Nerve Endings Firing Away

“Some things you know all your life. They are so simple and true they must be said without elegance, meter and rhyme. They must be laid on the table beside the salt shaker, the glass of water, the absence of light gathering in the shadows of picture frames. They must be naked and alone. They must stand for themselves.” – Philip Levine. [via The Scientific Indian]

The best things in this world are the simple ones. Simplicity is often forgotten amidst the chaos of more complex things. But things are not complex, they just appear to be complex or rather we perceive them to be complex. It assuages our psyche to make things complex and then try to decipher them. It gives us a false sense of comfort to see through our self-constructed fog when in fact, it never existed. You can explain the entire cycle of evaporation, condensation and rainfall to explain the simple concept of monsoons but a simple statement that the heavens are showering us with joy seems much closer to the truth. I do not wish to disparage science or logical thinking. But to think beyond the facts makes everything around you much more interesting and fun to experience.

It may seem so stupid cheering and screaming for your favorite team on the television but seen through the eyes of an avid sports fan, nothing can be more uplifting. Giving those jingling coins to a homeless person huddled on the cold street corner may actually encourage begging but nothing seems closer to self-satisfaction than doing exactly that. A girl with twinkling eyes and a mischievous smile scores more beauty points than any uppity supermodel in skimpy outfits. We can never provide any logical explanation for our actions, it just feels right.

Complexity blurs life; makes it appear robotic and mundane. I think Ayn Rand’s Objectivism also argues for similar values subtly. We enjoy such things for the way they are and not for the way we want them to be. Things can be much simpler than we think they are. All it needs is a sense of perception and eye for the little things that we often glance over.