I write therefore I am

When society as you know it effectively shuts down, when meeting places and social venues are ordered to close their doors, when isolation - normally something you associate with a scene from the Shawshank Redemption - becomes common place, the confines of your residence can resemble a prison.

They say, or at least they should say, a 'PERSON'S home is their castle'. When it is your home, your work place, your gym and your social venue it can feel a bit 'samey', very quickly. What you have though is a fair amount of time to consider the state of things. That doesn't by any means suggest that you can't still procrastinate your way out of painting that ceiling or putting up that frame, which at this stage would look odd anywhere other than propped against the wall anyway.

Descartes is generally accepted, albeit in French, to have penned the phrase, 'cogito ergo sum' (I think, therefore I am). It is celebrated as capturing, in beautiful simplicity, the quintessence of human awareness and the state of being. In the modern world where a phrase roughly along the lines of "if you don't post it, did it even happen?" is aptly used to describe our use of the internet, I have clumsily played on the phrase and made it "I write, therefore I am". This is partly to avoid doing anything else but it is also to underline that the dissemination of writing and images is modernity's equivalent of such a proof of life and consciousness. An unexpressed, unarticulated, unwritten thought - well, did it even happen?

Writing though also serves a greater purpose than simply recording the occurrence of thoughts. It can be a profoundly cathartic and revealing journey of the self. It can simultaneously offer yourself and others insight into the recesses of your mind. That won't always reveal overtly positive things but the better you know yourself and others know you, the more your chance of feeling comfortable in your own skin. That's what I think anyway and as you read this, you now know that is what I think - even if you think it not.

Still here? Oh ok. Better make some sort of discernible point quickly.

My thesis isn't actually profound or complex, it's fairly straightforward. We only take time to investigate, introspect and impart when we aren't so busy chasing our own tails day-to-day and mindlessly exploring the venues that we have chosen to escape to. Each restaurant and bar is an experience that we rate for a moment but doesn't often actually enrich our existence in the way even a little bit of time thinking and writing might. This is one of the miraculous silver linings to the Covid-19 situation. Incidentally, this is a subject I have posted about recently ( https://www.dhirubhai.net/posts/sahar-farooqi-1b57617a_coronavirus-activity-6646676228264730624-3-nK)

Reconnection with the basics, with each other, with ourselves is what we can enjoy at the moment. The longer this pandemic goes on, the less appealing it will probably become, I suppose. After all how long can I be interesting to myself, let alone others. I certainly hope it's over before I start using large Nutella Jars to store my urine a la Howard Hughes.

At the outset and for the moment at least, I'm buoyed by having a moment with my thoughts, in using the words I know, to give them expression and life.

From within the confines of my own prison, my own castle, I write therefore I am.