Friday 30 April 2021

The Sky is a Book

Every night, words start appearing when you look up. Words are written in white, words that form sentences that may or may not mean something to the people looking at them. So, it is possible to catch a glimpse of them during the day too. The reason the sky is usually spoken of as a book during the nighttime is because these words are easier to read compared to the daytime, and seem infinitely more beautiful in the shimmer of the moonlight. 

Sometimes I wonder if this is the reason people have heads that are tilted backwards compared to their bodies. Did people have heads looking in their front or looking down at some point in history, and evolved to have heads looking up? Many people have tried to answer this question, but it remains a mystery. It is hard to untangle it since the origin of the words in the sky is also a mystery. Both mysteries go hand in hand. If we can tell when the words appeared, maybe we would be able to guess the timeline of evolution.

Human beings have been able to gain at least some knowledge about these words. In particular, one human being who I will call P for privacy reasons completely transformed this field. Nobody would have expected someone like P to solve part of these mysteries. P was heavily not curious, and heavily unmotivated. Maybe that is why when she read the words in the sky, she could tell the secret behind them. Overthinking can make life harder, especially when so much of your mind is saturated by the sentences spanning the sky.

What P did was just believe what she was told. For one minute one night the words said, “We like to watch birds hit poles”. So, what led P to uncover this information about the words in the sky was her indifference. That particular night she was lying down on a cloth on the grass, doing nothing, since she did not want to or need to. 

The very interesting fact P uncovered led to chaos. Why did the words enjoy watching birds hit poles? Was that because it was inherently hilarious, or inherently disturbing? Many people wondered if the words were malevolent or just had a good sense of humour. Many people tried to answer this question by building telescopes of various kinds, in case somewhere in some part of the sky a little word would reveal this secret. Some people attempted to build poles of various heights to prod the words, but could never quite reach them. In short, a period of rapid development ensued on earth as people tried to advance existing technology to make sense of what was so interesting to the words in the sky about birds hitting poles.

Of course, this entire time, the words just existed in the sky, showing themselves in full glory in the dark. What were they thinking? Are they even capable of thinking anything other than birds and poles?

Friday 23 April 2021

Resilient Hope

Everyone is latching on to empty hope. Hope is what matters, regardless of whether it is realistic or not. Hope is what keeps everyone going and not give up. Hope is what adds wrinkles of dreams to our minds. “This is how life will be afterwards,” everyone says. Everyone thinks it’ll all be over in a month. A month passes. A year. A year passes. Ten years. Ten years pass. It is still the same, but hope still remains. Why does hope still remain? Why is hope so resilient? People break, their resilience breaks, but hope stays. The world has changed irreparably, things will never be the same. But hope… hope does not care. It keeps going, and it keeps people going. 

What happens when hope breaks? When hope gives up? What happens then? Will we ever see that happen? I am curious about the nature of hope. I wonder why, despite little pockets of despair everywhere around the world, the sum total gives rise to hope. What makes up collective hope? Why, when we feel like the world is ending, why do we see it stay alive?