Empty Shelf

    I am a man of discipline. I like things to be in order and obey the rules. Chaos isn’t my cup of tea. But it doesn’t mean I can’t survive chaos. I create an order out of chaos to survive. We all agree to a fact that everything is in chaos around us. Atleast scientifically, entropy of the Universe increases with every breath you take. It will keep increasing even if you don’t breathe. As a person who is accustomed to creating order out of chaos, chaos never lets me loose my mental balance, unlike many people, who can’t get back or take a longer time to become normal once hit by a chaos. Chaos is my playground.

           People think I am cool headed, but I am not. I am one of the most emotionally reactive persons. It is just that I don’t give a fuck about many things in life so they don’t affect me. And, I feel my emotions are my intimate actions whose audience should be restricted to only those who are extremely close to me.

                You may ask, why the fuck are you telling me all these things? Get to the point. Sure, I can. But what use are mere facts? Only facts can never help you take a decision. Fact is just a statement which hardly takes any time for you to understand. But what matters is the circumstance in which the fact is generated. “Rama killed Ravana” is a fact. You can make nothing out of this statement and hence you cannot form an opinion out of this fact. For you to gain a perspective or form your own opinion of this incident, you should know who are Rama and Ravana and what made Rama kill Ravana. I am telling all these things to point out the importance of understanding the characters and circumstances before knowing the facts. Once you know the facts, it doesn’t matter if Rama killed Ravana or vice versa. You have formed an opinion on what should be done and once the fact is introduced all you have to do it is to categorize it as right action or wrong action. My apologies for deviating from the main topic, but you cannot be emotionally attached to mere facts without knowing the circumstances. That is why people who are at higher positions and take decisions merely based on factual numbers can never really understand the impact of their decisions or why their decisions worked or failed. Once you understand the circumstance and pick up on whose side you are, the fact “Rama killed Ravana” will either make you happy or sad. So, it is important to understand characters before looking at their actions and passing judgements.

            Coming to the topic, I stay alone and one of the advantages is, I can keep my home in whatever way I want it. And I want it neat and ordered. I like my home to be spacious so I try to have minimal furniture. I keep things in my home in orderly fashion which is considered a sin among single people. There are many shelves in my home and all of them are filled be one or other stuff. When I randomly open any shelf, I know what to expect inside it and how is the stuff arranged in it. Out of all the shelves, there is one shelf to which I am particularly attached to. I store all my precious and important stuff in that shelf. There is a memory attached to each item present in that shelf.

                One fine day, I woke up and opened the shelf. It is empty. I know it should be shocking to me. But I am not that type of writer where I build suspense to reveal a fact. What people fail to realise is the best suspense is the one where facts are revealed without any suspense – where things happens when no one is expecting it to happen. If you try to build up suspense, audience will understand that something is going to happen. They just don’t know yet what is going to happen. But they are prepared for whatever suspense you are going to show. Also, I said, I create order out of chaos, I was confident that I can create an order, so I wasn’t shocked.

               First question that comes to anyone’s mind is, how did it happen? I don’t care about this question because, it has happened and we can’t reverse it. Second question- did I lose anything important. Yes, My Everything. Third, is there anything I can do about it? Nothing. Accept that I have lost it and I have to move on. Should be an easy task for someone like me who can tweak chaos and create an order out of it. I too thought so.

                Now the fact – All shelves except one shelf is filled with things. Tell this fact to someone with OCD and watch them go mad. I don’t have OCD. But I started to have this inconvenient feeling whenever I realise this fact. On top of it, this inconvenient feeling reminds me of the precious stuff I lost. First of all, the sadness of losing things. They are not just any things. I had put considerable efforts and spend time to collect those things. I am extremely attached to them. Whenever I look at the shelf, I get a feeling that the empty shelf is a vacuum and it is trying to suck me bit my bit into vacuum.

                 After going through this psychological turmoil for some days, I decided to put something in the shelf. I started to search for things to be put into it. Anything I came across doesn’t seem like it deserves a spot in the shelf – based on its previous occupants. Here I have two options – Put some junk in it and reduce its value and pacify the psychological disturbance to an extent or keep suffering till I find something worthy of having a place in that shelf. We all have shelves. We all try to fill them. What option will you choose?

P.S: I am interested in questions which either don’t have an answer or for which anyone can have their own answer.

P.P.S: May be continued!