“It was the end of only the first day of a three day weekend and I had already binge watched the first season of BBC’s Sherlock.
A three day weekend? Yeah, well… You see a senior professor from our college had passed away. He had a stroke in the middle of the night. Given that he had served most of his life teaching students in the same college, the management decided that it would only be fair to declare the next day as a holiday to pay homage. The ‘next day’ happened to be a Friday.
Needless to say, a lot of my friends decided to make an impromptu trip to the beach. I decided to stay back. Not because I thought it was wrong to go on a celebration on the day that had been declared off for a person who had died. No, that wasn’t the reason AT ALL. The thing is, I was saving up for a bigger trip during the holidays and I knew that with my appetite, I would need a bigger budget.
Don’t judge us. You would have done the same. It’s not like we were not sad that the professor had died. We were; but he died of natural causes and he was quite old – it had to happen some day. Everyone accepted it and went on to the beach. (You’re still judging us, but it’s okay. I don’t care anymore)
Anyway, so it was the end of Friday and I was tired from the constant staring at my laptop screen. I did what any college student would do when he is tired and ready to sleep. I decided to knock on a few doors along the corridor to ask for food. Once my insatiable hunger was partially curbed, I decided to hit the sack.
I had probably only slept for a few hours, when I woke up. It was the middle of the night and for some reason I could not go back to sleep. And you know what happens when you lie on the bed trying to go to sleep and, for some reason, you can’t. That’s right – My brain entered ‘philosopher mode‘. I started to think about life and things that happen in life. Well, mostly my life, but you get the picture.
It was then that I realized that how meagre life really is but yet, there exists an enormous amount of things that we can learn. How did I reach there? I have no clue. It could have been the thought of being alone while all my friends were out to party; it could have been the death of a professor who we saw day in and day and only the other day had seemed like he would go on for ten more years; or it could have been the fact that my phone was blinking with low battery and I was too lazy to get up and plug it on the other side of the room. (With night thoughts, you never really know what leads where).
Whatever reason it might have been, it led me to an epiphany – learning is infinite in this finite life of ours.”
Why did I narrate this story?
If you answered for dark humor – you are right! But not quite there…
The thing is, when I realised that there are so many things to learn, I decided to actively learn more each day. Learn as much as I can before I die. It’s not that I did not do things before. I always tried my hand at everything.
I had always been the person who would tag along with people to play water polo when I could barely keep myself afloat (No, I was not suicidal). But after that night, I decided to actively learn more things. Even if I don’t like them.
So what do I do when I don’t write? I travel. I explore. I observe. I listen. And through all that I learn.
I still binge watch shows. I still travel with friends. I still eat food (I do this a lot, actually). But now, all of that, along with enjoyment, is a learning process as well.
By no means is this a way to inspire anyone to do better. I could care less about that (Grammar tip: This means I do care a little and am trying actively to care less. When you don’t care at all, you say – I couldn’t care less).
I mean, if I had to give a TED talk seminar, even that crowd of sophisticated adults would boo me off stage since instead of inspiring people, I would narcissistically keep talking about myself.
I am just responding to a prompt from Blogging University’s Writing 101, which asked what I do when I don’t write, and I think I have gone on too long with that as well. So, I will stop.
Normally, I end my non fiction posts by my catchphrase asking you to WRITE ON.
But, for today, from one writer to another, take a step back and RELAX.
The AnonymouSTalker 