Bursting with thoughts!

I've always considered myself to be a dynamic sort of person. So when the number of hours in my normal day began to stretch out in unmanageable proportions, it came as a personal shocker. Initially I was overjoyed. I started doing all those things that I wanted to do but never actually got around doing. I began to read, I started learning the guitar, even played around with gardening for a while. Time passed slowly as I hopscotched from one activity to another with the impunity of a madman. But even in this maniac frenzy, one eventually begins to acknowledge the obvious fact that there is just so much one can do with his/her time. And surely, the days loaded with activity soon gave way to days loaded with....time.

Its only then that you realize how the completely abstract notion of two hands circumnavigating twelve numbers on a surface holds you in an iron grip. You begin noticing really minor things like how the seconds hand vibrates every time it moves, or that if you concentrate carefully you can see the individual blades of the rotating fan. It is in these times when you start wishing for an unexpected exam to pop up, or your boss to call upon you for an extra shift or something, just so that you have something to do. And it was in one of these maddeningly slow time zones, when I started looking for opportunities to score, initially just to pass time, and eventually out of habit. Now I am not one of those creepy guys always rushing head over heels to get a few eye-fulls, although I must confess, I've taken my chances now and then. What I am talking about is that I minutely scrutinise my past, and to some part fantasize about the future, occasionally running into random alternate parallel universes too. I try to make a note of all the opportunities I missed, while simultaneously preparing for various fictitious scenarios as well, gauging for myself where my responses stood on a scale of say 10, and what would have been a better response.

Personally I've always thought of these moments as moments of introspection. Time when I would analyse my past and try to learn from it in hope for a better future. I must say that this line of thought gave me a certain amount of cover when my self-belief would stagger under heavy crossfire. After all, where do we stand as individuals and as a species if we altogether lose the ability to learn from our mistakes? Even the humblest of animals demonstrate this very basic quality. It is indeed, one may say, a bare necessity to ensure survival. But then again, the very essence of a species is the variety in it: The most basic game of mix and match in which nature toys with the numerous dials reading the various qualities of an individual. All that is left for me to say is that every individual is near perfect in its own way, working ever so hard towards the ultimate goal in life so aptly summarised as...'survival of the fittest'.