More often than not, I have judged my own hobbies. This erroneous
tendency, growing in influence with age, akin to any of the small voices at the
back of my head that tell me it is wrong to pick noses in public or that I
shouldn't nibble my Tshirt, unfortunately has the uncanny ability to smell like
wisdom and hence nurture itself with whatever scant resources available in the
barren land of my mind.
A detour now. Astral trips or out of body experiences, while
a subject matter of neuroscience and psychology, is, in a mild form, very
easily achieved. Ever tried saying your name continuously for a few times?
After a few seconds the name and the concept of self seems very alien,
something that is terrifyingly liberating. It's too tempting to delineate what
we are with what our name signifies - which is actually a lot, including our
life, our career, our person as such. Pause at this moment. Try it out. Go
stand before a mirror (if it helps), blank your mind and repeat your own name. See what I mean? May be it doesn't work all
the time. But I am sure each of us have gone through these moments of extreme
lucidity, however short lived it may be, where we transcendentally realise and
experience the insignificance of our lives.
Carl Sagan's Pale Blue dot quote
hits the spot like nothing else though his intention of the statement might
have been different. No, you don't have to Google it. I like you. So here you
go, the quote diligently copy pasted.
“Look again at that
dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you
know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out
their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident
religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every
hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and
peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child,
inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every
"superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner
in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a
sunbeam. -Carl Sagan.
and the point of this digression? the point is that there is no point in anything
anybody does. So we should probably take ourselves a little less seriously. The
pervasiveness of competition in our
lives is so complete and absolute that we don't even realize how our actions and thoughts are molded by it.
It is sad that many of us aren't
even comfortable talking about our hobbies. I realized this when I caught
myself one day that I usually say "I read" when people ask me what I
do with my time. It's not that I don't read, I do, but truth be told I should
always say "I read and I watch movies and I play video games". It's
just that subconsciously I have relegated watching movies to a
"lesser" grade of a hobby. It
was stupid. So I have consciously corrected that in the last few days and this
post is a continuation of that correction.
I love movies.
If I spend my hard
earned money for something and/or my precious time and feel satisfied,
contended and happy by doing so, it means I love it right?
So as a record of my
romance with movies I am starting my first movie blog. Your feedback and
suggestions are sincerely solicited. :)
Our hobbies aren't what should make us cool or help us woo
or make us social celebrities. Our hobbies simply have to make us happy. Our
hobbies should give us an avenue to independently and harmlessly rejuvenate
ourselves. Our hobbies should give us an sanctuary to hide from life's grind
and turmoil. And it doesn't matter what it is. Some travel, some dance, some
sing, some play, some cook, some talk, some sleep, some read, some watch, some
browse...doesn't matter.
We are, after
all,a mote of dust on a mote of dust.
Should take pride in what gives us happiness. As Nicolas Cage once wisely said... ..."that's the
secret to survival. Never go to war. Especially with yourself."
No comments:
Post a Comment