The Time Trotter

It’s my sister’s birthday today, and this story is for her, but feel free to read it as everyone can find a piece of themselves in this story 🙂

Happy birthday sis!!!

THE TIME TROTTER

“This is it?” Nadine rolled her eyes in sheer disappointment as she pushed and rolled over the device to one side with her index finger. The three interlocking gears at the base were furnished with cobwebs. She pulled her hand back quickly and rubbed her fingers onto her t-shirt to ditch the possible presence of sticky web particles she’d nearly poked through.

“It is,” Jerzy said almost shouting. “All the indications are there, right in front of us…staring at our faces…”

Nadine fixed her gaze at the device once more and chuckled. “The only thing staring at our faces is most likely a hairy, little spider.”

Jerzy toppled the device back over and took out a small notebook from his back pocket. He started shuffling through the weathered pages.

“Your grandpa was nuts guys,” Leo said. He had helped himself onto a dusty chest in the far corner. “Old Felix’s attic is full of weird junk like this… and none of them is of any good.” He noticed Jerzy wasn’t listening, but carried on anyway: “Teleportation chamber? Clean energy generator? And now a time machine? Come on…”

“Here!” Jerzy shouted as he opened a page in the notebook and showed it to them. The diagram drawn on the page was no doubt the blueprint of the device that was lying on the table now; an antique pocket watch screwed to a sizeable wooden box with knobs and pegs on each side. The lidless cavity at the bottom of the box housed some kind of battery or a power source, impossible to identify in its current horrible condition. And wires… lots of wires coming out of the device in chaotic tangles. Each part of the device was labelled in almost illegible handwriting with the heading in all caps over the drawing: ‘The Time Trotter Prototype and its Parts’.

“So?” Leo still seemed uninterested.

“This,” Jerzy said as he picked up the device. “…is the only ‘junk’ we found in grandpa’s attic that came with a manual… including the blueprint and operating instructions!” He quickly skipped over a few pages with his free hand and showed Leo and Nadia the page titled: “Step by step instructions”.

“Step by step instructions? That doesn’t sound like something a scientist like grandpa would write,” Nadia said as she carefully took the device from Jerzy’s hand and placed it on the table before she bent over to examine the device more thoroughly. “Even the bedtime stories he used to tell us years ago were riddled with technical and scientific terms.”

“Not if the manual was intended to be found by the likes of us,” Jerzy protested waving the manual.

“Jerzy,” Nadia finally said. “You’re my brother and I love you for that… but a mechanical, antique pocket watch… it’s so outdated. I am not sure if it can even point out the right time, let alone travel.”

“All the early prototypes of great machines were… outdated at first. Think about the first mobile phones as thick as bricks, all the way to the smart phones of the modern era not much thicker than an ID card.”

“Ok genius, so how does it work?” Leo cut in with a hint of boredom in his tone. He was holding a ceramic jug with no labels on, possibly one of the scattered, ordinary junk in the attic with no superpowers allocated by Nadia and Jerzy’s granddad.

Jerzy was already on it, finger lining the relevant step on the manual. “Place the device on a steady surface,” he read aloud and checked whether his sister followed the first step. The device was indeed on the table, Jerzy just pressed hard on one corner of the table to see if the legs were even. It didn’t budge.

“Next, we press the stem until it clicks,” Jerzy read before pointing out the sticking metal piece on top of the watch. Nadia pressed it hard and they all heard the clicking sound. The hands started spinning at an incredible speed in opposite directions until they stopped, displaying five past four.

Jerzy quickly checked his phone and to his expectations the time was exactly the same as what the pocket watch was claiming it was.

“That was weird,” Nadia said as she looked at her own wristwatch. “Now what?”

“Look! It started ticking…” Jerzy was astonished to his limits. He kept on reading. “Pull the stem out and start turning it in the desired destination: Counter clockwise for the past, and clockwise for the future.” He put the manual back into his pocket and rushed to the device. He got hold of the stem in no time. He pulled it slightly out and began turning it counter clockwise… allegedly into the past.

