Minding my business

In recent news, Trump was suddenly enamored by the economic metaphor ‘Priming the pump’ so much so that he claimed that he invented the phrase. Meanwhile I try to mind my own business and not think about the craziness of the whole situation.

Yet on my way to work, I find myself reflecting on the phrase ‘Minding my business’ in a new light. I see the words ‘mind’ and ‘business’ with an angelic halo and the subtext saying ‘my mind, my business.’ I take this as a passive-aggressive way for my sub-conscious to question the affairs of my mind.

Recently I was on a binge overdrive consuming non-stop Dexter seasons only interrupted by late night comedy shows skewering Trump. Binge watching is essentially mental hibernation for me, complete thoughtless state with no priorities and no guilt. Top that with the incredulousness of news from Trumpland and your mind will scream for detox as well.

I have pulled many movie/ TV marathons, vegetating in front of the screen and wasting a good many hours of my life. Dexter (till season 4) is perhaps better than some of the other stuff I have consumed like a junkie, but this time around it feels like ‘I am too old for this s***.'

Oh the joy of finding the perfect phrase/metaphor/meme to express my thoughts!- Thank you Mr. Murtaugh, of course I didn’t invent it :)

Resemblances

Do we seek out for them or they just jump out to us? I am more inclined to believe that we try to seek out for them. At certain points of your life when you are unsure of which direction to take you seek consolation in the slightest resemblance of your predicament you see around. There may be real people but if you have a real good imagination then you can look up to characters from a novel or movie or TV series characters.  I am not sure if you should applaud your imagination for figuring out that uncanny resemblance or pity yourself for seeking out fictitious pillars of support. We like to believe that we are strong and rational but we are fragile and irrational at the same time. So we are willing to believe in a make belief world only to make sense of the situation that you find yourself in.

I wish I could dismiss this just as an over activity of my mind. However I can’t and I’m here to argue my case. The imagined characters we see, read about evolve out of someone’s own experiences at some point of time. They do have an iota of truth about them and there can be a possibility that that truth resonates with your own belief. Art comes closest to life when people can actually relate to it in personal terms. So I would say it is good art if it can make that relation and strike that resemblance. Moving from pure art to commercial movies and soaps, don’t sneer just as well because I was someone who did that just a few days back and then I realized I’m also culpable to believing that sometimes your life, your personality comes close to some fictitious character on the idiot boss.

However nature is just not good at creating identicals, it doesn’t repeat its code. The closest it allows are resemblances, certain similar traits, but then the parts don’t add up to identical wholes. So it’s just about fleeting or uncanny resemblances and nothing more. The rest from here is your own imagination. And just like that a moment of your life may have a little resemblance with a character on the TV. And just like that you build comradeship with a certain character in the make belief world. And you wait to watch what happens next J