Hoo...Haa...Hee! These were the sounds
that were coming out of my mouth with my arms and legs outstretched. Oh, please
don't worry; I wasn't undergoing any medical examination. Rather, these were
the sounds I made when I was asked to do a few movements and sound exercises in
my first class during a theater workshop organized by The Actor's Studio,Hyderabad.
The next exercise was to make these sounds
while throwing an invisible object to the person next to you. The next got a
bit more interesting; a participant had to start a sentence with an English
alphabet and the next person had to create the next sentence starting with the
next letter in chain, however keeping a relation to the previous sentence. Then
it was just whole lot of walking, sometimes in slow motion and running the
other times.
I didn't get the meaning of these
exercises immediately. Even right now I am not sure. However the core message
that seems to be coming from these exercises is “Let go and believe in your guts”.
Gut-feeling, creativity, spontaneity, freedom, instincts etc are expressing the
inner human desire to feel larger than life.
Confession: I have one of those desk jobs
in a software company. A number of times while travelling a question regularly come
from the unknown co-passenger, “Where do you live?” I give a polite reply, “Hyderabad”.
And then the displeasing anticipated reply, “Oh, so you're in software.” I sometimes
wonder whether it is a national opinion to consider it to be a curse to be in
the most happening industry in India.
Anyways, every time I just give a fake
smile and shake my head (accepting, “I am guilty.”) So in a nutshell; I am the “regular
technological Joe” who has the luxury to browse Facebook while working. Some
days need some mental push-ups while others I just slog through for the
eight-nine hours. In a world of Ctrl+C & Ctrl+V the creativity plays
a minimal role.
Don't get me wrong, I like my job. But sometimes
I do feel the desire to be “free”. An unrestricted flow of thoughts &
actions that seem to lead nowhere. But eventually all coalesces to form a
coherent chain of events. The desire to let go, make a fool out of myself and
still land on the safety net at the end of all the exercise. That's
FREEDOM!
"STAY HUNGRY, STAY FOOLISH" as Steve Jobs famously quoted from the last issue of the Whole Earth Catalog. I'll
just add, “Foolishness is not easy, you’ve to work hard on it”. Foolish enough
to understand I don't know it all and open the mind to endless possibilities.
Ain't that wisdom enough to embarrass some of the smartest minds!
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| The Last Whole Earth Catalog |
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