After a couple of turns, he stopped. “This shouldn’t be the way,” he thought. The pocket watch read twenty past two, but as soon as he released the stem, it went back to the original time. A tiny spider started scurrying away to safety… towards the absence of mechanical tampering.

“You just scared off the operator,” Leo said laughing as the spider found new shelter under the junk posing as the clean energy generator.

“No,” Nadia said. “The time on my watch also went back a couple of hours, but it’s back to normal now. Did we really go back in time?”

Jerzy shook his head. “I don’t know,” was all he could say.

At that moment, Leo smashed the ceramic jug in his hand by throwing it to the floor. “I have an idea,” he said. “Just try again, but go slow…super slow.”

Jerzy was at the wheel again. He started turning the stem in the same direction as before. Weirdly enough, he could take back the seconds which shouldn’t have been possible… Seconds at a time…

The smashed tiny bits of the jug started moving towards each other until they slowly started forming the original, unscathed jug. The pieces were sticking together on the floor with no indication of having been smashed before. When the jug was complete, it slowly started rising in mid-air and moved towards Leo’s open hand… the one that smashed it seconds ago… or the one that will smash it seconds later.

Jerzy let go off the stem in sheer joy, but now the time went back to its original position and they all had to witness the jug being smashed again in fast forward.

Nadia pulled out the manual out of Jerzy’s back pocket and quickly skimmed through it to the very last page. “Time is never steady, it can flow in both directions… but it’s intended to go only forward to avoid confusion and chaos. I invented the ‘time trotter’ for the sole purpose of providing myself tiny comforts like taking back time a couple of minutes before I made a huge mistake or travelling forward to avoid waiting hours for my favourite evening show. But even then, the need to hold the stem in an upright position was never worth the trouble. Time catches up in the end.” Nadia put the manual back into Jerzy’s pocket before mumbling “I’m outta here,” to herself as she left. Leo soon followed.

Jerzy spent the next couple of months experimenting with the device. He found out that he was stuck in the attic as he couldn’t take the device with him, he could never find a steady surface to allow the device to work elsewhere. All the unlabeled junk around him started to make sense now. The old TV unit in one corner, the bathtub and the toilet in the other with complete plumbing. The browned out mattress, too. Their grandpa lived nearly all his life here.

Just as Jerzy was about to give up, he found an old photo album buried deep in the shelves. The photos were of his childhood, Nadia and him as toddlers, grandpa and his youth… Something was strange… really strange… as the young grandpa Felix looked exactly the same as Leo in the present. He couldn’t stop now… there was a way… he needed to find it.. just like grandpa!

Morals of the story:

Stick to the present… don’t burden your life with the past and thus stop living the present, the moment. Same with the future in a way… Long live carpe diem.
Most things that seem complex at first like the time trotter device with lots of pegs, knobs and wires, can work with much less. Don’t scare yourself with possible obstructions that may arise in achieving your dreams.
Leo, in fact, isn’t the younger version of Felix, but we like making connections between unrelated things to support what we really want. Felix Leo!!! Even the photo Jerzy found had little resemblance to his grandpa’s youth but that’s how our minds work if we are inclined to believe in something. We only see what we want to see.
Family is important… but how you perceive family members and how they affect you is vital…

The Aftermath of Immortality

We are born, we age and we die. In-between the two significant milestones of what we call life, we seek meaning to this long-lasting event fantasizing about what follows. Is death really the end? Or is it just the beginning of a huge unknown?

What if there was no end to life?

