An attempt to write

11/10/07
11.30 p.m.

An attempt to write

Writer’s blocks are tricky things. You don’t know when you’ll have one, or how long it will last, or whether you even have one while you are having it or not.
I have been struggling to put an end to this block since some six months. First I tried to read more, hoping something would inspire me to write. When I was inspired, my English gave way. So then I decided I must work on my language, read more, learn more. Then I read somewhere that a writer must write everyday, so that’s what I am doing now. Writing everyday. On Anything.
It’s amazing how we derive everything from our work. How we feel about ourselves, how we feel about what we have achieved in life, what we consider good and what we could live without, all our definitions are dependent on two things, what we love to do, and how other people look at it. Rather, how people who matter to us see our work. This is when a writer’s block can be a writer’s death. It’s grueling when you are not able to do something you absolutely love to do, and when someone else, anyone else is able to do it better than you. When you derive your self worth from your work, you are at an advantage because, well, it’s better than deriving one’s worth from an individual which is hundred percent risky and unreliable, and you are also at a disadvantage because your work too is fluid. It might ditch you at the very last moment.

On the road toward the end to my writer’s block, I discovered many things, about myself, about people, phenomena and all those things I researched so as to be able to write about them. Most inspired me. And yet they couldn’t get a good article out of me. Why I do not know. I just could not do justice to them. Those people, people like Mahatma Gandhi. I read so much about him. Whatever I read completely changed my opinion about him, although I must admit my earlier thoughts on him were mostly uninformed and childish. How was I to tell the world in archaic, flowery language that the man was simply a genius! Though popular opinion today on Gandhiji is extremely unsure and skewed, but we must admit, there are no two ways about it, when Tagore called him a Mahatma, he was not kidding. Gandhiji was a Great Soul indeed. His clairvoyance was extraordinary, beyond what you and I are capable of, at least in this lifetime. We want to live a king size life, comfortable for us, or more so, for our family. Some of us with a slightly bigger heart and a slightly larger vision want to work for our communities, or our nation. Gandhiji might be at the fore of our national freedom struggle but let me a sure you, his vision was far more holistic than any of us can imagine. His message of love and non-violence was truly universal. He reached out and touched the most basic instinct in all of us. The innate ability to love. It couldn’t be taught, only realized. I wouldn’t be wrong if I said Gandhiji came to us in the form of our conscience. Not only awakening the Indians to the power and force of the truth but more so reiterating to the world that violence is all that is unnatural, evil and it must be stopped, not by violence, but with a weapon long forgotten, love. It’s funny how we all understand the same stuff when J.K. Rowling says it in her Harry Potter books, which are strangely fictional. That is exactly what Gandhi fought to make us realize, these values and ideals do sound strange and impossible to live by, but there was a man, who lived them till he breathed his last. That puny old man defined a different kind of courage, much like Harry Potter does today, the courage to fight without arms, to love with an open heart and to hate no one. ‘Be the change you want to see in the world’. Gandhiji signified change. He signified a better, saner existence. The funny part is, we all realize he was right, we all appreciate what he did for us, but none of us have the courage to be Gandhi, to walk the path he paved for us. He was right, he still is right, and we all hope that one day we live to see Gandhi’s ideal world, without making much effort in creating it.

In a sense, most of us want to be saved.

Life is a just a series of choices.
Wait for a miracle or Be the miracle?
You choose.