To All That We Need…

“Your one thought is a precious paint brush of yours. You have been given a repertoire of various colors; bright, light, dark and grim, countless colors. Your mind is a palette, too, and your canvas is the universe around you. Do you have any idea how tangible your strokes could be with this brush? Wait, did I tell you this brush has one more eccentricity to share? It attracts similitude.” He couldn’t keep track of the rest as he woke up precisely at the same instant. It was a recurrent dream as usual.

He would find himself in an Art class, amongst a group of students of different age groups and an instructor with a paint brush in hand. Students were dressed in rags and tatters, sitting and listening intently on white wooden chairs and tables. In front was a huge white canvas. The room was cold and grim. The instructor, well, that’s the most intriguing part of all. It was a 14-year-old girl, dressed in an ash grey night-gown, with tangled open hair. Her face was a blur but her voice was crystal clear and that’s what mattered most. Her words had the power to drag you to other dimensions, while you stayed still in a trance. And odd was the fact, he wasn’t amongst the students but a mere listener standing in the corner of the room, beside the only window in the room. It was dusk outside.

He struggled to shut his thoughts down and bring himself back to the reality common to all. “I am alive and this was all a mere dream. I should get up now. I have a new job to start today, Goddammit! Get up, would you?” He was speaking out loud and in almost ten straight minutes managed to get out of bed. “But wait, let me at least jot down the words she spoke.” He took his iPad off the side table and made note of that Morse code. In less than 20 minutes he was ready to get going. He made himself some pan cakes with maple syrup and a glass of chocolate milk. His breakfast was always incomplete without the morning dose of news flash. He switched on his iPad and scrolled down some headlines. There, something caught his eye and he couldn’t help reading it through, “Stephen Hawking Warns That Aggression Could Destroy Us All.”

“Good Heavens, what’s been cooking all this while?” He muttered in confusion. He already had a lot on his plate and now this thought. “Aggression could destroy us, how?” He stood still at the kitchen counter for a while and suddenly his muscles visibly relaxed as he decided something. “I need to see her. She could decode all this ambiguity.” He headed towards the only lyrical dancer in town and the person closest to his heart, Tennessee. Her name was enough to make him beam inside out. He chuckled inwardly. “Well, ditching your first day at new job, not a good idea but I guess aggression would take care of that too.” He seemed amused by his own thought.

“There she is.” He could never help falling over and over for that only being worthy of his complete attention in the world. She was standing still in the middle of the wide veranda, eyes closed, inhaling the morning bliss and smiling to herself. Her smile could tell she had sensed his presence there. “What now, Aleph? She asked opening her eyes slightly. She nodded him to follow her and sauntered towards the living room. He followed blindly. “Actually, I have a lot to ask and make sense of, you know.” He managed to break the ice. She didn’t say anything, just smiled, ensuring complete trust and confidence. He continued to share his dream than the headline and now he was silent and waited for her to decipher all that. She spoke after a while.

“Aleph, our thoughts attract similitude; be they negative, positive, good, evil, homicidal or revolutionary. The way one paints a picture but the first stroke and even before that the first color from the palette sets the tone for all, likewise your world works. Imagine yourself the sole creator of your life’s course, believing in the guidance from God, or for others, the universe. Your first thought is innocent but magnetic, the more you focus, it expands and the more you resist, it persists. For instance you started worrying about your presentation today, or a debt to clear or an interview to attend or a recent break-up to get through.” She paused to let the idea sink. He was too engrossed to breathe. She continued, “You started with the thought “worrying about”. You chose the color black. Your first stroke had to be likewise. Now imagine its magnetic streak. It’s now attracting similitude as promised. In a few minutes your reality would be nothing but grimmer, darker with despair lurking clear. Are you getting how this works, Aleph?”

She left him there; deep in thought and stood up to make some tea. She was addicted to tea and so was he. She was soon back with two cups of hot tea. He hadn’t moved an inch. She smiled and knocked on the table. He started and apologized for being so lost in thoughts. “Thoughts”, this word was now measuring his mind’s labyrinth. “Was Newton right when he proposed rather proved the theory of cause and effect?” He sounded absurd asking the obvious but he really wanted to. “Great, you nipped the right root there. Cause and effect, our life’s course is a conspicuous instance of that. But don’t miss the fact, not just actions have equal reactions but here thoughts, if intense and focused could actually transform your entire existence.” She sipped her tea and continued, “Now, let’s make sense of our beloved Stephen Hawking’s prediction as to the end of the world or humanity for that matter. Tell you what, he is right. Wait, you do the math here, substitute the thought “aggression” in the example I just shared, and track down the course.” She paused for him to respond. “Good Grace, you mean to say, aggression, could for sure destroy the world; one being’s aggressive thought attracting similitude and manifesting all in actions, affecting the fellow humans, who in return, having the same fatal thoughts. Lord, it’s like a jungle catching fire in no time. Tennessee, there has to be a solution, an antidote?”

She couldn’t help praising his attempt on comprehending the nature’s game. “This world also works on opposites. Remember. So the cure lies in nothing else but ‘Empathy’; an empathetic thought could do the needful only if it were of the same intensity. Aleph, we need empathy here. We need light here. It’s already dark enough to tread. Humanity needs empathy.” She sighed and stopped. She couldn’t say anything more. He didn’t force her to.