Movement Within Stagnation.

Today in one of our major classes, my professor uttered this line: “Even stagnation involves a lot of movement — it’s not being static.”

This statement literally seized and paused my mind for a second. It made me think. A few days back, I had a presentation based on the short story Araby by James Joyce- How this story represents the lives of the people in Dubliners.

Araby is a short story about the character narrator, who is a young boy, bored of the mundane routines of the grey streets of Dublin, who develops a love interest in his friend’s sister. But he fails to articulate his desires, and one day in their brief conversation she says she wants to go to the bazaar — Araby — but she can't due to religious reasons. Since he hears the name of the bazaar, he feels like it casts an eastern enchantment in him. He thinks that place would be magical, make him forget his harsh reality, and help him win her love too. But that bazaar is exactly the same as his dull Dublin, which disappoints him. And at the end he realises that even in dreams dubliners can't escape domination, and all this love and fascination is an illusion. And nothing brings change.

These people's lives in Dublin were monotonous, boring, stagnant, without any change and transformation.

Throughout my presentation I kept using the words static, stagnant, and inactivity to describe the Dubliners' lives.

And today when I came across this sentence, it took me back to the presentation.

So yes, in one sense those people's lives were stagnant. But yes, it does involve movement. Their thirst, their efforts, their thinking, their attempts to move — all these involve action.

Though the result isn't transformation and victory, yet they aren't being static. Day by day, efforts are being put in in order to expect change, though the story ends with an epiphany. 

In a day-to-day example, let's say I want to learn the choreography of a recently released song perfectly. Day by day I'm putting in efforts, beginning with accommodating a little time and then slowly increasing it. But I feel like I'm still at the same place. But the actual truth is, I would have improved a percentage daily, though I might still want to reach the actual goal.

So in this case I don't think I can call this stagnation. Because here it involves hard work, efforts, time, and dedication. Though it doesn't offer the imagined result, still the work is being done towards it.

Is progress only about being fast? No, never.Slow and steady can also win the race. Though we might feel like we are stagnated, still in the same place.

It carries the other side of meaning as well. Stagnation is also about being still . As few people might never take any step and always stay in a stagnated stage and sink in it, few realising and few not at all.

Let's say you wanted to write a paper. In order to write you need to think. Where does that thinking come from? From reading and other activities that enrich it. We shouldn’t just keep  thinking about reading instead we should actually sit down and read. Just thinking, thinking, and never making it out into action is stagnation ( Such stagnation is often the result of procrastination) .