I have discovered a new species of human being. The Forwarding Genius. He wakes up in the morning, brushes his teeth with one hand, and forwards messages with the other. By the time he has had his first cup of tea, he has already solved world peace, exposed three political conspiracies, cured diabetes with papaya seeds, and warned at least forty seven people about a new virus that arrived yesterday by the Shatabdi and left this morning on the Bullet train.
And then comes the masterpiece. At the bottom of the message, in bold letters, it says, “Forwarded as received.”
Of course it was received. Nobody believes it was written.
What fascinates me is not the speed of the fingers, but the absence of the brain.
Somewhere between receiving and forwarding, the thinking department quietly shuts down, like a government office at lunch hour.
Now let us be honest. Some of these forwards are quite impressive. They have facts, figures, and even a quote from Einstein who, poor man, seems to have said everything except what he actually said.
You read it and think, “This is brilliant.” But just when your mind begins to say, “Yes, but…” your finger has already pressed forward.
That “Yes, but” is the tragedy.
That small disagreement, that tiny twist in your thinking, that little joke you could have added, that is your originality trying to be born. And you have just strangled it with your thumb.
I met a gentleman recently who proudly told me, “I send at least two hundred messages a day.”
I looked at him with awe bordering on disgust. Not because he was productive, but because he had successfully outsourced his entire thinking process.
Imagine if writers did that. Ernest Hemingway forwarding Hamlet. “To be or not to be, forwarded as received.” That would have been the end of, “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” because it would have tolled a death knell to his own writing career.
Well, you may say, that it’s good there was no WhatsApp those days.
But the problem is not technology. It is laziness dressed up as participation. We feel we are contributing to society by forwarding messages, when actually we are only increasing the traffic.
Try this experiment tomorrow. When you receive a forward, do not send it immediately. Sit with it. Argue with it. Laugh at it. Disagree with it. Add something to it. Maybe even delete it. It is a revolutionary act.
And then, instead of forwarding, write one original line of your own.
Just one.
It may not go viral. It may not even be read. But it will be yours.
And slowly, something dangerous will begin to happen. You will start thinking.
Which, in today’s world, is far more frightening to our stupid leadership than any virus. Because it’s thinkers who can get us out of this world-wide mess, we are in right now...!
The Author conducts an online, eight session Writers and Speakers Course. If you’d like to join, do send a thumbs-up to WhatsApp number 9892572883 or send a message to bobsbanter@gmail.com
