Sometimes I wonder what it is about words that arrests me in the most unexpected way. It's almost supernatural, that by simply stringing a handful of them together, you can turn a person's life inside out. No, I'm not talking about the brilliant words of famous poets and lyricists, those who have been alleged and credited as the brightest minds of their (or even our) time. Those honourable words often have nothing on me. They don't move me. They don't keep me wanting more. In fact, they often left me cold and lonesome in perplexity. Guess what? I'm talking about TV.
The magic about TV is not really in the acting, or the topsy-turvy story line, or even the drop-dead gorgeous cast. Ok, may be the last one helps (a lot). But to me, the magic of TV that is so addictive, is that in the way that we don't think when we watch TV. It sort of does the thinking for you. You just lie there, whisked into a this world of artificial reality where everyone's good-looking, and even though there's always a mess that crops up halfway that simply drives you crazy, by the end of the forty minutes, you know for sure that things are gonna end. It may end badly. It may end well. But you know that it will end no matter what, and you have one week to resume that horror, or experience new horrors.
Nonetheless, after the forty five minutes are up, we are (well, I am) left wanting more. We wished that it didn't end so soon. And we start thinking about it, refusing to let go because the true reality is just too cruel and unbearable to face. One of my favorite parts about watching TV is in listening to the first thirty seconds worth of narration that sets out the theme or mood of the entire episode. I think this is one of the most brilliant ways that words are ever used to convey a message. Forget Shakespeare. Forget Poe. Forget Dickinson. The thing about TV is that they are there to keep you at the edge of their seat; what they show you on the screen are such that they are hynotising. They're clear, relatable-- to construct a reality that we can enter without feeling too alien toward it. Sure, we will never become doctors, lawyers, crime scene investigators, rich heirs living on the Upper East Side, but we never really feel too alien toward these things we see on TV, or too alien to relate to them.
These short intro to the episode, they often make us feel something, think about things, and that is the true mark of brilliant use of words. They arrest you, in an almost supernatural kind of way. So I just want to share some that practically gave birth to this post.
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A couple of hundred years ago, Benjamin Franklin shared with the world the secret of his success. Never leave that till tomorrow, he said, which you can do today. This is the man who discovered electricity. You think more people would listen to what he had to say. I don't know why we put things off, but if I had to guess, I'd have to say it has a lot to do with fear. Fear of failure, fear of rejection, sometimes the fear is just of making a decision, because what if you're wrong? What if you're making a mistake you can't undo? There early worm catches the worm. A stitch in lime saves nine. He who hesitates is lost. We can't pretend we hadn't been told. We've all heard the proverbs, heard the philosophers, heard our grandparents warning us about wasting time, heard the damn poets urging us to seize the day. Still sometimes we have to see for ourselves. We have to make our own mistakes. We have to learn our own lessons. We have to sweep today's possibility under tomorrow's rug until we can't anymore. Until we finally understand for ourselves what Benjamin Franklin really meant. That knowing is better than wondering, that waking is better than sleeping, and even the biggest failure, even the worst, beat the hell out of never trying.
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Irony is rich:
May be we like the pain. May be we're wired that way. Because without it, I don't know: may be we just wouldn't feel real. What's that saying? Why do I keep hitting myself with a hammer? Because it feels so good when I stop.
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When we say things like 'people don't change', it drives scientists crazy because change is literally the only constant in all of science. Energy. Matter. It's always changing, morphing, merging, growing, dying. It's they way people try not to change that's unnatural. The way we cling to what things were instead of letting things be what they are. The way we cling to old memories instead of forming new ones. The way we insist of forming new ones. The way we insist on believing despite every scientific indication that anything in this lifetime is permanent. Change in constant. How we experience change that's up to us. It can feel like death, or it can feel like a second chance at life. If we open our fingers, loosen our grips, go with it, it can feel like pure adrenaline. Like at any moment, we can have another chance at life. Like at any moment, we can be born all over again.
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Nobody chooses to be a freak. Most people don't realise they're a freak until it's way too late to change it. No matter how much of a freak you end up being, chances are there's still someone out there for you. Unless of course, they've already moved on. Because when it comes to love, even freaks can't wait forever.
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My pick:
Biology says that we are who we are from birth, that our DNA is set in stone. Unchangeable. Our DNA doesn't account for all of us though, we're human. Life changes us. We develop new traits. Become less territorial. We start competing. We learn from our mistakes. We face our greatest fears. For better or worse, we find ways to become more than our biology. The risk, of course, is that we can change too much to the point where we don't recognise ourselves. Finding our way back can be difficult. There's no compass, no map. We just have to close our eyes, take a step and hope to God, we get there.
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