Unstoppable

In life, there are certain things that are unstoppable. In this one, we’ll try to take a look at one of those fast-moving entities, in this fast moving world.

“Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.”

– John Lennon

Our minds are immensely complex entities, aren’t they? They are capable of extracting learning from as remotely related areas to a topic as one can imagine. And this particular set of epiphanies I am going to put into words happens to be one such learning.

The other day, I was mindlessly sitting in my class room, looking at the board, expecting an incredibly long day ahead. Four straight lectures, and the first lecturer was yet to arrive. I was constantly thinking, but the train of thought was getting increasingly out of hand and increasingly hard to follow. Jumping from what would the possible lunch menu be to the possible prime minister of India at the end of the 2019 elections to the possible highlights of the next Avengers movie to will the Los Angeles Lakers be able to turn their fate around the next season, almost all current and non-current happenings came rushing into my head and out. Needless to say (because I wrote about it), there was one particular thought that came to me as soon as I became mindful (that happened after my teacher started cold-calling students to the board to solve questions, which I wasn’t prepared for).

This thought was related to an emerging pattern between the thoughts that I had. The possible lunch menu, the next possible prime minister of India and all the others, they had something in common. They all looked forward to something! I was in class, not at the cafeteria. The year running at that instant was (and currently is) 2018, not 2019. The next Avengers movie is set to release in 2019, not 2018 (which is very disconcerting), and by the way, there are many other potentially phenomenal movies before that, like Aquaman, Venom, Captain Marvel.. Oh, my apologies. That’s not what we were talking about, was it?

Before I was so rudely interrupted by my own mind, I was about to convey something. I was about to convey the point that this pattern, this seemingly irrelevant coherence between a few thoughts of ours, is not a one time occurrence.

Let’s go down the memory lane together, shall we? Let’s try to remember the last thought that wasn’t related to, or shaped by the possible consequences of the future? Go ahead, I’ll wait, because I know that I’ll have to go down the lane miles at a time to recollect any information of that sort. Even when we’re calling it a day at work, or stopping to study after the whole 12 minutes that we did, we look forward to something!, either a movie, or an outing with people or whatever else that comes to mind. Almost all the time, we look forward to something or the other.

When we’re studying for exams, we’re looking forward to either achieving positive results, or avoiding negative ones. When we’re sad about something, we either look forward to recovering from that sadness or a future filled with sadness and despair (dark, I know). There is truth to the fact that our minds are actually unstoppable! They always are on the go and in the end, the absences of us looking forward are far, and few between.

However, I realized these scarce occurrences also have a pattern to them. I saw, when I did things that I enjoyed, I didn’t care about anything else. This implied,

The situations in which we are having fun, we don’t look forward to anything.

This statement has a lot of power to it. A direct implication I see from it is that the human mind is strongly driven by achieving positive outcomes, be it fun, joy, happiness, success or everything to else that gives an effect similar to the aforementioned factors.

But, the probing question is, what happens when we turn this the other way around? I mean, is there a possibility of us having fun, when we’re not looking forward to anything? 

Letting there be some mystique about the incredibly mature statements I’ve made, I’d like to bring this one to a close. Thanks a lot for reading. Please do let me know of your comments on the topic, as to what could be the possible answers to the question.

-Vibhu Vyas