Let’s assume for a minute that the humanity has found the secret of immortality and death is suddenly off the table for the old, the sick and the unfortunate who are perished every day in freak accidents. The perks of immortality would probably be in the lines of preventing ageing after a certain age and possibly through implementing rapid cell regeneration into our bodies to sustain a never-ending life. Surely, the ultra-wealthy would benefit from it first, but then it would eventually be available for all just like how newly found cures are applied to everyone after a certain time, probably pissing off the ones who had paid high prices for the privilege in the first years. Let’s say that an idealistic scientist made immortality airborne before releasing it to the atmosphere so everyone got the cure for death whether they liked it or not. It’s bad news for the ones with suicidal tendencies as the torment would now be eternal. But, what would happen to the rest of us, what would be in the store for us?

At first, people, especially the old and the sick, would probably celebrate the newfound immortality just like in Jose Saramago’s novel “Death at Intervals”, but soon joy would leave its place to sorrow as clergymen, morticians, life insurance providers, homicide detectives, contract killers and murder mystery writers become needless in society. The first signs of unemployment would spread to every profession eventually as the population starts to grow and retirement becomes a historical notion.

All sources of our eternal fear would eventually cease to exist amongst us, turning fear into a pleasant experience where nothing with grave outcomes takes place. Young daredevil wannabes will find new ways of entertainment as they jump off skyscrapers, run into burning buildings after setting them alight and dashing across streets riddled with drivers racing each other, filming the whole thing for the sake of more social media interactions just before finding out that it was only death that disappeared, not the pain and the long recovery times. Hospitals will be overflooded as a result and healthcare professionals would probably riot in a passive-aggressive manner.

Religions would be wiped out of existence or at least downsized to mini fan clubs with the last of the persistent fanatics working to earn a passage for heaven slowly vanish. With immortality in play, humanity would become their own micro gods. We don’t think God has a god, do we?

Breakthroughs in science and technology would be more frequent as brilliant inventors and scientists continue to benefit from their life-long experience to put on top of what they had already achieved. Soon, the whole universe would be our backyard to explore as manned spacecraft consisting of immortal astronauts chart course for distant stars right after the colonization of the moon by adrenaline junkies on painkiller meds and oxygen tanks, building habitats without any protective gear. Remember! The space is freezing, but what is frozen, can be thawed, just like how it works for frozen chicken in a microwave oven, to minimize the efficiency of the lunar workforce.

Exploration would not be limited just to space. Hard to reach places on Earth like the bottom of the Mariana trench or the insides of volcanoes would be thoroughly mapped and probably be opened for tourism, eventually ruining the last natural beauties of our planet. On the bright side, new life forms would be discovered.

Education would transform into simplicity of teaching the very basic stuff like the language and the culture as there would be no need for a vast number of specialists on Earth anymore other than for the ones that went off world for exploration.

Language is dynamic, so it would certainly change a great deal. Some expressions and words like “death”, “deathbed”, “murder”, “suicide”, “homicide”, “coffin”, “deadly”, “survival”, “survival of the fittest”, “natural” and all related vocabulary items would disappear, while others shift in meaning over time like the word “alone” would probably be used to describe “with few people in the vicinity” as skyrocketing population growth rate would make sure of that. The word “execute” would lose one of its prime meanings, making it used only for computer commands. New words to express new feelings would emerge as well as a new tense to talk about the very distant but experienced past.

New housing would certainly be a major issue. Some lakes would be dried and some mountains would be flattened to make new space for housing and most of us (mostly the poor) would have to live in vast overcrowded underground dwellings. Satellite estate agents would emerge either selling spots on space junk in Earth’s orbit, rent lunar homes, or advertise Martian blocks of flats for the rich.

Finally, natural resources would become so scarce that we would have to leave our scorched Earth to look for a new home across the galaxy. Luckily, being immortal opens up a large number of options that would have never been possible in history. But, some planet where we wouldn’t have to recycle our pee into drinking water would be swell. Not that we would die of thirst or hunger for that matter, but because how it would make us constantly feel. On the bright side, obesity would be gone forever.

