It’s not easy to pick on the clichés in life when life itself is one big overused idea. Familiarity does not only breed contempt when it comes to life, it breeds a sense of comfort too. The tension between comfort and contempt is the paradox that one must live through.

Whatever the circumstances of birth, there is a compulsion to lead a clichéd life. In most cases, this involves getting education, learning ‘social graces’, landing a suitable job, getting married, having children, working, followed by the inevitable reality called death.

That is the standard model of life, if not success, carefully and thoughtfully designed for human beings who don’t tend to question it most of the time.

And yet they can’t stick with it all the time. The collective wisdom of human race gets challenged now and then for the sheer boredom it generates. For instance, family, the celebrated institution, is also repressive in many ways. But humans have such a knack for creating clichés of one sort or the other that the moment somebody starts looking away from this institution, he or she gets labelled: the erring man becomes a philanderer and the woman a slut -- a rather heavy price for trying to break free of a clichéd life, one would say.

Familiarity does breed a sense of ease in life. In a hilariously ironic way, one seeks refuge from the meaninglessness of life in words, phrases, and ideas that have practically lost all meaning -- already. No wonder, politics relies so heavily on clichés. The moment one type of politics is thought to have prolonged its stay, another set of ideas is shaped and presented as a new kind of politics with its own set of clichés.

The reason why political slogans become trite is because people see a disconnect between what is being said and practised -- the hypocrisy and insincerity is what turns them into clichés. But people generally do stick to one variety of politics or the other. And that is because their penchant for familiarity outweighs their disgust for insincerity.

Politicians, smart as they are, know this too well and aren’t therefore pushed to invent new phrases or slogans as frequently as we would like them to. Thus capitalists of today can recite Habib Jalib with no sense of shame and Naya Pakistan becomes purana (old) the moment it is uttered. As for the common people, Pakistan remains at a crossroads just as the politicians remain corrupt while they wait for a strongman to take the country out of its morass.

Also read: Death by clichés

So, are we all conformists? Or is life nothing better than a cage where there is not much left to do except to conform?

Some people turn to writing in order to get away from clichés. Others do well to read what the writers write because that ultimately is the space where there is some imagination at work. This is speaking of literature and poetry and not journalism; in journalism the sifting process is missing and thus tends to be as hackneyed as life itself because it has to report on it. And then there is music that sometimes interacts with poetry, the arts, and of course the film -- to get away from clichés that is.

Some people thus manage to find meaning in life, others don’t, while some are not ever bothered by such existential concerns.

But all of us feel, or at least express, a sense of joy to see a newborn baby and wish him or her a long life and no less than a hundred years. You can only tell a child what bliss is it to be alive and not what meaningless pain it actually is. And you only pray for ‘courage’ and ‘forbearance’ for the aggrieved family to bear the ‘irreparable loss’ if and when a near and dear one dies.

Read more on: Developing jargon

We live with these platitudes because we are as comfortable uttering them as others are listening to them. Sometimes they act as grease for a smooth running of human relationships. To ask about the weather, no matter how predictable it seems, can kickstart a conversation and any two people can take it from there.

In the final analysis, life is simple, or clichéd if you like. As for originality, it remains the preserve of literature and arts alone. They do draw on life but transcend it too.