How Utter Nonsense Is Better Than Common Sense?

I love talking nonsense. It’s a pity it is not a common practice and is underestimated. Sometimes, I speak so much logic and sense at work that I must be loopy. And I tell people I feel loopy, so they must bear with me. I don’t know what they make of it, but I talk nonsense.

It is very freeing just to speak, whether it makes sense or not. And what comes after that is of much better quality. For example, once, on a team call at work, I decided to do the wave dance with a business partner who also tends towards loopiness. She and I had fun at work, and our teams really worked well together. I suspect others on the call secretly enjoy the fun without admitting it. Recently, I have come up with the idea that humans should have a button that can shrink or expand them - that way, we can hug tall people or use them for ladders. I am glad that my husband shares the same sense of humour and plays along with it.

Another fun thing is mishearing people. I have a very close friend in London who is like a sister to me. And she won’t admit it, but she has a hearing problem. She will hear hormones when we are talking about Mormons, for example. We have spent hours laughing on that thread alone. Sometimes, people are so serious, and I think the situation is hilarious. It makes some people really mad, so I have learnt to nod gravely instead of breaking out into peals of laughter. I suspect I always had this trait, but it wasn’t until London that I embraced it legitimately. British humour is always on, and it is so witty that the other party sometimes has no idea what they are being made of. After working in London for seven years, I find it hard to turn off the humour switch.

Why is this so freeing? Because at that point, we are going with the flow and not bound by the constraints of our mind or intellect. And it honours the child within each of us. As children, most of us played all sorts of games - the stairs outside our apartment were sometimes hot air balloons, ships, or plain slides. Thank god, we never questioned whether it made sense. I remember inventing games to keep myself occupied on long bus rides. It was a natural process to do that.

Some of the nonsense also translates into creativity - when I am dancing or writing, a feeling very similar to ‘nonsense speaking’ comes through. At that time, everything feels so effortless - the music tells me what dance steps to do, and words appear on the page; all I have to do is to keep up so that I can write it. At times like this, I forget myself, and that is very freeing - the attachment to this very important person who is called ‘Anu’ does not exist. And with that comes a freedom which is addictive. Sometimes, we get the same feeling while running, meditating, etc. That feeling is grace - it is always there. We need to remove our constant mind chatter and intellect to let it emerge. It’s like the sun, which is always there, only at times covered by clouds.

We need to honour it, not dismiss it if we want to live a full life. Sometimes, we take ourselves so seriously that we forget that we are just a speck in the entire universe. Even a tiny thing takes on a big proportion, but if we can see the nonsense in that, it puts things in perspective. Sometimes, we can only get out of our own heads when we change the situation completely, which is what nonsense does. It takes you out of a problem so that, for at least a moment, you are not attached to it - and that moment is where change happens.

So Keep Calm And Keep Talking Nonsense!