The last thoughts of anyone watching the Earth get smaller from the spaceship monitors would be to try to find a cure to undo the damage of not being able to die. Without and end, life is not so precious after all!

Centuries later, we would have the chance to closely observe how human evolution takes place as we would have lighter bodies having to roam in less gravity for a prolonged time. The ones that couldn’t find a suitable planet to settle would have lighter skin colours and their eyes would probably lose sensitivity to light for better vision. In the end, we would lose our ability to reproduce. Why have tiny versions of ourselves to transfer our experience when we could live forever? Never needing to lactate ever again, female breasts would flatten and disappear, leaving behind only the nipples, very similar to how men are now.

Doesn’t the word “Immortal” sound much better with more appropriate punctuation and spacing, as in “I’m mortal”?

Transforming Education into a Reflex

We are born and we die, and in between we live a life cycle where we learn stuff to ensure the longevity and the quality of our survival between the above mentioned vital milestones. Learning starts as early as life and ends only when we die. And in seldom cases, learning goes on even after we die (if we donate our cadavers to medical students where they are the ones who do the learning). That’s one of the reasons why learning is so crucial!

Before we begin to learn any of the serious stuff, we activate our built-in reflexes that ensure our survival as babies, like sucking, swallowing, grasping and crawling. That’s basically how babies can breathe, eat and drink and move (crawl) to their mother’s breasts when placed on their stomachs to hold (grasp) the organic milk dispenser and get (suck and swallow) the milk flowing without needing an external instructor, a whiteboard or any homework.

Then, we develop (or can we say learn here?) more complex reflexes, which are basically motor reflexes acquired by repetitive responses like what chain of actions we follow after learning how to ride a bike, or how we jam the brakes when we see an object on our path while speeding. Why we don’t actually think of hitting the brakes rather than just doing it, is what makes this, a reflex. Just think about walking! It would be insane to think about the every step you take; left foot forward, right foot forward… heels first upon contacting the ground, toes springing upward upon leaving the ground…

Weirdly enough, most of the time, we don’t have a recollection of the learning processes that we have mastered and became reflexes, like walking. Perhaps it is so, as the learning process took a long time ago and we tend to have little to less memories of our infancy… or perhaps we have undergone a completely different learning process which is way different from how we are taught in traditional schools following outdated norms that have not changed for ages.

Imagine a classroom of 20 or so infants, each having a different cultural background, interest, motivation and tiny, little distractions crawling next to each other… and just one teacher battling to do her job; trying to teach to the middle ground by putting on educative, audiovisual material on play before the students are saved by the bell they have been longing for.

Perhaps, we should find ways to transform learning into a reflex!

On a personal level, what we intend to learn must be turned into fun, we should also ditch our fears of failure and lose our prejudices for an effective learning process.

But, what can be done on a global level?

Learning has to be in the most natural way possible, so we may consider…

… getting rid of prison-cell feeling indoor classrooms with badly styled furniture, as they are not usually comfy enough to keep students focused on the subject matter…

… keeping lesson duration to what’s in focus and shorten or lengthen the duration accordingly. Besides, students lose focus after a certain time…

… having a smaller number of students grouped by their learning styles. It doesn’t take 15 people to change a light-bulb, but somehow educators seem to be expecting the exact outcome. Having less and like-minded students will provide them equal opportunities to actually learn something…

… encouraging students to ask questions. The current education system fails at this as younger students, cooped up in with indifferent peers, often refrain from asking anything, afraid their friends will make fun of them and older students are mostly lectured in giant halls with 100+ other people, where education is always on a tight schedule…

… losing the concept of daily homework, or at least modifying it greatly. As working adults, the happiest and the most productive times at work are when we don’t stay overtime or bring work to home. Think about bringing work home every single day!

… finding alternative ways of rewarding and grading students. In real life, we don’t get grades on our acquired reflexes like walking, etc…

… rewarding creative thinking, questioning and such skills, not having students memorize and copy-paste what the textbook says… Originality denies copy-pasting!

