After an exhausting installation ceremony
of the Port Town Toastmasters Club, I was sitting along with Area Director
Sagnik and Division Director Poorvi, exchanging pleasnatries, when, as they
concentrated on their fruit cake and jelabi's, I fell silent, eyes open staring
into space. Preetham, our VP PR came up
to me and said, what are you doing? You look like you are in the labor waiting
room and you've just got the news that your wife has delivered triplets! I was shocked and for a minute I actually
believed her. For I was faraway from the BMS hotel where the function was held,
literally in a blank funk!
I am a dreamer, but not of dreams. I rarely
get them. I tend to drift into space, not on a rocket, but on a cycle,
pedalling away in a vacuum. There is no road, nothing on either side or no
light at the end of the tunnel. My expression is vacant - I am there and yet I
am not. I know it, and yet I find it difficult to restrain myself from doing
that. For something to hold me in the here and now, would require me to be in a
dangerous situation of life and death, and then too I am not sure whether I
would be in the Netherlands! I am told Amsterdam is nice place!
My wife and kids constantly tease me about
my condition as they call it. I don’t notice when they have a haircut, or what
clothes they wear, so long as they wear them, and often they talk about me when
I am in the room, confident that I will not register what they are saying. But
the condition is not so bad, one ear does pick up my name, though I often feign
ignorance - fueling the myth of my condition! Its called selective hearing. One
often develops this condition a few years into marriage perhaps, but I guess I
had what these insurance advisors call a preexisting condition.
But I think I developed it long
before. At a birthday party of a friend,
I must have been in College then, we were seated in circle, on sofas or chairs.
Next to each of the sofas, were teapoys or small stools to keep the glasses -
soft drinks mind you - we were holding and bowls of snacks. I was sitting at
the edge of one of the sofas and next to me was a teapoy on which my glass was
kept. I picked it up for a sip and kept holding it for a moment thereafter, and
fell back into my lost stupor. A little while later, I kept my glass down on
the teapoy. But the teapoy was no longer there as it had been taken away. The
glass shattered and everybody yelled at me. I felt like sheep on the way to its
slaughter. They say there's no harm in
day dreaming, but there is.
In fact I was an ordinary student, not a terrible
student because I was often day dreaming. Still, I managed to get into college,
but my daydreaming threatened to sabotage me. I used behavior modification to
break the cycle. I started by setting an arbitrary time limit on studying: for
every 15 minutes of study, I'd allow myself an hour of daydreaming. I set the
alarm and I cleared college, my CC CL ACB ALB. Not bad?
But I wonder why I do it. Why do I have the
condition? Daydreaming allows me to play out scenarios where you miraculously
save the day. I play out scenarios in my head that are kind of crazy, and then
I personally, heroically resolve them. Instead of being ordinary Brian
Fernandez, attending to my daily routine, I am faraway on a star trek, a hero
to someone somewhere, but remain a guy here on earth who looks like he had
triplets to those who are looking at me. Now both are pleasurable I am sure,
though I haven’t experienced the latter and it may be too late for it.
Visualization is daydreaming with a purpose
says Bo Bennett and I reassure myself that I am on the right track, but I am
jolted from the reality when I try to start my bike with the car keys or wear
my T shirt inside out. But what takes the cake is applying toothpaste instead
of shaving cream.
I’m sure all of this will get better as I
get older, and I can already feel it. Toastmasters has helped in this regard
very much. I am now able to make a full speech with confidence, even though my
mind is on mars.
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