A Scream through the Tunnel

Plastic toys have very little value to adults. Just because they adorn the showcase does not mean that a human being values them. A child tends to play with toys and live a situation for them making them experience an event. Or that is how they create this situation for themselves. Just imagine what it would be like for a human being to be played as a toy. The difference of course is that a human being experiences the game as real and not ‘as though’ it is real. A human being is a bundle of contradictions but it is probably this contradiction that is most daunting and gives the essence of an experience. Without this contradiction there would be no experience. Take the case of someone who with great difficulty buys a Japanese dish and brings it home. But just when he tries to open it he drops it and becomes angst at the outcome of the care and effort that he took to buy it. Here the contradiction is that although he took great care he lost his favourite dish. This is experience. Someone who gives a lecture on life usually does not know what he is talking about. This boy who bought the dish could well look upon himself as a toy played by a heartless spirit.

If a mindset is a choice, then who gave him this choice? -No one. What we call experience gives us the illusion that either the universe is perfect or the universe is imperfect. The person who decides to pursue one of the two courses as his mindset is usually taking himself as a toy played by a heartless spirit. If life goes well for him then he thinks that the so called spirit is compassionate and if it does not go all that well he feels victimised whether or not he calls the spirit heartless. The person however, who gives a lecture on how to live life is removed from this zone and is rarely in touch with it. This is a secure zone trying to persuade the victim to adopt a mindset that the spirit is compassionate. This is just one of the two binary illusions.

Take another instance when a boy is going with his friends to an amusement park and on the way they have to cross a track. While crossing the boy suddenly decides not to cross the track because he had heard of someone who got killed while crossing the track as the signal did not work. He is justified in not trusting signals and he is justified in not trusting his destiny. If we leave ourselves to chance then we are toys and if we do not leave ourselves to chance we are also toys because we are still victims. What one calls life is the result of two opposing forces trying to outdo each other and as they cannot do away with each other they give rise to the product of plastic toys that we are.