In real life, we can learn a foreign language better when we travel to the target country and immerse with the culture…and weirdly enough what is taught and what is natural can be completely different:

Which line is better when we order a cup of coffee in a cafe abroad?

“Excuse me! I would like to have a cup of coffee, please.” (What is taught)

versus

“Hello! Coffee, please.” (What people actually say)

We can learn about basic math better when we start using money, rather than adding up, subtracting, multiplying or dividing insignificant numbers…

Look at the math problem below that a young student may encounter at school:

“Carol has five eggs and she gives 2 of them to her friend Pedro. How many eggs does Carol have now?”

Math problems at current schools like the one above never work for most students like I was, as I cannot stop myself from trying to figure out other questions unrelated and irrelevant to the real problem such as…

Who are Carol and Pedro?

Why does Carol have eggs in the first place?

Why does she give two to Pedro?

Are they close friends or not?

What will Pedro do with the two eggs he now possesses?

(Perhaps, I am the odd one out here as I have never given or received any eggs from a friend before).

We can learn about world geography better when we start visiting different countries and learning from the source…

We can learn about history better by visiting historical sites rather than reading about them in a textbook accompanied with a crappy image…

We can learn about psychology better by interacting with people, and just by listening to them (assuming they would do the same)…

We can learn about biology better by spending some time on farms or by going camping…

We can learn everything better if we live through it! And repetitive, personal experience is what transforms an action into a reflex!

If you think the above methods require loads of money, just think about how much each country annually spends on the outdated education system that doesn’t really teach.

Vampire Philosophy: Thought Shard no:566, On Change and Humanly Love…

Throughout history, philosophers have been tackling problems relating to a variety of subjects like existence, society, political theory, ethics, values, art, epistemology etc. As most of philosophy is directly questioning aspects of human life and its relations to other matters like the ones mentioned earlier, it can be objective only up to a degree as we are all human after all. What we lack is total objectivity, which can only be possible by viewing these matters from a completely different perspective; a non-human one. This series of texts (recordings) attempts to question us from a unique perspective with a vampiric touch to all matters that matter to us…

“Greetings Human!

I am Lyzette leaving this recording in the Highgate Cemetary as a reflection of our thoughts; the vampire perspective. This is thought shard number 566, recorded in 1449 AD, based on our perception of change and humanly love.

Sadly, unconditional and eternal love AKA true love does not exist in your world. It is just as a myth to you as we, Strigoi are. False assumptions, ignorance, unawareness and illusions mislead you into believing its existence, just like those of you who are convinced we, vampires can turn into bats. Here, our transformation into bats is just in your minds, not in the physical world bound by unbreakable no transformation rules. However, change is different. Much slower but more effective in the long run.

Your world is fueled by change. You survive by changes of all kinds, in every aspect. You change in size as you grow from infancy to adulthood. Your early ideas are reshaped by influence of your teenage idols whereas your desires, dreams and demands are altered by personal experience as you get older. And yet, you choose to believe in eternal, unconditional love when everything in and around you is dependent on conditions that change constantly. And that’s not all, as constant change occurs in both parties. Now, tell me how true love is possible! If it indeed were, you would still be chasing the first soul you ever kissed or held hands with.

You only fall in love with illusions… or the perfect versions of the people who you think you are in love with. When you realize the initial feelings are withering away, you try to remodel your beloved into a glorified image of a dream. The perfect image shatters as both parties push each other away unwillingly.

In an ideal case of true love, jealousy would never reside in the minds of the lovers as each party is confident of themselves to make the other party much happier than anyone else ever could. Knowing that nobody else could claim that special spot in the other’s heart. Or… in the event that the lovers grew apart, the more loving party would just let go of the other rather than obsessing themselves to win them back. They would know that letting go would make the other party happy. Wasn’t true love about making each other happy?

