raising a toast

Cheers to another year!

saying without words:4

(using a poor 2 megapix cam on my cell)

a bend in the road

awkwardly alone

blowing in the wind

a brook in a valley gorgeous

mind that existentialism

The futility of any idea lies in the sacred belief of its executionability. Also the futility of a mind lies in its endless churning of such ideas. Come to think of it, every day or perhaps every waking hour in our life, we ideate (i abhor this word though). The subconcious like an OS keeps running these ideas as processes in the background. Like I am typing on the key board but alongside my mind is churning ideas at rate rivalling the reproduction rate of mosquitoes.

An existential veiw of life would suggest, that by extension ideas are basically a measure as well as a reflection upon the human existence and the conditions of its existence, rather than having a more obfuscated genesis in an undefinable essence of humans.

However, a closer look reveals that even though the existential principle is applicable to most of the ideas getting germinated in the mind, but there is a certain set of ideas popping up which do not really seem to have been derived from any direct or indirect condition of our existence. For example, what do we call the sudden idea of jumping into the sky while looking into the reflection of it in a small shaving mirror. Suddenly, that small non descript mirror is like a secret doorway to a mystical escape, a window to a free fall into the great blue abyss, i recall feeling queasy in the stomach, peeking into that mirror and seeing the sky deep down below, almost a thrill as if of descent on a giant wheel. An idea so strong that it generated a reflex response of anxious thrill from the body.

I got another such idea earlier, the fecund mind overworking when it should instead have been in hibernate mode like the body. The far fetched quixotian nature of the said idea made me wonder from where does the mind come up with this stuff. Then

I cornered Kafka, Dostovyesky and so many more who have expounded an approach to life driven only by what we are and what our experiences as a human have been, people called that existentialism over the years, but the whole premise is challenged by the existence of these out of the world ideas in the mind, if life is only about what we are and what we learn, then how does the mind generate ideas, one never experienced, saw or heard about before.

What is the basic tenet? Is life only about experiences and knowledge gained through human existence? Or is there an obscure, unexplainable something which influences our existence, our thoughts and sometimes our actions.