Inside and Outside

‘Is there a story inside me?’, I asked myself. In the dead of the night, bored after watching an endless series of mindless youtube videos, I posed the same question I was trying to answer since morning. My insides were dry, thoroughly vacuumed of any remnants of creativity left, it seemed.

It was only yesterday, while returning from office, that my mind was full of ideas; ideas conspiring to get themselves out, impatient to be conveyed, waiting to be laid out. And now, it was a parched earth; a river which had run its course; a graveyard of thoughts through which I was wandering aimlessly.

‘Is there a story inside me?’, I ask again. The sound echoed in my ears as if I am staring inside an empty well. There was no story inside me and I was not sure when again I might have one inside me.

Through years of observation I have come to the conclusion that ideas come with an expiry date. Unless, made evident at the right fateful moment, they die a slow death and what is left is starved emaciated soul bereft of life.

‘Bereft of life. Bereft of life. Bereft of life’, I keep on repeating it till it dawns on me; a man without ideas is bereft of life. He struts around lifelessly, huffing and puffing day in and day out without any worthy idea living a worthless life. I am afraid now. I cannot find any idea inside me. I don’t want to die before I die. I ask again, ‘is there a story inside me?’ I draw a blank. May be I am looking in a wrong place. May be I should look somewhere else.

‘Is there a story outside me?’, I ask. It is dark outside. I look through the window. A distant light helps me in making out the shapes of the trees around. Trees, which have lived for so many years and will live for many more to come. Do they have any story inside them or their life sap is running dry too? They do not respond. The outside seems to be as cold and inert as my inside. The darkness of my room mingles with the darkness outside my window.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate my outside with my inside. Both have been equally inept in inspiring me. Both are bereft of ideas and life.

I do not lose hope though. I keep on alternating between the two spheres. I am getting impatient and angry. I increase my speed of alternation but to no avail. I keep pressing myself. The boundary between inside and outside starts blurring. I do not stop. I do not want to stop. Now, I am not too sure where I am looking. Both my inside and my outside bear similar features. They are dry and lifeless. I cannot be sure where I am at this moment. I am afraid to stop now as I am not sure where will I end up. Would my reality become inside out? I decide to go on. Soon, the boundary vanishes.

I become one. My outside engulfs me completely. My inside expands and fills everything around me. I do not aspire to be more. I cannot be less. I am anything and everything.

‘Is there a story somewhere?’ I ask       

‘You just wrote one’, says a voice inside me. Or is it outside?