Evolution...

Why do we do anything beyond what we are paid to do? In an age where individualism or uniqueness not only gets you thrown out of society but sometime even lands you in prison, why do we still persist in being creative for a thankless world that will never bring recognition or acknowledge our efforts? The things we do, our many and varied hobbies, be it scribbling on a piece of paper or attempting to capture the play of light on a woman’s smile with a camera… what is it that drives us back to these things when at the end of the day we all draw our paychecks as mindless corporate drones.

Hammering out a heart wrenching epitaph on a laptop isn’t something that would ease our minds… far from it. The anguish of feeling the world slowly turn into a chessboard dominated by unseen powers that rule over millions of petty and worthless pawns… drives us to scream and rage at the helplessness that we personify. But, if the suffocating routine of our daily existence is so time consuming as to leave “no time to stop” or “stare”, why do we insist on taking out precious minutes from our precious respite to indulge the faint glimmer of originality in each of us that just refuses to be extinguished?

In those few moments of enforced creativity, snatched from a world in recession and decay, why do our hearts and souls gush out in the few lines we write or the few curves we draw? What is it about that seemingly random splotch of colors… that for a little while lifts us out of our shady misery of black and gray?

It appears as if the race of men is doomed to forever be balanced in the disposition of their skills. As the years drag us on into an unforeseeable future, studded with technological advancements that we can barely dream of, our erstwhile gifts in the forms of emotions and their portrayal seem to be fading gradually away.

Gone are the geniuses of the golden era who made their canvas come alive beneath their brushes. Their poor substitutes, who we are forced to worship under the banner of “modern maestro”s suffer from the same lack of originality that the rest of mankind feels the burden of. An attempt to escape the curse of the age by forcing creativity to take shape is much like forcing your body to eject the materials that were never in your bowels to begin with. All the effort is wasted and manifests in naught but wind.

Gone is the era of poets and muses. In the present age, most verses are scorned on general principles… the few that are acknowledged are throwbacks into the bygone days and mimic the “classical” nature of when the world was a less somber place altogether.

But with the departure of what might once have been termed culture, man’s intellect has grown exponentially. Logic and rationality are the bywords of today and blind faith has been replaced by the trust in theorems and proofs. Where once most men were far too shut in to even begin to acknowledge something they had not been told at their mother’s breast, we are ready to know, ready to learn... ready to question and ready to accept the answers we get.

Perhaps, that is where the key difference between the world long gone and the world which dawns… lies. In the past ages men were distinctly unique. Some could paint, but couldn’t sing. Some could think deep thought but couldn’t write a line. The blacksmiths never learned how to rear the sheep… and the scribes never learned how to ride a horse. But here, in the melting pot of the modern era… we can all do everything… up to a point.

Since we are all brought up while being imparted the “common knowledge” necessary for be an educated citizen, we all are rational. We are no longer raised as the son of a philosopher, who is being groomed to follow his father’s footsteps, or the daughter of a dancer who would learn her first steps from her mother the minute she can walk.

We are the children of an age and not of our parents. We are all raised equally to be logical in our actions… and that is all that we are expected to do, no more and no less. And so we all turn out to be rational beings leading similar lives and doing similar jobs.

We all turn out to be men who on the night of each full moon feel an uncontrollable urge to write or to paint or to sing. For just as rationality, was spread over the population of the world… the ignored spawn of creativity was scattered to the masses as well.

We may no longer have the bright blinding brilliance of the past, centered in one gloriously gifted mortal… but each of us, are now a compilation of every trait that we have ever possessed. In us run the genes of Aristotle as well as Botticelli… a blend of everything mankind has ever cherished.

We have evolved from the cave dwellers that had lit a fire. All that is left to do, is to isolate which forefather we seek to follow, and step out of the rat race. What do we choose to be... an inventor or a philosopher... or the dumb office go-er of today?