White Sheet of Paper Beckons
The compulsion to fill the whiteness is real
When I see a white sheet of paper, I get this urge to fill it up with words, doodles, numbers, anything that would make the whiteness of the white sheet vanish.
The whiteness overwhelms me, mocks me, yet serves as a playground if I choose to play. It is here that I try out my ideas, brainstorm and bring new things to life. With each stroke of a pen or pencil I reduce the whiteness to lesser and lesser extent. When I’m done, all that remains is thin trails and spots of whiteness, randomly distributed, perhaps arranged in sparse yet interesting patterns.
I like this jostling, this struggle with the whiteness. Its like wrestling with a formidable enemy. I know that any mark I make on the whiteness reduces its hold on me. However, unless it makes sense to me, I don’t leave any mark. I like to play fair; my satisfaction is more important to me than winning every time.
I am somehow not able to tolerate whiteness. Every fiber of my being firmly believes that the moment I see whiteness I must fill it up. This is just like what I’ve been taught since childhood, that sitting idle is a sin. One must keep doing something. One must fill the whiteness of time with some or the other activity. Sitting idle is the sign of an uninspired and lost person, with no purpose in life. People with purpose always seek and reach new zeniths, always are on the go, always fill up the whiteness in their life and proudly showcase it on social media.
I try my best to be like those go-getters, those people with a purpose, but constantly chasing goals tires me and I need long and frequent breaks to stay relaxed. But my mind has some internal mechanism that triggers the guilt hormone when my breaktime exceeds certain duration. When that happens, I sense the whiteness of time start to surround me, drown me and finally overpower me completely. My mind goes on overdrive to cope with this but freezes. The feeling of guilt about all the wasted time overwhelms me and I need a longer break to get over that.
To avoid such frozen situations, I do my best to keep myself occupied and stay in control of my time (and avoid looking at white sheets). This takes effort as this is not conducive to my basic nature. Instead of force-fitting myself to fit into a certain mould that looks appealing but is unsustainable, I decide to address the actual issue — the guilt over whiteness in my life. I decide to sit idle at one place and do nothing. This works for a few minutes. Then I take it one notch higher — I sit at my desk, open a white sheet of paper, kept a pen beside it and stare at it. I set an alarm of 10 minutes. I want to survive these 10 minutes doing nothing. I want the whiteness of this sheet of paper to overpower me, overwhelm me, suffocate me and keep me pinned down. I wanted to feel totally beaten. It might have been five minutes when I began to feel relaxed in my limbs, then my mind began to relax as well. I began taking deep breaths. This was good, I thought. I was beginning to learn the ability to resist, the ability of self-control.
The hardest part is to say NO. Today I said, No, I won’t fill you white paper. Today I will enjoy wasting time doing nothing and feeling as empty as you feel. Instead of filling you with my crude ideas and doodles, I will let you fill me with your emptiness. This way I can also enjoy feeling filled with my daily tasks the way you feel every time I work my pen on you.
