Pami Therese Estalilla
IT'S a challenge to round up ideas when there’s a circus going on in your head. For remaining coherent and (mostly) sane throughout that daily spectacle, I congratulate all of us. Yesterday I peeked into my red tent and spied a couple of financial woes dancing bareback on an elephant that had the faces of politicians painted on its side. Book chapters were doing daredevil stunts on the flying trapeze, while tasks I postponed indefinitely danced to a marching band of vague future plans. (Whenever that happens, I prefer to watch the clowns.)
But lately, I’ve been more concerned about the ideas that get away. They manage this so frequently on a universal scale that it bothers me. You know what I’m talking about- those times when something just clicks into place, and you are overcome with a wave of inspiration. It might be the answer to a question you’ve been asking for ages, a dream you just remembered, a picture in your mind you suddenly wanted to paint, the beginning of a story you would love to write, or a combination of notes that you could have allowed to unfold into your musical masterpiece.
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You don’t write it down immediately because you’re underwater or crossing the street, and after a momentary distraction- it’s gone. Not even in the absolute sense of
“gone”. It’s no longer with you but still somewhere in the vicinity, just a little more than an arm’s breadth away. That’s what makes it worse. You know it hasn’t completely left, but you feel like a child helplessly grasping at a balloon string as it moves further and further away.
So I’ve been wondering- where do all these lost ideas go? Often, I visualize them as not too different from those balloons, in that they float in a similar way until they reach a certain altitude- where they cluster eternally in a Limbo where nobody else can go.
Then again, the Limbo of Lost Ideas may be a recycling center- which brings us to considering where they might have come from. Sometimes, inspiration just seems to strike us out of nowhere. Suppose the poets of old were right and they do come from a higher place (a conclave of Professional Muses on shifting schedules?), seeds of potential sent to us as opportunities. The chances missed regroup into the Limbo and wait to be sent out again, hopefully this time to people who will recognize their massiveness and hold on more tightly.
An alternate picture- they do not float by themselves at all, but are snatched away. There’s an age-old belief that the Devil is responsible for it. I personally doubt that Devils would bother themselves with this tomfoolery at all. (Now, I may be racist, but if they begin with capital D’s, they might prefer more dramatic matters like Eternal Damnation and the Philippine Elections.) It’s far more conceivable to imagine invisible beings with the mindsets of imps and poltergeists (more mischief, less hellfire/brimstone) hovering over us with their catch nets, ready to seize what they can for their own collections (to mount on walls and show off to imp friends).
What if no idea was ever lost? What if the forgotten questions were verbalized, your next-door neighbor wrote his bestselling novel, and you applied that brilliant concept into the most memorable TV ad of the decade? Imagine the possible advancements in science, technology, medicine, music, literature and new forms of art, things we couldn’t begin to imagine today. But would this alternate dimension be a utopia of sorts? There is no guarantee.
Perhaps it’s the universe’s subtle way of checking our pace. With Man’s capacity for destruction, who’s to say we wouldn’t have blown ourselves into oblivion long since?
And yet it would be nice if we were each allowed the once-in-a-lifetime chance to venture inside that Limbo (or Recycling Center, or Imp’s Collection) of these Ideas and choose a handful of them to take back home. (Are you listening, Santa?)
Wishful thinking aside, there is a remedy, after all, to minimize our losses: Write it down. Right away. Write it down while you still can.
