Today was an interesting day full of conversations. One of the fantastic endeavours of humankind has been to become more social - which I am by my habit have been quite not good at. However, over the course of the life into the adulthood I have made a few select group of friends and acquaintances with whom I share great pleasure of connecting and conversing around vastly different topic. Although, due to the nature of growth and life as it is, friends and family often spread around the world with quite a physical distance among themselves. This, however, does not equal to further distance between heart and connection. On the contrary, it leads to a strengthening of that connection via memory, nostalgia, and the gratitude for all the pleasured and treasured moments shared with that person.
One of such friends of mine is currently pursuing her PhD in Australia. This is a country where many known faces to me resides, despite its location on entirely different hemisphere of dear planet of ours. With the complete opposite seasonal sequence, abrupt weather trends, sparse human population with double the kangaroo population - many of my fellow acquaintances have made that country their temporary 'home'. So, the friend of mine and I sat together, connected via the magical ether of internet, to catch up after many busy fortnights of surviving through our respective lives.
It is always a pleasure to strike up a trade of words with someone thinking in the same spectrum. The friend and I, by the virtue of being friends over the tumultuous years of undergraduate education, have shared many events of happiness and sorrow, excitements and dreariness, and peace and chaos. So, of course, our spectrums of thoughts have tuned themselves quite beautifully - so much so even the garbled words and flickers of eyebrows can convey meanings. Hence when we connected after so long, a spark of conversation was lit - and the flame fanned out as the hours passed.
True to the millennial traditions, came the complaining. To be truthful they were consistently spread around the conversation as life has been too unkind sometimes. However, a particular part of conversation was a true passionate 'complaint' of mine. It regards the human nature of interest, and the lack thereof.
Curiosity killed the cat. Then it discovered fire, clothing, music, language, commerce, glass, tobacco, wine, pickled gherkins, artificial sweeteners, penicillin, radio, radioactivity, stars, planets, object beyond our solar system, black holes, potholes, wildlife, agriculture, noodles, chopsticks, cassettes, electricity, light bulb, the computer, internet, and many things in between. While doing so humans also kept being curious about the cat and asking if the cat was killed or left alive. Among all the curiosities one can develop, the most unfulfilling, vicious, unproductive, and appalling one is the curiosity about other people's life. The nosiness of gossip constantly rubs our noses in dirt, and we keep being quaintly oblivious to that. Always comparing even though humans always lead a completely different life from one another and will always do so - despite the similarities one may find with others. Always judging as if a supreme being bestowed the responsibility of divine judgement of right and wrong upon our tiny brain which can't even comprehend the true complexity of our nature. The grass is greener on the other side, or so we say. Which, through experience, I learnt is completely false. The grass is not greener on the other side. In fact, the other side probably do not have grass at all. For some, the herbaceous growth you see on the other side may be sedges not grasses. The nerd inside me is urging to tell you that sedges belong to the family of graminoids - grass like plants. So, looking for similarities are pointless. Also, chaos theory describes that the simplest change in the starting state can result in a vastly different result in the final states. Human lives in its starting state always vastly differs from each other. The final or intermittent steps where we place our judgement is so far different than our supercharged thinking machines can even remotely comprehend. Yet we do pass our judgement, we put behavioural characteristics and label them. This practice seems to be the dullest, and fruitless endeavours of all time. I do accept that I have not considered the entire set of endeavours of all time, but I am sure you get my point.
There is another set of people who live in the spectrum of not having any sort of interest - or the intensity of interest that we call passion. However, I grown to realise that it may not be their own fault. Life is not set to be fair or kind or anything of that sort in the reality. Through the time, circumstances, experiences, and opportunities shape the human desires, activities, interests, and thought process. Often the harshness of survival leaves no space for the growth of an interest - like a harsh winter seizes any attempt of growth of a plant in the Tundras. Some do regain their lost spirit or develop new ones when life’s harshness is subsided by various means, and the ease and freedom of exploration set in. For many though, the mental barrier developed over the years becomes a too tall of a wall for climbing and crossing. There is also an additional barrier in the current world that hinders the growth of interest or passion: the modern life of connectivity. The information overload and the dumping of garbage materials on otherwise healthy mind often renders them numb to sensation of curiosity, passion, and discovery. The depletion of dopamine reserve through mindless scrolling of infinite stream of media, clickbaits, and cat videos leaves no enthusiasm left for critical thinking or thinking of any sorts. Quite enchanted by the urge of dopamine hits we live a life of digital zombies. The hard work to build a passion often is just too much for many of our generation and upcoming ones.
The void of or corruption of interest – however you see it – is a quite serious plaguelike event that is, to be frank, always have been a part of human society. In the earlier civilisations too, I believe, these were present. Look at the myths of civilisations and you will see even the Olympians and the offspring gods were not devoid of the viced interest of gossips and jealousy nor they were free of the lack of serious pursuit of interest. Depends on whom you look at one or the other vice will be present. If we think that man provisioned the tales of the gods with their own understanding of behaviours – it obviously makes sense to think that the earlier civilisations also had the same experience.
The intensity with which most of us look outwards and measure other people’s lives, could have been actually beneficial if only the gaze went inwards into the life we own. However, the chaotic and often unsettling nature of self-reflection repels most of us away from such activity. The ones who can take in the pain, master the gaze, reflect, and act – are the ones we can call the true enlightened ones.
