Wednesday, September 15, 2010

We need space

Yesterday night while walking to my room, I realized that I was the only one moving. The trees (even the leaves were still), the shrubs, the street, the street lights, everything was still. Later while walking across the area outside the canteen, I saw empty chairs and tables, and knew that somebody must have been sitting there till few hours ago. It came to my mind that places empty at night are occupied at some time during the day, and vice versa.

We people need space to live, to move around, to get together and spend time together. Same is the case with animals. As humans, we have specific place for specific purpose and it makes things convenient and easy to live.
Imagine living like a tree, stuck at one place, everything you need is supplied to you but you can't move, in fact you don't have to move because there is no reason to move! This is different from being captured in a cage because the person/animal/bird in a cage does move around in the enclosed space available.
Sometimes huge space is liked as in case of a big bungalow, but the same is detested in case one has to walk some distance to do some work or get some work done. Little space such as my room works great for me, except for doing exercises.

Many animals mark their territories, be it for hunting or living. We do the same, we have a fixed residence, a definite route to workplace and back, few other places one visits etc. Different kind of spaces mean different to us. For me, being in open space like a football field after a long time feels liberating, being in a closed space like one's room feels comforting.

Genghis Khan raided and plundered many lands and their wealth. The notion has always been that once the land is captured, anything on it belongs to the conqueror. The interesting thing here is that a person can keep his land or his property on the land that may belong to someone else only by paying something in return for his ownership!

"How much land does a man require" by Leo Tolstoy, a must read in this context.

2 comments:

Amit Kabra said...

Scientist ...
I tried to be in your state of mind after reading this post and then I tried to figure out why you wrote this post ...
I didn't get the answer, can you elaborate on it??

Abhishek said...

@Amit: "It came to my mind that places empty at night are occupied at some time during the day, and vice versa." is the reason I just wrote this post. It was a thought that excited me and I wrote as much related things I could think of, related to it!