Closer to Nowhere

Do you know who you are?
Do you ever think about it?
If you were told it’s a place
Would you drive until you found it?

Or would you turn down a street
That you know would lead to where you were before?
You call it home, but are you really sure
That’s your home?

-Jen Foster

We are born to this world like everyone else. We are made to believe that we’re special. Everyone is special in a way- everyone is special for himself. In all these years I have not come across one person who’s an exception to the rule. I believe that is what humanness is all about. Of course different people would say different things - disagree with me or agree and yet say that my analysis is incomplete. But I’m not claiming that I’ve said everything that needs to be said, or that what I’m saying is conclusive. I’m just putting my thoughts to paper and I choose to do so- at times to amuse myself, at times to kill time and at other times to swallow the venom that is offered to me and employ my disturbed mind in an activity that doesn’t require interaction with the outer world .

When a person comes to this paradise called the world, he’s instantly associated with other mortals- his family. Even if he doesn’t find a family, he gets one, for a family is indispensable at that stage, it is a much needed life sustaining survival kit. We are animals, not plants and we need to be fed and tended. From what I hear, life is a gift and we must go to great extents to preserve it. This is perhaps one of the very first instructions that we’re fed, as part of the human doctrine. And we follow this religiously. We fall in love with our lives and take away others’ for we’re not geniuses at understanding principles. Some of us do, but that hardly matters as long as the others exist. It is only a quantitative issue.

As we continue to live, we learn things. We are made to learn things. Since we lack experience, someone else has to show the way and we take the path shown to us and walk on it for the rest of our lives. Some of us do not, but that hardly matters, as long as the others exist. It is merely a quantitative issue these days. So we do what we are expected to and do however much is expected from us and we fail- we’re ordinary mortals and we’re bound to fail. Some do not fail, but that hardly matters as long as the others exist. It is just a quantitative issue. So we fall and we rise and rise to win the race. But some of us do not rise and win the race, and I wish it did not matter, but it does, for it is a quantitative issue.

I knew a certain character in this whole play - directed by the latent forces that created us - who realized that the paths were misleading; in fact they never took you some place nice. You kept on driving in circles and you saw the milestones from far away and felt you were advancing but you never really bothered to read the stones and all of them had the same figure on them: You were in this state called stagnancy in motion, where you were moving but not getting anywhere. Of course his was a different path and not all of us are on that one, but that hardly matters as long as that path exists. It is only a quantitative issue. And one day, he stopped driving- he parked and sat on the grass, silently observing the others racing past each other on the road that led to the hypothetical place called nowhere. And they stared at him, frowned upon him, ridiculed him and called him names, and he smelled the lavender that grew beside the grass. He had no companion but the wind that blew past him and the dew that made his bed in the grass each night and greeted him good morning, when he woke up each day. He died this morning, and the leaves from the nearby maple tree made his shroud, his burial garment. No one came to his funeral but the wind that caressed his hair and the dew that kissed him goodbye.

We go on, race on and keep on rocking in the free world, oblivious of others like him, for the fact that there are people like him hardly matters. It is only a quantitative issue.