Simply Being | Simple Being

Tag: expression (page 1 of 1)

What If

What if we didn’t express?

What if we let the feelings swim around, flowing in rivulets, pooling at bottom of the heart?
Let the Sun through, bright and wordless,
Warm radiance is all one needs, and all evaporates,
Tears, sweat, regrets, unspoken and unexpressed.

What if we released them to the winds,
Dispersed, screaming into the void—
Until unrecognizable, tattered, ripped into shreds,
Merging into the air, microscopic and littler.

Expression/Experience

A few fleeting thoughts. (I see the irony, yes, I do!)

Expression can never hope to capture experience. In fact, it is wholly incapable of conveying experience, or maybe only a fraction of it. Here’s the clincher, though. Experience is fleeting, while expression has some degree of longevity. (Even if it’s only an individual voicing her thoughts to the void. And if she writes it out someplace, it persists longer… in her mind and in the minds of those who read it.) Here’s where expression does the individual disservice. It grants permanence to something ephemeral. It makes an experience into Truth, whereas what it is is creativity. It’s the mind connecting the dots, drawing a picture, casting a passing moment on to stone, paper, canvas, film.

If the individual and her readers (or listeners, etc.) know expression for what it is (i.e. creative energy), they can partake in it, savor it, bless it, or not. However, when they construe it as Truth, they grant it solidity, a lasting relevance. And they are forever imprisoned by it.

VIDEO: SING

Pardon the sun on my face (I am unshowered, hair uncombed, hence resorting to camouflage) but I am here to tell you… If you like to SING, go ahead and SING. Post a singing video/audio on social media. It does not matter if you are a good/bad/lousy/average singer. There are billions of us on this planet, and we can all SING.

Express, Excess

I thought long and hard before opening a Twitter account, then finally took the plunge. Now I have two of them. It is incredibly easy to get into the trap of followers and fans when you join the popular social networks. I think that that entirely takes away the joy of sharing and connecting. In the beginning, I was indifferent to the number game, and then I got hooked. Thankfully, it didn't last long, and now I am back to my usual carefree (uncaring of the numbers) self, free to share and express what I think fit.

Ours has become a culture of expression, over expression really,  and excessively so. "I am tired, I walked so much ALL DAY!," "That b*#%#^% took away my brother's kids," "All sloshed…," "It is raining," "My cat peed," and so on. I wonder if these folks tweet every thought that passes through. That would be an impossible task but they do a good job, nonetheless. On and on, these devoted Twitterers keep at it, day in and day out. This is supposed to be a space of conversation but if all that we are doing is exchanging "It is raining" with "I am drunk," I wonder what kind of a conversation is happening. More importantly, do I want to be part of it?

Let me clarify, there is a lot of good stuff happening on Twitter. Interesting links, engaging ideas, warm and fuzzy conversations, brilliant connections – they are all there. A lot of it is also noise, plain noise. People broadcasting their random thoughts to no one in particular. Or to anyone who's listening.

A lot of times, I am tempted to tell people to shut up. Be quiet, please. Bah, who am I to do that? It is a free space. That, I think, is part of the problem. Don't get me wrong; I am all for free speech. But I think 'free speech' has been understood wrongly by many people. We tend to equate freedom with a 'I-will-do/say-damn-well-what-I-wish' attitude and not 'How do I use this freedom usefully?'

Take Pinterest. An infinite wall with infinite pictures hanging on it. You browse a webpage, like an image, tack a pin. Like another image, tack another pin. Thus the wall grows larger, the number of pictures keep expanding. It is an inspiration board, they say. If you have 3500+ pictures tacked on your wall, which ones do you look at? How does your browser window even accommodate these pictures? Of course, you got to keep scrolling down.

Reading, talking, tweeting, posting, pinning…. Phew. It is a whole lot of excess, don't you think?

Over the years, I have started to express less of what I think. Thousands of thoughts rush through this mind daily, some useful and meaningful, the others are pure drivel. Actually, that isn't true entirely. Meditation and yoga have transformed this mind. There are fewer thoughts and they are more directed, stronger in intention and powerful. And that's what gives birth to a post of this kind, or some other good writing. That's the kind that deserves expression and a presence for posterity on the walls of the Internet. Not "OMG. Is that sunshine?" or "The house smells like whiskey."