Undergraduate /
'the significance of lines in my life' something about you that you want us to know. [13]
Tell us something about you that you want us to know.
I took the pencil in my hand, by then glistening with nervous perspiration, while the anxiety slowly crept into me. I forced the ruler against the rough yellow page, wondering if this was going to be the end of what I so strived to achieve. Resisting the temptation to remove the solitary bead of sweat hanging on the edge of my jaw, I dragged my arm cautiously, careful to suppress my proclivity for straying from the line I decided to take. As the the graphite made its awaited contact with the trailing edge of the ruler, a sense of euphoria took hold of me as I realized I had managed to draw a parallelogram after all this work.
Lines have a beauty of their own. Devoid of sense of beginning and end on their own, they co-exist with various other shapes and curves, complimenting them while creating the most appealing of images. Seldom can a man stand before the the Louvre and not be amazed at how several lines come together to give us, the audience, a sense of grandeur in front of our eyes. Nor are we ever underwhelmed by the magic that the three lines, resting against each other, and a circle, nestling solemnly between them, create in Rowling's final work. We find meaning behind the interaction of lines, give them names. A coming together of three lines at an angle was called a triangle. The interaction of four perpendicular lines was called a square. At times we take these shapes for granted, forgetting the brilliance of the individual lines that came together to form a group of such lines. We attach rules to such shapes, ones we believe will hold true every time they come together in a certain way. Theorems upon theorems are built on this neglect of the individual lines, ones that we concentrated on only when they were alone. But we forget that lines interact with other shapes, but they also shine by themselves, for no man could withhold his wonder as he stands on the the edge of the Rose Line, one that traveled miles and told a story often forgotten.
Lines have a treasured place in my life. I sit at my desk, brooding over a blue college brochure, while surrounded by the lines on the edges of the walls, parallel and perpendicular to each other alternatively. Lines withhold us in the form of the limits we set to ourselves, keeping us enclosed in the square we imagine being in. There are some lines we cannot cross while some lines we ought not to cross. Some keep us safe, away from a world of anarchy and chaos, while others point us to the direction of the loo. But at times, we need to forgo our adulation for such lines and transcend our own limitations. We need to break way from a few lines, and take a stand, be it a social stand in the form of a youth movement, or a personal stand in the form of me telling my friend that she should take steps against her abusive father. Perhaps, we do not destroy lines after all. Perhaps, we create new ones as we escape the boundaries set up by the ones we cross.
As I draw another line on the yellow page of my notebook, I wonder about the significance of lines in my life. They bring a synchronization to the world I live in. They bring regularity to my actions and point the direction to which I ought to strive. Lines interact to to form the outline of the books I loved to read, while they give beauty to the neck of a guitar, calling on us to explore the depths of our soul in the realms of its metallic strings. I strive to escape some, while I am happy to be guided by some. Lines have always been a part of me, and will always accompany me wherever I may roam, whichever line I choose to follow.
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I decided to show rather than tell here. A lot of philosophical things are implied in the descriptions of the lines, and how I view them. I hope it was interesting, and showed how I think.