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IMAGINATION HIJACKED

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I am not aware of myself, how on earth will I be minding others' business

BY: Feroz Rashid

When we were busy we had a lot of time; today we are idle and have literally no time. People with social media gadgets in hand would acknowledge it and be on the same page with me (if they ever had a thought about it) that our imagination has been hijacked.

Because I don’t like to talk in puzzles, I would be rather clear and, above all, personal. I have always been kind of introvert and loved to rack my brain about the prevailing situations. As a consequence, I learnt to pick up a pen and write whatever I liked. I never felt lack of themes to write about because I had a lot of time to think. Usually, I used to sit down in my room and think of the things that beset me. I was happy that each time I came up with an idea.

I experienced it of late that I was losing what used to be my motto. I never had and never will, God willing, in the time to be give that up, but certain things always matter. With the course of time, one changes either entirely or partially. Moreover, positive change is something you love to have, but negative change would be intolerable.

No matter what, you always want to be better off than before. But, as a matter of fact, it goes in a different course and you feel worse off than before. We stand on the verge of brainlessness, yet ready to change the world. Beset with lot of dilemma, we hardly know where do we stand, where we are heading to and what shall be our future. How often do we stay put and have a good dream. Truth be told, we don’t have time to relax and unleash our imagination.

We live in the world of science and technology that has made robots out of us; robots that are, as we know, insensitive metal things. It is bizarre, that we resemble robots in different ways- we eat, they need power; we work, they work too; we don’t think beyond the pre-defined and over occupying matter-whether important or unimportant, they don’t think beyond the fed memory as well.

It is a matter of concern that we- the modern-day humans aren’t even concerned about ourselves, not to speak of other people, environmental and global issues etc. I am not aware of myself, how on earth would I be minding others’ business. Today, I have less time for my parents, my family and even myself. The moment when one learns to live neither for self nor for others, one has lost the meaning of life.

The issue is not exactly the technological progress, but our approach of dealing with it. The world has turned upside down and when we should have been driving the machines, machines drive us in reality. Do you know when emotionless gadgets drive the people-of-emotions, the end result is not always good. I must say, we are driven by mobile phones, Facebook, Twitter and what not. We often feel burdened, though we are not; we often feel sad, though we are not, we often feel dizzy, though we are not.

All day long, we read books, we work, we travel here and there, we eat and drink, or we scroll down the Facebook, thus not feeling free to spare a couple of minutes to fancy, or to get flashbacks of the day. Now we don’t have time to sleep either. Our sleep fails us (or we fail our sleep), so does our comfort. It does happen, and it will happen. It has a dire effect on our mental health; we often feel dizzy, slothful, and insomniac.

I condole the time gone by, and wait in wonder when I will be literally busy again. I hardly relish the days today as I did in the recent past. Like an addict, though I try to be out of the mess created by Facebook and YouTube, I always slip in and fritter most of my time doing nothing. It is often disturbing when you feel you are busy and have no time although you aren’t literally busy or short of time. You want to finish things but you do not. The most irritating thing is that you don’t want to think about anything if sometimes you have a time. Whenever you try to mull over anything, you feel out of mind. To be true, as I am writing this, I struggle with the words.

The way forward is nothing but to encourage creative imagination. This can be done in various ways: first, one must be optimistic enough to let go of some time and relax. This will enhance the space of one’s mind and let one gain more insight and knowledge about oneself. Second, because creative imagination is no more, one must limit the use of social media gadgets, and be on the more realistic side of daily life. Last, but not the least, one must spend time with religious education and research. This, I think, is the more realistic way of regaining one’s creative imagination.

The writer is a student of 5th semester pursuing B.A from GDC Bijbehara. [email protected]

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