In short, true love does not exist because of the fact that change is unavoidable as time cannot be stopped. The only way to pause time briefly is through reliving the good memories over and over again until they aren’t vivid as before. And that’s exactly what you think love is…

The next thought shard can be found buried deep beneath the Sphinx in modern Egypt.

End of transfer.”

Vampire Philosophy: Thought Shard no:434, On Death and Immortality…

Throughout history, philosophers have been tackling problems relating to a variety of subjects like existence, society, political theory, ethics, values, art, epistemology etc. As most of philosophy is directly questioning aspects of human life and its relations to other matters like the ones mentioned earlier, it can be objective only up to a degree as we are all human after all. What we lack is total objectivity, which can only be possible by viewing these matters from a completely different perspective; a non-human one. This series of texts (recordings) attempts to question us from a unique perspective with a vampiric touch to all matters that matter to us…

“Greetings Human!

I am Torbyn leaving this recording in the cave of Lascaux as a reflection of our thoughts; the vampire perspective. This is thought shard number 434, recorded in 1218 AD, based on our perception of death and immortality.

Immortality! Outliving time itself. The long lasting dream of all mankind… Fortunately, all living things die. An end adds immense beauty, value to eternal boredom. As immortals, we, the Strigoi, see life like a never-ending mystery book, with all its mysteries revealed in the early chapters. When there’s nothing more to explore, everything loses meaning, but you keep going out of habit.

You reproduce and transfer your knowledge and values to your young, making them fresh, mini copies of yourselves…

You create works of art, to take place in history, not to be forgotten, living through eternity the best you can… and if you lack the talent for art, you become a politician…

You advance in technology, trying to prolong your life span fighting diseases… a world with limited resources throw at you…

Even what seems like an innocent act where young human couples carve their love onto tree trunks, is nothing more than a feeble attempt at immortality… the love dies but the curvy symbol and the initials around it, do not… is this the immortality you wish upon? Immortality of teen regrets?

Despite all these, you cannot even convince yourself of your dream… as you spell it the same way as its opposing concept: “Immortal versus I’m mortal!” or a similar concept with a slight change of letters: “death versus breath”.

Death is unknown to you until you die and delving into the unknown scares you… yet, it’s the same you, trying to explore the mysteries of the universe. Two unknowns, two completely different reactions… how delusional of you!

The next thought shard can be found in Highgate Cemetary in modern London.

End of transfer.”

Redefining Death: A Contemporary Guide

As persistent seekers of healthy, prolonged lives and even immortality in the modern ages, we, mortals have always feared “death” as it means a definitive full-stop to what we have valued the most: Life…

But, what is death?

According to most dictionaries, “death” is the end of life…

For me, it’s “ceasing to exist in the former plane of existence”… but, I am not all into the heaven-hell thing as I believe those two opposite concepts were designed to direct the majority of the human race into doing good deeds, so that all good-doers are led to believe they will have their afterlife retirement lying in endless flower fields above the clouds, drinking mulled wine from its rivers and having sex for eternity (and that is without the help of Viagra for the elderly men). The evil-doers, on the other hand, will burn in agony for eternity…

Eternity? A concept valid for both heaven and hell? Wait! Living for eternity is achieving “immortality” Wasn’t that our final goal? Our seemingly impossible dream? To be immortal? Is reaching our final goal through “death”? Or, was the whole concept of immortality just an unintended word play, the creation of a concept due to bad punctuation and spacing (as in “Immortal” vs. “I’m mortal”)?

Anyway, going to heaven sounds fun, right?

