When the day seems hardened
by mechanical work, deadlines
and tough choices…
When you’re forced
to give your all to the present
with no time to revisit old memories…
When pauses leave you
feeling guilty and you fail
to see in them a gift of reconnection…
When your day is made more efficient
with the shortest route suggestions on Uber
and AI thinking, reading, and summarizing for you…
Remember a song.
Remember its lyrics and revel in its melody
Forget deadlines and efficiency. Live.
When limits are not respected
Knowledge becomes corrupted.
When falsities are not questioned
Beliefs become corrupted.
When intention is not reviewed
Action becomes corrupted.
When words become weapons
Understanding becomes corrupted.
When love becomes selective
Emotions become corrupted.
When the vulnerable are not protected
Power becomes corrupted.
If one
Gets only half a rupee worth
For every rupee spent
What is being lost
Is a real value in favour of a notional one.
You wonder why
You’re dispensable even where you contribute
Or why your voice gets drowned in echoes
Or why change- once life altering
Has been reduced to the prostitution of trend.
You question why
You should bother with setting high personal standards
When public standards have fallen to an all time low.
Or why the qualifications required to build a life
Make cleverness more important than integrity.
You can see
That all of humanity is now subsumed
Within the logic of the economy.
Value has moved from what you possess
To what you’re able to acquire and gain.
We perversely celebrate
The destruction of human values as progress
The notional as the real
The machine as the master
And enslavement as freedom.
We’re each a book of short stories
Events, encounters, tragedies, and joys…
Disappointments and regrets
Passion and pain…
Gathered with us
As the dust of memories.
Why do we carefully collect this dust?
Why do we sustain its presence?
Perhaps we intuitively know
That the answers we seek
Cannot be found in what happened
They’re realized in witnessing what remains.
There was a storm outside my window this morning.
Furious, raging, threatening and violent!
It came with force and blew its fury
It slammed, it banged…my windows wobbled.
The trees are now swaying to their natural rhythm
The storm has passed as quickly as it arrived
The trees survived. The storm couldn’t destroy them.
They’ve seen many storms over many seasons.
Are we creating catastrophe after catastrophe
Because our myths are being challenged
And we must now destroy everything
To create new myths and reclaim our delusional glories?
In designing life around autonomy and conveniences
Have we doomed ourselves to an existence
Where we must now grapple with ghosts
And imaginary challenges to derive a sense of purpose?
When did our spaces become unsafe
For women, children, men…
The helpless, the voiceless, the old and the infirm?
What passions have become more important than compassion?
Have relationships become conveniences?
Forged with a swipe, ended on a whim
Self-serving and devoid of respect
Discontinued because of disinterest?
Have we lost the capacity to build
Something slowly, through time…
Now that we can produce anything
Without engaging with its formation?
When did we reduce
The rich diversity of life
To some meaningless tropes of success
And reserve our applause for a tiresome few?
Have we lost our capacity for knowledge
Through direct perception and deep insight
By relying on our information superhighways
That are misinforming and misleading us?
Are we no longer interrogating life
Because it’s become such an entertaining carnival?
Are we so satisfied with what we have found
That we are no longer seeking?
Where everyone is hustling
Seek nothing from your time.
Don’t try and capitalize it.
You can never profit from your own slavery.
Choose solitude over noisy company;
Invalidation can be a valuable gift.
Let the agitated
Have and live with the last word.
Do the illogical…
And free yourself from the prison of opinions.
Lose purposely.
It’s better than celebrating mindless wins.
Reject the world that is designed to ingratiate itself to you
Seek honesty. Choose difficulty. Cherish the frictions.
Isn’t there creativity
In creating technologies
That can create anything that humans can?
Isn’t there creativity
In developing a simulation
Of human intelligence?
Have the expectations from human creativity
Now reached heights
That cannot be humanly scaled?
Is this the last we are seeing
Of human agency and creativity
At and for human scale?
Can we now find the creativity
To articulate a definition of creativity
That is free of pride and desire and ambition?
Can we return to a way of seeing
That is free of filters and grotesque forms
That hype up beauty, wealth, knowledge and power?
Can we stop creating the Gods
That we couldn’t find?
Can we become seekers of truth again?
Can we reclaim the necessary-
Our leisure, our slowness, our honesty;
And walk away from our creations of the unnecessary?
Can we pause the accolades and celebrations
And ask if there is a higher creativity to be found
In no longer creating creativity-sucking simulations?
We are all learning…
Learning what to do
(Or what not to do)
So that we can be
Light, not shadow
Pure creativity, not conclusion
Free, not enslaved
Abundant, not limited
Happy, not despondent
Truthful, not dishonest
Courageous, not fearful
Grateful, not bitter
We are all learning
Because it’s only in learning
That we grow.
We are sensual in nature
Divine in essence
And spiritual in aspiration.
We succumb
We surrender
We refuse to stay fallen.
We also have a mind
That reflects and contemplates
As deeply as it distorts.
How does one explain
The silence of the spirit
When chemistry commands?
How interesting it is
That love’s roots are bodies entwined
Yet it grows to branch out and be free.
That chemistry of a racing heart and a lingering gaze
Are the stirrings of a love that must silently begin
By going undercover so that it can eventually grow.
Love’s journey is to be long and arduous.
Even as it is rooted in silence and sensuality
It learns the art of selfless self-expression.
In a world designed for dependencies
Love’s spiritual force can only be realized
By discovering freedom within belonging.
Wit. Wisdom. Wonder... 