Pokey

They say behind every imagination lies a wish but there are times when one wishes not to imagine. Every deep desire however dark is masked by one of those little irrelevant day dreams. Those desires we cannot accept are washed off with a shrug as a hopeless mind trick. Though we barely may admit them in the public eye. I have met very few people who can accept their dreams and term them as their desires. They seem to me as quite an interesting lot. They understand something about themselves that others don’t. I recently met such a person.

Pokey is a man in love. He’s a man I’ve known to be in love perpetually. The object of his affections resign from time to time but the love is constant, permanent and universal.
Pokey singularly follows whatever takes his fancy. It does seem a bit odd in the beginning when he drags you across the city on foot because the love of his life detests the pollution and is concerned about the carbons caused by vehicular pollution. Then there was the time when another unfortunate girl was plagued by his attributions who seemed interested in theatre. In fact, She was a rising star in the City’s art circles causing Pokey to suddenly become Shakespearean. Much to everyone’s dismay, He would keep quoting the poor fellow to just about anybody, including the vegetable vendor. The point I wish to illuminate is that, the fellow would not only be a passive lover but he would go all out and devote his attention to the minutest detail. He is what I would call the perpetual student. He studies what he likes and I rather enviously admit, he excels in them. True, He never gets the girl in the end but I suspect that he doesn’t want her. He rather enjoys the chase. He won’t admit it, mind you.

You see Pokey had once had a very dysfunctional relationship. A happy couple that went very wrong. No reason. Just one of the many things that happen in life. Pokey’s love had never died out though. He simply said to me once,” You know Aabhishek, I often wonder how beautiful love is. If it felt so bloody wonderful with the wrong person, Just imagine how ecstatic it would be with the right one.” To a cynic like me, it did seem that the beer was taking it’s toll but the problem with people like Pokey is like swine flu they are bloody contagious after you’ve been with them a while. You can’t help but be affected by his enthusiasm and devotion when he goes in for a girl. I have never once seen him unhappy. Not even for the girl he would have devoted enormous amounts of time pleasing her in little ways. When the girl absolutely assures him that he has spread more than enough joy in her life to last her a lifetime, does he shrug his shoulders and move on to the next one. I have never really understood what drives the fellow but it appeared I could learn a lot from him. Whether his desire to fulfill an unfulfilled love fuels his imagination or his imagination of his incomplete love fuels his wishes, I shall not know.

The Tyranny Of Optimism

The Tyranny Of Optimism.
the interim period between relationships is always the most educating one albeit the most frustrating one. It is a phase where optimism must reign supreme without which the body and mind plunge into an endless anarchy of self-destruction. Optimism is a despotic ruler. It is the bastard child of disappointment and determination conceived when one faces disappointment with determination. Optimism implies an underlying disappointment to it. As without the fear of disappointment, what does one have to be optimistic about?

Optimism is a state of being, Its not an attitude. There is a constant threat to optimism. Events which can quell it. It is meant to be a temporary being. The ingredients of attitude, usually need to be of a more permanent nature, meaning no matter how screwed up the circumstances are your reaction to it does not change. Optimists often argue that it is the best route to take in uncertainty. But the dominance of this beast oversteps all thresholds of uncertainty.

Once optimism has made a conquest of you, It shall lead you into avoidable circumstances with an unrealistic belief and complete ignorance of facts. It is hard to tell when optimism mutates into overconfidence for there is a very thin line (If at all) that separates them. Overconfidence grows up to take the form of recklessness.

Optimism does seem to remind us of a great king who started what might once have been a revered dynasty only to rise into infamy due to his long line of wasteful scions and spiteful tyrants.

Similarly optimism may do wonders for you now but keep watching for that line so you don’t go into a restaurant hoping to pay for the meal with the pearl you hope to find in the oysters.