Why Creative people are like Coriander
Have you ever felt like an apple in an orange orchard? Have you ever felt like a fountain pen among quills? Have you ever felt like the sober person among sloshed friends?
Well, then I must say we share relatable snippets from our life’s canvas, most of which is inked with estrangement.
Allow me, to sketch my life’s timeline while you read this and try to relate. It all began from the time we stepped through the threshold of our school, we had friends, many of them. But as time progressed we disintegrated into small groups of our own, groups with same wavelength of thought with traits that were similar. Nobody, our parents, teachers, seniors, nobody, told us to polarize, but I guess it’s a natural human tendency to do so. As long as one was in a group he had a fraternity to back him up, and the person who lacked a group had the support of his own isolation and sagacity. As we got older, so did our groups, and the brotherhood strengthened.
Now, we were in middle school and talking about other people and groups had become a norm. But as voluntary solitude is very different from communal solitude, so was the demeanour of the people practicing it. The voluntarily isolated people were considered outlaws and nobody really talked to them because they always kept a distance from the majority but the latter kind of people were like coriander, not particularly required in a dish but goes well with most of the dishes. They had the potential to talk with everyone in their batch but like a desolate guy’s fate would have it, no one in their batch would take the first step to talk to them, instead they had to initiate the conversation, always.
I bet most of you would agree when I say that they were the real pioneers who actually did new things, creative in their work, who thought way more and way deeper than the hoi polloi. Now, one might say that everyone would like to be friends with such a person, well, yes, but when someone outperforms others of the same age group, same batch; green eyes shine brilliantly and what follows is perpetual silence from the fellow competitors, not the curious.
We were in high school and time flew like an arrow, steady but swift. We found ourselves standing at tapering end of our school life, Mr. Corianders had realized by now that they had to live their life in the present way throughout, since the price one pays for being different from the crowd is ostracism.
College came as a reassurance to the conviction already formed. This was the time when they tried to gel in with the people but in that way, they began forgetting their true identity. After spending some time in that futile attempt to gel in, they realized that it was just not their cup of tea. Now, one might think life must have been very tough living in solitude but, knowledge set them free. Existentialism, it was, and a few concepts of higher physics that mostly dealt with philosophy. Following what the wise people had set as a precedent, they started being more of themselves and not the person complying with the specifications and rules others had set for them. Thus, began another stage of metamorphosis, self-realization.
Thoughts of “to be or not to be”, were flushed in the wake of self-realization.
The urge to appease others in order to be a part of the crowd had dampened. Everything headed the way it was before, the whole idea of being apart from the crowd, being an apple in an orange orchard, being a fountain pen among quills, being the sober person among sloshed friends.
If you, dear reader, find this an exceedingly relatable walkthrough, and are in search of some motivation, just remember —
What is alienated today due to inability of the society to comprehend, might be the driving force of tomorrow. Be the bulb among candles!
Yours truly,
Mr. Coriander.
