thepalimpsest-blog1

[thepalimpsest-blog1]

If we take care of the moments, the years will take care of themselves.

Maria Edgeworth

[thepalimpsest-blog1]

There’s more to give, I feel it.

Despite the notion of productivity engaging our generation, there is always this pervasiveness, this desire you see in people to do something useful with their time, something ennobling. It is not the will that is lacking, but the recognition of the means to to get something done. 

This ‘something’ is not to be confused with the next task at the job or the conclusion of a deadline. This ‘something’ pertains to an undertaking more sublime, more personal. It is the thought that keeps you on edge, at work. It is that resident sense, that your full potential is not being extracted. It is that confusion where you know you are capable of more, but know not – of what in.

We are more than just our means, yet less than the discipline that makes such decisions come to life. We have been afforded the comforts of easy leisure, but are offered just as many inconsequential influences (at present, social media) to absorb such time.

The great Roman philosopher Seneca captures this dilemma beautifully in saying:

“All those who call you to themselves draw you away from yourself.”

It is simple to consider, really. One can only give to the world what they already have. Will, skill, love, time and all the other constituents that can be of aid to another. Say, a child paints well and loves it; and detests sport of any kind. Yet, they decide to participate in a swimmer’s race for years, because that is what all good kids on the block appear to be doing. No matter how hard they work at it, I leave it to you to assess the probability of them emerging a satisfied winner at the end of the two years, harbouring an altered personality with a new found love for sport.

It is also worth thinking of what they unconsciously loose out on, in that making choice. Think of the hours now forgone, hours contained in the whole of twenty-four months, wherein they could have gathered the skill, the knowledge and the self-satisfaction at honing their art in the joyous pursuit of painting.

Annie Dillard captures the enormity of the everyday, with a poetic sincerity, in saying that :

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” 

As children we often lack the faculty and the foresight to make such choices. Yet, does it not astound you to observe how, even as adults, we start to move along similar avenues of unconscious choices promoted by the larger crowds of the apparently successful, instead of individualizing.

We humans learn quickly, but it is the unlearning takes time. We have learnt that following a prescribed system gets you educated till a point, but we find it hard to unlearn the idea, that from then on - it is our small, deliberate choices of the everyday that will be the true makers of us; and that there will be no pre-ordained path laid down for us to follow.

If one spends hours everyday typing in lists and coming home and not working on their mind, their body and their relationships, then I hope we accept how these days will add up eventually. If such is the case, then I hope we do not act unfair in comparing ourselves with another, five years down the line, who may have been making the conscious choice of putting in that extra hour every single day or week, towards honing their art and moving towards a goal, in the innumerable hours that we may have spent away.

We are the busiest generation there ever has been; harbouring more internal chaos than ever before seen. 

Start somewhere. Start, but with an acute awareness of the distance between where you stand and where you want to be. You cannot offer shelter to another, if you haven’t one yourself. You cannot educate or inform others, if you do not choose to inform yourself first. You cannot help the crowds, without doing something, starting somewhere yourself.

This world would be a fuller place, if many more questioned like Umberto Eco did in his book The Name of the Rose :

“Then why do you want to know?" "Because learning does not consist only of knowing what we must or we can do, but also of knowing what we could do and perhaps should not do.” 

[thepalimpsest-blog1]

We fill in what we don’t know, with the limits of what do know.

Krista Tippett

[thepalimpsest-blog1]

It began with one curious question.

You came here for a reason.

Each reason unique on its own, yet I’m hoping curiosity had something to do with it. In which case, I’m very happy to have you here. In an age of scrolling feeds, we are conditioned to think that the most recent is the most important. Somewhere the idea, that the true material of knowledge is meaning; that sometimes learning requires a deeper understanding which cannot be gained without a patience of sorts - seems to have been forgotten.

It was the same string of curiosity that we share, that had me hunting. Searching far and beyond, I found such islands of knowledge; but arrayed in directions so scattered - that I took it upon myself to fill those blanks. To fill them writings of scholars and philosophies of thinkers of times strikingly different from ours, but who happened to scramble around the very same questions we face today.

The power to relate and the need to feel understood is as central to the human condition as is the necessity for food in our system and air in our lungs. The one fundamental quality that all enduring works of art share is simply this - they make us feel connected, even if for only a moment. It seems to me that more and more we have come to expect less and less of each other and that is why the ever-present relevance of long-past thinkers and curious learners seems more valuable than ever.

Oscillating between books read and recalled, personal moments captured in emotional capsules and longstanding lessons learned, I shall write of the little, passing details that we often miss. Each time, it will be something untried, something novel. High chance – unrelated to the last, because…

Humans do better with recipes of variety.

To end this, I will start where I should have begun. The place where I should have told you what “The Palimpsest” truly stands for. In its simplest form, it means “something superimposed or altered but still bearing visible traces of its earlier form”. It’s what Lenin did with Karl Marx’s ideas and its exactly what we do to a basic brownie recipe to make it a peanut butter or Nutella one.

In a similar sense, I evoke my inner voice through my writings, but not without acknowledging the incredible palette of literary works that have shaped my beliefs; my own experiences which have lent shades to my stories and inked my ideas.

Ready to run the race back home, when you find yourself a race-horse in world with no race-tracks - a little kick here, a little push there, can go a long way.

With that, I see you off. Till we meet again, and soon.