When was the last time you were happy?
When was the last time you were sad?
When was the last time you were satisfied with your share of life?
The last time you felt how unfair the world is?
Our thoughts, our feelings are but gusts of wind borne off of our experiences . Raining one minute, sunny the next. In the course of this roller coaster ride, we hope, nay, we believe that our memories are powerful enough to remember all these details of the why and when of when we are happy but how truthful are our memories?
All it takes is a 6 hour ride in a bus from Delhi to a remote village to forget all the good times you've had at home and to start cursing your luck. All it takes is five minutes of talking with an old friend to relive you of the horrors of the bus ride, before the news of an exam takes you back into your dive.
Its times like that when you truly appreciate our ability to write, to capture in words those ephemeral feelings that we experience at the time. Feelings of joy, of despair, of longing or anger, it all comes pouring out forever plastered on paper for all the world to see. It isn't for the permanence of its existence, of its survival after our death, of talking to our successors or of leaving behind a memorial that we write, it is for us to relive our own memories, to remember.
The computer has made life easier for us who hate using a pen, letting us instead write on a screen where our woe begotten handwriting is forgotten but our feelings live on and our writings only as permanent as we see fit. It has made a writer of us all and is a call for us all to begin in earnest the task of holding on to our ephemeral thoughts since A memory is what you make of it. Something as simple as going to play football with your group of friends could become a memory that you cherish for the rest of our life. To remember the feeling, to jog your memory of not just the good times, but also of the bad, to feel the nostalgia welling up in you is why we write.
To all ye folks who are yet to pick up a pen, pick up a keyboard instead and start writing, for memories may fade and feelings forgotten, but the written word stays on.
