Random Talk - The First time and the Void after it...

I am going to start this post by saying that while the title may be vague, by the end of this post you will understand what it means to me. Around a week back, I had a conversation with one of my closest friends and it was about game series; especially one in particular, Mass Effect. I was talking to him about how it, is one of those things that, transcends its flaws and how it has become such an integral part of how I experience games and stories in general. I described it to him like this; Mass Effect is the series that I want to experience again for the first time.

This got me thinking about how much we value our first experiences, be it physical or emotional or intellectual. We have this certain weight attached to our “First Time”. We are living in a world of sensory overload. We experience new and old things left right and center and as time goes on we get desensitized to a lot of them. But once in a while something comes along and it makes us sit up and makes us feel this rush of euphoria, of beauty, of happiness, of sadness, of …. Emotion, and this one small thing influences us in such a way that we can’t help but wish we could relive that moment again and again. This doesn’t mean that the times that we do it all over again is any less powerful, but just that it will never have the effect it had when we experience it for the first time.

It could be anything from a song that you listened for the first time to a movie you saw, or a sunset that you experienced or an emotion that you felt. A lot of times you can’t describe what it did to you, but you know that it fundamentally changed who you were as a person. For a lot of people, a really good example would be falling in love, and for many, it may be getting your heart broken for the first time. I sure as hell, don’t have something as profound as love, at least till now. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t felt that “First Time”

It happened to me when I played Mass Effect 2 for the first time and in the opening scene you get to experience the ship and the crew that you spent so much time on in the first time, get shredded and you glance into the silent emptiness of space as you spacewalk to save your pilot.

It happened to me when I watched Titanic for the first time. It happened to me when I watched Anohana for the first time. It happened to me when I read Percy Jackson for the first time. It happened when I saw Ghost in the Shell and met brilliant characters. And these moments hold a very special place in my heart, as they symbolize the beginning of a change in who I am as a person.

You can sit there and judge me all you want for saying that fiction has shaped me more than reality, and I would even dare you to judge me, because I don’t expect everyone to accept me completely for who I am and what I stand for. Conflicting ideologies create tensions and tensions create opportunities to learn new perspectives and grow as a person.

Over time, I have come to grow a love hate relationship with experiencing a really powerful thing for the first time. I love it because of everything I said before. I hate it because once you experience something like that; it leaves behind this huge void that can never be filled. It takes a long time to accept the fact that something is not going to have the same impact on you ever again, because you crave for it and you pine for it, and you search endlessly for it and in the end, you realize that nothing can ever fill that void again.

A perfect thing is very subjective. A perfect film is a different thing for me and my friend. A perfect song is different for me and my dad. The dictionary definition of a perfect thing is a thing without flaws, but I believe that the actual definition of a perfect thing is that, it depends on the person who experiences it. This is where criticism takes a huge hit, a critic or reviewer can only say that something is not perfect by his standards but his standards are completely different form yours.

When you feel like you have experienced something profound for the first time, irrespective of what flaws it may have in someone else’s eyes, it is perfect to you. That is why I tend to put away experiencing things I know will have that kind of impact on me. I know that I will never be able to get that feeling again after I experience if tor the first time and that scares me a lot. I put away watching “A Garden of Words” for a year and a half because I knew that I would be affected by it. And since I have watched it, it has left a void in me wanting to experience that unique feeling that it gave once again.

I guess that’s the beauty of it all. Everything you experience is unique and they all leave voids behind because something similar will become a pale imitation of the real thing. I guess we are all just full of voids, hoping that one day they will be filled, but knowing that they will remain empty forever.

I rambled on a lot in this post, but I hope I got across the feeling that I was trying to describe. Let me know something that has moved you so much that it has changed you as a person. Until next time…

Sayonara!!!