Of Memories & Photographs
Memories and photographs.. They are quite similair. Both are frozen in time. Both are unalterable, unless one willingly distorts them. Both are preserved, for various reasons, some happy, some sad, some fearful, some inspiring, but ultimately, the one binding philosophy is that they are worth preserving. Both are a result of humankind’s feeble effort at stopping the relentless march of the merciless/benevolent warrior called TIME. Both fade away, without periodic upkeep. Both are meaningless, at least, not as meaningful, to others. When disclosed or shown to a fellow human being, they can never convey the same significance as it had to the protagonist.
Last Saturday, was like any other day.. Woke up and went for a jog.. Something about watching the sun rise on the beach. The transformation in the sky is striking. While the moon is like a maiden, the sun is quite masculine. The raw power it exudes is incomparable. The shift from day to night is quite feminine, in the sense that the transformation is subtle, gradual and gentle like the rising curtains of a movie.
On the other hand, the shift from night to day is anything but subtle, definitely not gradual and quite explicit. Like a dam-burst. Masculine, all the way.
Post-jog, went to the airport to drop my roomie. He was going to Dubai. (There you go X, your 15 minutes of fame. Now everyone knows that you went abroad … Ok, not everyone, but atleast those lost souls, who by mistake, might land up on this site after mis-spelling an URL)
I’m digressing. Coming back to the topic of memories…On my way back, I happened to go past the premises which hosted my previous organization. On an impulse, I walked in. Met up some people, who had worked with me then. Most of them were new. The office décor had changed. The setting was different. The culture was different, or so I felt. After a few minutes of catching up on the missing pieces of each others lives, I was out of the office.
On my way back, I messaged a couple of my friends-who I knew from those days- about how things had changed and that how I felt alien in my old office. Their responses were on the lines of “yeah, we understand”,”life is like that”, etc. Though, they were well-meaning, these were empty responses to me. Then I thought about my experience that day and concluded:
(a)Disappointment was bound to happen because I had walked in with the expectation that things would be in the same place that I left them a year and half back. That was foolish and deservingly, I was disappointed. Just as how I had moved on a long way in the last 1.5 years, so has the world. Expecting that the past would remain where I left it, like a laboratory sample preserved in vinegar, is naive, if not downright dysfunctional. Instead of expecting things to be the same, I would have been better off, if I had just observed the changes, sans judgment.
(b)My experiences are purely mine and however close I might be to another soul on earth, it is impossible for me to communicate the gravity of my experience to a different person. Consequently, if there is an information gap in my communication, there will obviously be a difference in our reactions. Because the variables are no longer similar.
Hypothetical situation:
Two identical twins, separated at birth, made to grow up in two separate rooms of the same house, never in touch with each other, same upbringing, same conditioning, and same treatment. Basically, all other things being constant, given a same situation, would they both react in the same way?
Last Saturday, was like any other day.. Woke up and went for a jog.. Something about watching the sun rise on the beach. The transformation in the sky is striking. While the moon is like a maiden, the sun is quite masculine. The raw power it exudes is incomparable. The shift from day to night is quite feminine, in the sense that the transformation is subtle, gradual and gentle like the rising curtains of a movie.
On the other hand, the shift from night to day is anything but subtle, definitely not gradual and quite explicit. Like a dam-burst. Masculine, all the way.
Post-jog, went to the airport to drop my roomie. He was going to Dubai. (There you go X, your 15 minutes of fame. Now everyone knows that you went abroad … Ok, not everyone, but atleast those lost souls, who by mistake, might land up on this site after mis-spelling an URL)
I’m digressing. Coming back to the topic of memories…On my way back, I happened to go past the premises which hosted my previous organization. On an impulse, I walked in. Met up some people, who had worked with me then. Most of them were new. The office décor had changed. The setting was different. The culture was different, or so I felt. After a few minutes of catching up on the missing pieces of each others lives, I was out of the office.
On my way back, I messaged a couple of my friends-who I knew from those days- about how things had changed and that how I felt alien in my old office. Their responses were on the lines of “yeah, we understand”,”life is like that”, etc. Though, they were well-meaning, these were empty responses to me. Then I thought about my experience that day and concluded:
(a)Disappointment was bound to happen because I had walked in with the expectation that things would be in the same place that I left them a year and half back. That was foolish and deservingly, I was disappointed. Just as how I had moved on a long way in the last 1.5 years, so has the world. Expecting that the past would remain where I left it, like a laboratory sample preserved in vinegar, is naive, if not downright dysfunctional. Instead of expecting things to be the same, I would have been better off, if I had just observed the changes, sans judgment.
(b)My experiences are purely mine and however close I might be to another soul on earth, it is impossible for me to communicate the gravity of my experience to a different person. Consequently, if there is an information gap in my communication, there will obviously be a difference in our reactions. Because the variables are no longer similar.
Hypothetical situation:
Two identical twins, separated at birth, made to grow up in two separate rooms of the same house, never in touch with each other, same upbringing, same conditioning, and same treatment. Basically, all other things being constant, given a same situation, would they both react in the same way?
posted by Raja at 9:09 AM
1 comments
