Distractions and destination

Once upon a time, and God forbid the second time, when unemployment plateaued out, a man became so desperate that he was ready to accept whatever came his way. At last the Lady Luck softened on him and he got the job of a loco pilot. At his maiden flight, feeling elated he accelerated the train and skipped some stops. Lo and behold, the sprinting train derailed and ran to the plains.

An inquiry committee interrogated him why, after smooth sailing, the train had come off the tracks. The man replied most sedately that he had seen a man on the tracks. One member at the committee huffed and snapped at him: “To save one man, you risked the lives of hundreds of passengers. You should have run over that man, don’t you have any scintilla of good sense?”

After passing a self-satisfactory smile, the man retorted: “I agree with you, sir. I was going to trample that man under the steely wheels of my train. Suddenly, on seeing my train, he ran off the rails. I decided to chase him down and crush him under my train. That’s why I had to go off the track.”

Distractions are red herrings that divert our focus away when the commitment falters and the destination blurs. Staying laser-focused to our objectives is the mantra of success in this age of ubiquitous technological lures.

Urfi Shirazi, a Persian poet, says: Urfi tu mandesh e zaghogaye raqeeban/ Awaze-e-saga kam na kunad rizq-e gada raa

Translation: Urfi, turn a deaf ear to the din of your detractors/ Barking dogs cannot deprive a fakir of his due earnings

The knight in John Keats’ poem, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, is tempted away from his adventure by the beauty of the ethereal Belle Dame who embodies enchanting femme fatale. She is the emblem of all distracting forces that pull one away from the centre, hurtling off at a tangent.

The traveller in Robert Frost’s poem, Stopping by woods on a snowy evening, succeeds in shaking off the lull of mesmerising beauty of the woods (the centrifugal pull) lying between him and his destination. His obligations and the considerable distance yet to be covered before he can rest, constitute the centripetal stimulus. The traveller accepts, “The woods are lovely, dark and deep,” but “But I have promises to keep/ And long miles to go before I sleep.”

Guy de Maupassant’s 1883 short story, The Piece of String, shows the main character, a farmer, happens upon a piece of string on the road and picks it up without any definite purpose. A local man reckons that the farmer has retrieved something from the ground. Meanwhile, the village herald announces the loss of a pocketbook. The local man gives witness that he has seen the farmer stealing the pocketbook. Though later the pocketbook is found and delivered to its owner, the farmer pines away to death for being labelled as a liar and thief. Distractions and diversions are the traps crouched here, there and everywhere, waiting to ambush upon us.

In George Orwell’s 1984, the constant distractions and surveillance by the Party serve to control and manipulate the population, preventing them from thinking critically or questioning authority. In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, the characters are constantly distracted by entertainment, soma (a drug used to escape reality), and shallow pleasures, preventing them from seeking deeper meaning or challenging the status quo.

To stave off distractions and marshal priorities, the students must adhere to the Quaid’s advice religiously: “You must devote yourself whole-heartedly to your studies, for that is your first obligation to yourselves, your parents and to the State.” When the environment is rife with distractions, the sense of self-responsibility can glue one to one’s objectives.

The centrifugal force is but natural for the centripetal force: both guarantee peaceful existential circumambulation. It calls for the unabated supply of a restoring force disallowing one to be carried away along distractions because when the centre does not hold, things fall apart.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 26^th, 2024.

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