Then, why do we feel so down and depressed when we bid farewell to our loved ones on their voyage to a better place? Are we worried they might end up in hell? Are we just selfish for not being happy for them? Or do we secretly know that heaven does not exist? Who knows…

On another note,

As I said before, “death” is ceasing to exist and it happens to our loved ones all the time and in numerous other ways as well, like:

when we break up with a partner and never want to see each other again… or
when a loved one moves across the globe for a job opportunity, etc…
when someone we trust wrongs us in an unacceptable way…

The people in above cases “cease to exist” just like how I perceive “death”… and in all cases time heals us, gradually soothing the pain. The question here, is how we deal with the sudden loss… do we cry our eyes out until they dry out? do we surrender to booze or other similar ways to dull the pain? or do we seek their familiarity in the experiences of our daily lives and remember how they made us feel? No matter how we might grieve, time is always there for assistance…

As a final thought, I must say “death” according to me is like a paradox similar to the Schrodinger’s Cat… we can never know for sure if our deceased, loved ones are happy or not on a different plane of existence… until we are certain of their fate, they may very well be both happy and not…

Scripted Lives; 5 Acts, not a play…

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players…”
William Shakespeare

Act 1…
The man sees an attractive, young woman sitting alone at the bar. He moves to a better vantage point where he can see her face clearly and throws her a sneak look accompanied by a soft smile. The woman smiles back without breaking eye contact (If she doesn’t, the man starts from square one with a different actor). It’s the cue for the man to make a move. He does.

Act 2…
The man engages in small talk about the weather in the last few days. The woman agrees with a few comments of her own. They seem to have an excellent time although neither is into meteorology. The man offers to buy her a drink… one more of whatever she’s having. They start laughing at everything. Being funny ceases to be a requirement after this point.

Act 3…
They leave the bar together and go to whoever’s house is closer. They have sex. The man whispers how beautiful the woman is into the nearest ear. The woman instructs the man to go faster… or harder… or however she wants it.

Act 4…
They discover common hobbies, feel safe and loved in each other’s arms, and decide to go for a romantic relationship. The man buys her presents, the woman makes frequent surprises to him. The love between them is so profound that jealousy starts ruling the relationship!!! (Really ironic this one… As when couples love each other, they should develop trust not jealousy). They decide to get married though. After all, marriage is a sort of guarantee that they won’t cheat on one another, right?

Act 5…
As they can’t stand each other after countless fits; the man and the woman go for a divorce. After the mourning phase (or the relief), each return to Act 1 separately and play the same game expecting different results.

Just like theatrical plays, the illusion called life relies heavily on inter-human relationships…

Now, stop here for a moment and think about how you interact with other people…

Is every decision you make, truly yours? Does every word you say, belong to you?

Do we make choices in our relationships with others and carry on upon pre-taught thinking?

Acting out scenes with pre-written scripts like some untalented actors?

There are various books on pick up lines out in the market for the socially-challenged… Pieces of script, just in need of personal fillers.

Imagine reading a book or watching a film for the thousandth time… knowing the ending, but still trying to enjoy it, hoping the outcome would be different. It’s sheer disappointment as it’s the same title with a different set of characters after all.

Why do we do this?

Why do we keep on living li(v)es of who we are not?

Abortion of the Inner Child

We are born as small, cute and cuddly creatures; totally naked as there’s nothing to hide or be ashamed of, in this new, alien world. Soon as we start growing up, we display our emotions in the forms of genuine laughters or cries as honesty is always default at earlier ages. We are amazed by fireworks, cartoons etc. and believe in fairies, angels, monsters…

As children, we have huge dreams although our under-grown bodies have very limited capabilities. We are taught how to poop for instance. We think we can accomplish anything, but we are never given a chance. Our dreams get older and wither much faster than our bodies and brains.

Just as we reach our golden ages, we find out that we have to go to school and blend with the society and its unspoken rules. Just like all the junk in Pandora’s box, school teaches us useful stuff like reciting the periodic table!, as well as what’s right according to them and how to lie. All the contents of the education box are unleashed into our spongy, egg-shelled minds. Still, it never teaches us how to make deep, honest connections with others and be happy in life.

Late school era friendships start relying on selfish and personal interests. Most of us have friends so that we can show the world we are better than our buddies. We become jealous beings which will actually be the force that drives us into struggling to achieve so-called success in later life.

