An elephant and his mahut, a dog and his master, waking side by side would not have any problems doing that. Imagine two humans walking side by side on an unending road. There will come a time when they start thinking about why the other is walking half a step ahead of himself/herself or why they are walking together in the first place, or whether others are also walking in the same way. There is always this certain urge in humans to think too much. To wonder about things that are usually just rhetoric questions, or out of their control, but sometimes just plain absurd.
In extraordinary cases, it has lead to astounding revelations and discoveries, massive conquering conquests. But not everyone is extraordinary.
Two things come to mind… “The key to happiness is a weak memory” by Rita Mae Brown. And a tag line, one of my good friends used in his google talk tag message… “There are only two ways to be miserable…to think about everything….to not think about anything.”
The above words might reek of pessimism, but somehow they make sense to me right now. The human mind is not designed to let things go, to forget them. Thats what makes scientists and engineers follow their impossible dreams and make them possible. That is what makes art flow out from the inspired. This constant urge to hold everything in ones fist; to have control over things, the necessity of remaining informed. The craving for gossip, news. The insatiable need to have everything your own way. But all of it stops dead when it comes to the unknown.
The future. Nobody likes to have a thousand thoughts flooding through their head about the uncertainties of the future. And yet they keep on coming and you cant even stop them. Going round and round in your head, making you sleepless, driving you crazy.
The past. Things that will never be the same, questions that might never be answered, injustices that might never be set right, gratitude that might have not been expressed satisfactorily. Goodbyes that should have been said better.
Outer space. The reason why we can invest so much in the unknown. The sheer vastness of the universe. The dream of many young kids.
Blind faith. Another unknown. An easy way out of life’s important decisions. The best way to leave everything to that ultimate force to take care of; ans accept the outcome, whatever it is.
Whatever it thinks about, once the mind starts the thinking process, it is very difficult to stop it, and very addictive to continue thinking. And then Shakespeare gets the opportunity to write the famous words..’To be or not to be’. And the constant struggle of the human mind to understand and control everything that happens continues.
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