The importance of being spontaneous

I wanted to write a few words but now when I am in front of this computer I have lost the energy to write about anything. Lethargy has taken possession of my whole body. My eyes have lost the focus. It just stares. My hands have gone stiff; it feels more comfortable on the mouse while playing the card games. Are the card games the one to blame? Have they taken away my previous energy to write? I don’t know. I do like to write on my computer. I have missed this machine in Delhi. In Delhi after my office hours I had no access to any computers unless of course I visit a cyber café. But a cyber café is meant for sending or checking e-mails, not for composing purposeless blabbering.
A few days back while I was watching “Finding Forrester” I came to hear this dialogue “The first draft is always written from heart then you edit it through your head.” I am trying to do just that. Actually the beauty of the words and the depth of its meaning haunted me. It was almost what I believe about writing. My writings have always been emotional pieces written directly under the command of my heart. The habit remained even when I wrote answer scripts. There were times when an answer gave me so much pleasure that I wanted to write more about it. But the rules of examination never permitted me to do that. As my history teacher used to say, examination is a science. There are certain ways to write answers. One learns those techniques to score marks. That’s another reason why I never liked examinations.
I have always seen myself as a romantic. Despite my failures in love I have remained so. I have found small things priceless. Small experiences, places, memories have given me more pleasure than bigger ones.
I have always found it quite difficult…. It is difficult to write without thinking. If you follow your heart you will see that you have written more than your thought would have permitted. The brain tells you about the acceptance of a particular word or expression while the heart stresses on emotions. Now it is up to you if you would sacrifice the social norms and follow your heart to write whatever you wanted to express.
In fact very few of us have succeeded in ignoring the preset social norms and notions of acceptability. The society, have always loved and adored stereotypes, to create machines out of normal mortals. In schools, colleges and universities, even in the offices, in short in every sphere of our daily life, we are always taught to think in a particular way, talk and behave in a predetermined predictable way. This rather robs us of our individuality and rather makes us nothing more than mere machines. We become slaves of a system. The so-called fashion trends, promoted as revolutionary, cease to remain so because after a certain period themselves become a ritual and routine affair. Be it the goatee of Amir Khan or the metro sexual look of Saif Ali Khan. There was a time when every chap wanted to talk and walk like Dev Anand or Rajesh Khanna or Amitabh Bachhan. I remember the time I wanted to dress up in full pants because on screen Amitabh never wore short pants.
Today when I look back at my tenure in the Intrasoft I find how they wanted me to adapt to their system. I think my failure in doing so was in itself a boon for me. At least I am still not that much a machine. May be I am more human than others. May be my so-called failures, my imperfections, taking me closer to my mortal self.
Even this computer sometimes points out the parts, which it thinks are incorrect. Can’t blame it. It is programmed mainly for office works where time is short and the end result needs to be quick and perfect. So it helps us to become performing machines. But we are not machines. That’s why, I think, we find the temper tantrums, depressions, and stress becoming a part and parcel of our daily life. These moments remind us about our true identities. We are essentially human beings. It is natural to feel moody and tired and bogged down and chained. We have always loved to experiment, to do new things, different things, varied and so called impossible things. I remember this story about a boy who found rhythmical undertones in mathematics. And soon he started liking mathematics, a subject he previously detested. I never found that music in the figures and I still don’t, and that proves my difference from others.
Though I wish people to remain spontaneous and want them to do things in different ways yet sometimes a particular way a discipline is necessary to make a society perform and give good results. We should all work as a unit to make our society progress. And to make different people work as a unit we definitely need we need discipline, we need obedience towards a particular method or style. But that does not mean we will forget our true selves. At the end of the day we should all remember that we are different. And we should appreciate this difference; we should celebrate it. After all what is a democracy but a unit, which welcomes people of different origin, belief and religion.