We graduate. We get jobs, routine becomes our thing. We work hard to afford things we don’t really need. We get bored and boring at the same time and start judging the few people, who are still clinging onto their dreams and inner child, as being immature and not acting their age. Perhaps it’s the big ball of fury and jealousy they have against us (Yes, I am with child) just because they have had an untimely abortion of their inner child.

We finally reach an age when most people expect us to die. It’s only then, we revert back to our childhood and do stuff which is considered stupid by the norms of the modern society. Luckily, old age is a great excuse to be truly ourselves just like back when we were children. But, in fact we have missed a whole chunk (the long, middle part) of our lives. The inner child has been reborn but sadly it doesn’t have much time now as it’s connected to our physical bodies. We never die alone in the end.

Magic ceased to exist for most people long ago whereas it’s all around us… just give a long hug to an upset person without uttering gibberish like “I know what you feel” or talk to your plants daily and observe the change. We are all magicians if we believe we are.

So, next time you see a child disguised in an adult meat suit,

…helplessly trying to tie their trainers…

Or…

…gaping with awe to their surroundings in a toddler’s toy shop…

Or…

…smiling upon listening to a well-known fairy tale they had heard 100 times before…

Or…

…cooking in the messiest way possible…

Just look them in the eye and hug them.

Love is all we need after all.

The Illusion of Freedom

Freedom exists in…

… schoolbooks,

… dictionaries,

… fairy tales,

… video games,

… dreams,

… in the little daily choices we make, like having a pizza for lunch or going for a burger… and that’s only if our dietary restrictions allow us…

For more complex choices , the society we’ve been forced to live in by so called ‘free will’ makes the decisions…

With friendly imperatives starting with “Don’t…”

“…wear that…”
“…eat that…”
“…drink (that)…”
“…smoke (that)…”
“…be different…”
“…be weird, people are watching…”

All the demonstrative ‘that’ chunks uttered above vaguely indicate that they were actually remote choices of both the wrong-doer and their angelic companion bound by the unspoken rules of the society we may feel so detached from.

Most of us have the illusion of ‘being free as birds’, but the question is “Are birds really free?”

“Are they?”

They can fly, but so can we… by planes…

And that sums about everything they can do freely. They can’t swim, dive, run, write, make instrumental music, paint or have a pizza takeout etc.

So, why does it feel like they are the free ones?

Mixology 101

Sometimes writing does not have a purpose other than to entertain only the author himself. The piece below falls exactly under that category. Read it if you wish… but don’t expect a moral, life lessons, or whatever you expect from the stream of consciousness of a not-so-sane writer…

Welcome to the world of mixing up! The true essence of life and the world we live in!!!

Let’s start with basic emotions like joy and despair…

… and see how it goes by mixing the two and experiencing something totally overwhelming:

A standard smile involves 13 different facial muscles affecting the mouth, the lips, the cheeks, the nose and the eyes working together. Crying is a different case as each person’s style of shedding tears is distinctive so it can be a number of muscles ranging from 12 to 20 throughout your body (including a set of muscles in the abdomen and yes, I am making the number up). Now, think about crying out of joy. You may never need to go to a gym ever to work on your abdomen if you’re over-emotional.

Differences create art whether it’s painting,, music or some culinary magic:

Colours are not as meaningful on a virgin canvas when used solo. Masterpieces are created with a maelstrom of brush strokes involving a rainbow of colours. Well, even rainbows have much more than a single hue.

A single instrument can create good music, and feed your soul, but a band of instruments is a feast, a banquet involving no calories.

A tablespoon of salt is almost never consumed on its own as it’s… hmmm… too salty! But, when it goes into any kind of meal, it brings out the flavour.

Yin Yang! Life is indeed a giant mixture of everything. Try some alchemy in your life.

Barış Cansevgisi

Author

Tag: Life