we had stayed primitive, then our problems and complications of life would never have grown to such massive proportions. Perhaps…
I’m back in my room and my mind tells itself to shut up. But my questions are still unanswered…
