As usual, his thoughts didn't live up to his expectations. Why he even chose writing for a living, had been a mystery to him as well. He looked at the greenery outside the window of the train as he opened his diary for the umpteenth time...
It was all going overhead for him.
"I feel so..so intellectually challenged."he lamented. "I feel I've used up everything I have. I can't see myself writing anymore."
The old man took pity on him. "Every time you wrote, there was a third eye which you used to describe the world to your intellect. The description filled the well of thoughts and thoughts overflowed. For whatever reason, that well seems to be empty....so very empty!"
"Yes...I do feel empty" he agreed. "But then, there was something that always filled that well you're talking about. Experiences. Little ones, big ones, huge ones. Experiences I had been through. Experiences I had heard about. Experiences I could connect with and weave a story around. Why does it seem so difficult to spot one these days? Is it because I've lost the art of spotting them? Or have the people around me stopped having experiences of any sort?" He was getting agitated by the moment.
"You've simplified your life a little too much in my opinion...." the old man said. "You've classified some experiences as mundane and have stopped bothering about them. You fear going through certain experiences. So you can never write about them. And, you're too timid to write about a few experiences you've gone through. Unless you choose to open up your mind in one way or the other, you're going to face this famine. Only a rain of experiences can make the land of thoughts fertile. You may then sow seeds of imagination and reap a harvest that is intellectually pleasing."
He could see the greenery outside. Vast expanses of cultivated land were now being replaced by wilderness. He felt a strange sense of creativity embedded in the wilderness. The old man seemed to have read his mind already. "This is where writers like you and me thrive. In the wilderness. Where your thoughts can grow the way they want. Small plots. Huge ideas. An idea clinging to an other one. One thought growing on the other and feeding on it continuously. There is no boundary for creativity here. Whereas the cultivated land earlier, the story was slightly different. The harvest was excellent, but somewhere, there was a boundary. Somebody had defined what was yours, and what was not........."
He enjoyed the limitlessness of the wilderness for sometime, in silence. The old man made perfect sense.
He first had to come out the boundaries he set for himself. He had to start experiencing life all over again- though that wouldn't be easy. He looked at the old man.
The old man was writing away. There never seemed to be a pause in his writing. At this rate, he would write a story every hour!
He asked the old man "How do you manage to write so much? And so soon?"
The old man chuckled. "Thanks to you, I think I've discovered a new secret to writing today. Your mind can have the greatest of ideas, but the subtlety can come only when you put pen on paper. I might've compared your creativity to greenery. It was the spur of the moment. But unless I articulate it, I may not remember it at all later. When I met you today, I could recognise your problem, because I was going through the same myself.
I could see your hands twitching as you held the diary, yet I could see your mind twitching as well. I could see it hesitating to put a shapeless idea on paper. It had its own inhibitions. It had its expectations to live up to.
I felt it was the same with me as well. To be honest, a mind goes through cycles of drought and abundance. It is how well we combat the season of drought that determines how productive our season of abundance is.
I started writing in front of you...and I can already feel my season of abundance beginning....
Like everything else in life, it's a cycle........."
Suddenly, the train entered a tunnel. The darkness lasted quite a while. When the train was finally out of the tunnel, he noticed that the old man was no longer seated opposite him.
Finally, there was a sense of resolve as he opened his diary......
-20th July 2013
