Today is again one of those days, when I sit in front of the screen and wonder why the thoughts don’t flow forth. Maybe all I had to say I already have. Maybe it’s because the amount of information flowing into me and out of me was disproportionate which has led to this stalemate.
If only I had listened to the (only) wise man’s words, the revered Dalai Lama. He said, “When you talk you repeat what you already know, when you listen you may learn something new.” At least, I think he said it, I can’t clearly remember, I really wasn’t... never mind. But it won’t just be the holy Tibetan monk pointing out my deficit of intake of meaningful sounds that could be thoughtfully processed by my brain to yield wisdom, my girlfriend would be with him on this one.
And if there is any solace to be taken here, it is that I wouldn’t be alone in this line-up. Men of all shapes and sizes, across the boundaries of time and space, men since time immemorial and unto eternity, men in a line stretching all the way to infinity and back would be standing there shoulder to shoulder.
Some men may still be missing for they probably never paid attention to where and when to turn up. But having stretched this imagery to somewhat contorted levels of exaggeration, the idea stands clear: men don’t listen.
Nothing wrong with our aural-receptory devices (a.k.a. ears), it’s just that we as men have the strangest bouts of attention deficit disorder, wherein we have incredibly reduced periods of focus and distractions cloud over lucidity.
Which means that the rate of entry of data is equally matched by its rate of instant exit. In short, we hear a lot but retain nothing. This can also happen with our other senses; we can see but never notice, smell but not register, and even touch but not be able to tell.
In short, it’s in the nature of our tribe, imprinted into our very DNA, that there shall be times when we are physically present but mentally floating somewhere else. And the only thing which that seems to only further escalate this is when the origin of the stimulus happens to be a woman!
Love at first sight, if you now analyse, isn’t as much a romantic thing as it is a momentary ‘All Systems Failure’ in a man, clearly stemming from what I have just described above.
Sorry, if this killed the joy of your upcoming first anniversary celebrations. And furthermore, if you notice dear ladies, you will find that I have shared and even tried to explain this complex medical situation but have offered neither hope for redressal nor any scope for improvement; it’s just that I am not very comfortable with lying in print.
If the person you are with shows as much as an iota of betterment, consider his love the true kind and his efforts the most laudably noble and sincere. But if he has forgotten all about it by tomorrow morning and goes back to being a silly person, love him even more for it!
The writer is a lover of wine, song and everything fine
