A watched pot never boils

“A watched pot never boils, but it does develop paranoia”
- Josh Stern, in And That’s Why I’m Single.

“A watched pot never boils” is something that you say and mean, when if you wait anxiously for something to happen, it seems to take a very long time; watching and waiting will not speed up matters. In other words, time feels longer when you are watching and waiting for something to happen. However, like many of the most effective proverbs, this one is poetic rather than literal because watching a pot has no effect on how long it takes to boil.

There are different set of rules that govern the time needed for a pot to boil. To cite an example of the idiom: we watched and waited for things to happen when a change in our country’s political environment brought hope in the form of a change in government; and we watched and waited for the pot of hope to boil. But perhaps, because we were anxiously awaiting and watching; it seemed an everlasting wait.

Nation of storytellers

It may also be that our hopes and expectations were, beyond realities; and hence, our watching and waiting had no impact; making us realise that indeed, in many instances, watched pots never boil. There is also another idiom to the effect: “There is no gain without pain”. Thus, I suppose if watched pots are to boil, the people we trust to fulfill our expectations, must act with intentions, aimed not at personal gains, but with honesty of purpose, howsoever painful it may be to their personal interests.

If they, instead, try to achieve things through cunning, slyness, and stealth, aimed at personal gain; neither will watched pots boil, nor will our expectations fulfill as expected: the very expectations that gave them strength and victory? Intention may be the most powerful force there is and the law of intentions may be the creator of this world; but purity of intentions and honesty are the essential ingredients for intentions to convert to actions; and action to fulfill dreams.

The problem with this nation is that we are a nation of storytellers and therefore listen to storytellers. After all, all storytellers are people who have good memories to repeat the same lies; but hope others do not have good memories. We have not yet realized that a storyteller lives in the world of make believe and makes up things seemingly to help other people; and, a lying storyteller will always make up things to help himself.

As a result, even after countless number of listening and numberless numbers of disappointments, we surrender our hopes and dreams to the fateful limitations of storytellers and lying storytellers. We realize not, that the vision of our true destiny does not reside within the blinkered outlook of the storytellers and the doom prophets. We have not learnt, not to judge them by their word; but by the evidence of actual results produced in the past.

We have failed to see the complete absence of anything inspiring a sense of honesty in their stories; that their words are but mystical and miraculous only in the manifested realities of storytelling. For our people who suffer the lack of abundance, joy, love, fulfillment, prosperity, and only survive on self-limiting beliefs; the storytellers, always infuses hope, with their by now well-refined art of storytelling that has no connection to the realities of experience. Our storytellers have the capability to make our wildest wishes come true; to conjure ideas that floor the minds of not only the mindless, but also that of the sound of mind. In fact, there is no limitation on what we supposedly can achieve; except the limitations that the storytellers choose to impose on our imagination.

What these storytellers believe to be possible will always come true, to the extent that their stories deem it possible, the next time round; and it is as simple as that. Hence, dare to dream, for that is all what we have been doing anyway. The truth is, in spite of the storytellers, we as a people have failed to learn that be it through intention or ignorance, our successes and our failures have all been brought on by, none other than ourselves; that what one does is what counts, and not what one had the intention of doing. Our storytellers only have intentions; and if fulfilled, rest assured that it is, based on self-interest and gain to the storyteller: nothing else, nothing more.

Storytelling

All great acts are, ruled by intention. Intentions are the basic stuff that is at the core of the universe - a kind of pure energy that flows out into the world and affects other energy systems. However, it is only when expectations turn to intentions, and intentions remain pure; they create in our soul and spirit, this flow of energy. Such energy causes to flow out into the world and spread happiness, not mere words. Storytelling may be an important part of human continuity; but storytellers, as they exist, are a threat because even if all wisdom is in the stories they tell, we the gullible, have not the intelligence to see the lies in them and fall prey every single time, over and over, again and again.

Therefore, storytellers threaten all democracy, especially in countries in which the folly of fools still abounds: be it habitually or occasionally.

They frighten through falsity, and usurp the right to the freedom of the human spirit and human mind: everywhere, every time, always - in state, in church or mosque or temple, in party congress, in parliament, in the university or wherever; the storytellers rule through lies.

Many words will be spoken and written on the wind and the sand; or end up in some obscure gazette; but the storytelling will go on until the last human being stops listening. Then, and perhaps only then, we can send this great chroniclers of humanity, out into the endless nothingness where there will be no stories, no listeners.

Waiting for the fish to bite, or waiting for the wind to fly a kite; or waiting for Friday night; or waiting perhaps for love or a loved one; or a pot to boil, or a better break, a string of pearls, or a pair of pants; or for the hair to curl; or for another chance.

Futility of waiting

Everyone is just waiting, waiting, and waiting; waiting for something or the other. Do not keep waiting, for there are only as many days in the year as you make use of. Life is short and is the way cosmic nature encourages a bit of focus and tells you not to waste your life because any moment is later than you think. Therefore, let storytellers be. Let them wait and stew in their own stories while we put wood under their boiling cauldron.

If you wait for them, it will take forever. Cast them aside and treat them as frogs: If you throw a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will hop right out; but if you put that frog in a pot of tepid water and slowly warm it, the frog does not figure out what is going on until it is too late. The frog’s survival instincts are, only geared towards detecting sudden changes.

I am using this parable to illustrate how storytellers have to be careful to watch slowly changing trends in their environment, their surroundings, not just the sudden changes.

It is a warning to keep them paying attention; not just to, obvious threats but to more slowly developing ones and to indicate that their falsities will eventually get to them. Therefore, let storytellers be. It is just a matter of working by slow degrees to get rid of them even in this nation of storytellers.

An explanation: Generally, Storytellers the world over are employed, or seek employment, in the profession of the last resort of the scoundrel.

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