PROBABLY YOU LACK SUFFICIENT IMAGINATION, MY DEAR!

 

It's about noon and the sun is almost fully up outside.

But when a lecture is tedious, seconds pile on seconds to become minutes.

Like abandoned threads of webs and dead spiders heaping atop of one another become distracting patterns in the upper corners of your bedroom walls.

And there is no magic ingredient which will make logic good for anything in the life of a normal, happy human being.

When I thought things couldn't get worse, the professor was interrupted by the most annoying girl in class – one who loves hearing the sound of her own voice.

I shook my head slowly, I considered my options carefully.

Suicide wasn't one of them; not in such a lovely sunny day.

I lay back with my head resting on my palms and focused on a solitary dot on the ceiling.

Her voice disturbed my yoga, my serenity, my compassion.

I turned to the inner voice.

It was neither the voice of God nor of angels.

It wasn't the voice of a crazy composer or poet or philosopher either.

It was the voice of my mother:

"Kai, when you think things can't get worse, it's probably only because you lack sufficient imagination, my dear."

My thoughts swirled around the classroom.

She kept talking... with no selflessness in the gruff tone of her voice.

In the vast distance, I heard another question.

Her words made no sense to me.

Fool! Fool! Did I?

I halted, thinking I had said it aloud. I hadn't.

My own words came tiny but clear to my ears.

Next I took a pen from my pocket and held it at the ready.

"It's probably only because you lack sufficient imagination, my dear."

But there was nothing certain about my words.

I just wrote.

This morning I overheard some international students complaining about how the lady at the coffee shop was rude to them. They sounded really mad; mad enough to shout "I'm going to write a letter of complaint!"

Wow! That lady must have been really insolent.

What did she actually do?

Did she rip them off?

Did she swear at them?

Was she offensive?

Was she racist?

Probably not!

Probably she was just being a bit Flemish – blasé somehow.

Okay! Maybe she was a little rude – like everybody else.

Perhaps she got up with too little time to get ready.

Perhaps she hadn't had her morning coffee herself.

Or she had a fight with her partner.... or perhaps she doesn't have a partner at all.

Maybe she thought it was Friday only to realize it is still Thursday.

It's only through the details that the bigger picture is revealed.

So I looked into that girl's eyes, trying to practice my own philosophy.

All I heard was blah blah blah! My ears felt like burnt sausages.

Indeed, could anyone be more entirely wrong than I?

Alas: is there any magic potion which can turn logic into something useful and the husky voice of that girl into a nice melody?

I don't know how long I sat there like a vicious Buddha; but it lasted until I heard the professor wish us a good weekend.

Back to the beginning: it's noon and the sun is fully up outside.

But this time I was free.