Toilet Paper

The learning process is never a pleasant process for human beings. After all, we are not machines that we need only to be input with information, and voila, we have learned something new.

The human brain is more like a coconut. To get something in, one must first drill a hole. The drilling of the hole itself, is so painful that remembering the thing that was inserted becomes a breeze after that. Then there is the problem of being filled up to the brim. Once the full capacity is reached, even drilling a hole does not help. Often in these circumstances, drilling might only spray out whatever information there was, creating a real mess.

The limitations of the human mind, which has often been alluded to as the ‘human condition’, is manifested in how we live. How we live, and why we go through all that we really do, however mysterious it might appear later, is all supposedly part of a greater plan of God, or evolution, and which has nothing to do with increasing the general happiness, although the mass media might portray it in that way.

Yet, on a more holistic level, there might seem to be some patterns that a few individuals follow as they go through life, something that can be likened to the life cycle of a most common, and extremely ignored, yet most important commodity in our metrosexual lives, the toilet paper.

Think of it in this way. Toilet paper is something that we never want to run out of. Isn’t that basically the same demand we have of life? We don’t want to grow older or what some people call be ‘mature’, face reality and the likes. Instead we hope to count the years, but not have to grow old.

Every role of toilet paper has that fresh white and sterile look. It looks like the face of a new born baby, so full of potential. It looks like infinite possibilities, the beginning of an unending journey. It is almost a symbol of hope, something that all of us yearn for in our spare time.

It’s like when we are in the toilet doing our thing, and messing things around a bit, the first thing that comes to our mind is that white roll of paper. There is hope when we find it, because when we are done with our duties, and we reach for it, we keep pulling at it to our heart’s content, thinking that, that little role will keep giving out paper forever, to wipe away our mistakes. Then, after we are done with the wiping, and we look at the roll again, finding how little the diameter of the role seemed to have reduced, it seems like magic that we could use so much yet not diminish its girth – an illusion of infinite supply. In life, our environment treats us in a similar fashion. We step into a world with our pink cheeks and toothless and innocent grin, and the first thing we are made to believe is that there is infinite hope for all of us.

The point comes when the roll is half finished and it suddenly dawns on us that the roll is already half finished! No problem though, there is still a long way to go. Although at this point, we realize that even toilet paper is not immortal. We start caring less, beginning with operating it with hands dripping water, tearing in the most careless ways, not paying attention to the serrated intervals designed to making tearing toilet paper easy and aesthetic. The marks of misuse start showing, just like life at this halfway stage. We realize that we have crossed a milestone and that whatever we have not been able to achieve during that time, we will never be able to achieve in the future. This makes us care less, lose hope and become cynical.

Then the toilet roll thins out, and to get any job done, it must be used conservatively just like the way old people think, so that we can hope that it will not run out while we are at it, and also to use it a few more times. This follows inevitably to the end, which we are all afraid of, mostly because we, as human beings, are too lazy to get out and take part in this most mundane exercise of having to buy toilet paper every time, because it runs out quickly, against all our concerted wishes.

Thus, our lives are like the roll of toilet paper, and even if we rationalize our existence by trying to be happy for as long we can, and writing metaphors about coconuts, our time will eventually be up, and before it does, we have to ask ourselves whether we have done enough to keep the paper rolling, so that for generations to come, just like so many generations that have gone by, we can keep cleaning our own crap.