What Gopifications taught me about life

There was a time when Elon Musk did not own Twitter Facebook and Instagram had been revealed to be scavengers making money by selling our personal lives to the highest bidders But Twitter was all right I liked itI tweeted my wisdom and wit regularly to my 5000 or so followers Sometime in November 2017 I began tweeting oneliners sometimes philosophical sometimes sardonic Irony and sarcasm towards noone in particularI called them Gopifications The oneliners came unpredictably unconnected to each other I numbered them arbitrarily starting with Gopification 73 which read You canrsquot stop watering a plant just because it turned out to be a cactusSome Gopifications felt clumsy and laboured Trying to be different from their parents parents do the very things that make their children not want to be like them but some others felt positively inspirational and if I may confess brilliant 16 mdash A friend in need can take everything yoursquove got151 mdash Up and down is a matter of opinion when you live on a round planet109 mdash Dogs are some of the best human beings78 mdash Angry drivers create traffic jams Traffic jams create angry driversGopifications were meant to be silly and sly not lifechanging Imagine my surprise when a life changedmdashand it turned out to be mineOne day after an attack of cleverness I tweeted out this A day that you cannot remember is a day that you did not liveThen I started thinkingmdashhow many of my own days could I remember How much had I really lived The answer was chasteningMost of us live treadmill lives doing the same things day after day so monotonous and predictable that there seems to be no point in remembering them For example can you remember what you did three days ago on October 29 Unless it was something unusual or uncommon chances are yoursquore scratching your headItrsquos an inconvenient truth Most of our days go by in a haze lost to memory once they pass We remember highlights special events milestones lifechanging moments Yesterday is a blur But the day before yesterday is already blank flat featureless and forgottenThe banality of our lives has been measured by scientists We have the metricsYou will spend 33 of your 79 years in bed asleep Seven of those years will be spent struggling to sleepYou will work an average of 13 years two monthsYoursquoll spend 11 years four months staring at a screen Three of those years that screen will be your phonersquosYoursquoll eat 45 years have vacations 3 years work out about 13 years and romance a mere one year one monthSubtract all these routine activities from your life span and you will be left with about eight years unaccounted for A full 2997 days of life that you lived doing something not routinebut now forgotten foreverNo good This had to changeOn June 23 2012 I downloaded an app called Day One determined that no more days would go forgotten into the mist Since then I have recorded each day its mundane details its reflections its delights its sorrows My journal is 12 years old nowWhen phones became cameras I began including photos and then videos Moments with my children the kindness of strangers the surprises waiting around unexpected corners and the warmth of goodfellowship with friends and loved ones at the dayrsquos endThere were bad times toomdashheartbreaks loneliness fear despair sometimes hope and renewal Everything was faithfully noted As my diary habit grew I noticed my life changing by degreesI dreaded writing Just another day Nothing to report I found myself seeking out new experiences going places I had not walked smiling at strangers saying yes to the unexpected all so that I would have a story to tell my diary at nightOne day something came out of the clear blue sky My journal app has a feature that tells you what you were doing on the same day in previous years I took my daughter out for a pizza one daymdashmy app told me that Irsquod eaten out with her on the same day thrice in the previous seven years It seemed Irsquod had nosebleeds on certain days year after year Fancy that Some recurrences were trivial others were grand such as getting a new job for some reason always in JulyKeeping this diary has changed me profoundly I now search for patterns when I look back on my life Why I want to know have I had to deal four times with the funeral rites of someone I had not known while they lived Why is it that all those I consider my mentors were aged 52 when they came into my life Why do the strangers I meet keeping showing up again and again in my life sometimes years later What am I meant to learn from these patternsHerersquos what I am learning the unexamined life is utterly forgettable It becomes memorable only when you decide to make it memorableYou can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopigmailcomSend your feedback tomailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper