I often think about many of my friends for whom life has been mostly a positive affirmation – fame, position, stature, natural ease, ambition, everything juxtaposing (as if by a stroke of luck) in just the right proportion. I see them making their way through life without the least bit of visible effort, basking – though a bit narcissistically – in their self-glory. I look at my own life in comparison – grumpily stuttering my way through all the wrong roads, often not knowing where to go, often wandering off in totally undesirable and solitary bylanes.
During many of these unproductive wanderings, I often remember those apocalyptical words of Thomas Mann, which, over the years, has continued to live with me and haunt me: ‘… for knowledge Phaedrus, has neither dignity nor rigour: it is all insight and understanding and tolerance, uncontrolled and formless; it sympathizes with the abyss, it is the abyss.’ As one of my friends has often put forward this question (rather rhetorically, and not without intending to produce a dramatic affect): ‘If we are like this, there has to be a purpose; why are we the way we are?’ I must admit that I don’t have a straight answer to this one. One of the negative effects, I guess, of too much introspection (and aimless wandering) is to see the elusive promise of redemption fall apart. As Camus puts it so matter-of-factly in ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’, the promise of a mythical paradisiacal homeland is not something many of us can fall back on.
Yet, for most of my friends who move through their lives effortlessly, shinning through their successes and always keen on ensuring all the right moves and gestures, there seems to be no such need for a redemptive promise or a mythical homeland. They belong to this world, to this time. This is their homeland. Their self-glory is sufficient a reason for them to exist and to exist happily. And no matter how much I sneer at the shallow foundations and self deceiving nature of their pride and self-glory, the fact remains that they savour and live their lives in a manner that I’d never be able to; though this doesn’t mean that people like us are essentially depressive by nature. It only highlights the fact that for most of them, life is to be lived: straight, healthy, and without the unessential complications; while for others like me, it continues to be a haunting, dazzling puzzle to be unravelled – one day at a time.
- Written on 11 May, 2010
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2 comments:
Whether it is Herman Hess or Vivekananda, the great people always seem to have preached the following: to know the self, absorb the world around you first! The fact that we exist in this world is fascinating enough to keep people engaged in the "present": "..bishwa bhora praan... tahar-i majhkhaane ami peyechhi mor sthaan... bismoye taai jaage, jaage amaar gaan..."! Delving into the self is the job of the expert. There is nothing "shallow" or "hollow" or "great" for that matter in being a part of an eternal progression, whose design is too intricate to reveal itself in any manner to the beginner! One does not start learning swimming till one gets over the fear to jump into the water! Bottom line: rejection or repulsion is perhaps not the best way to begin a process of realisation, appreciation and eventual enjoyment!
If a person seems to be so sure, specially in self-glory, then that person never knows the wrong and right roads, it is thus obvious that she/he never ponders and never searches, rather has no search for anything other than materials. Why worry about that!!! World is a miracle, maybe, so to discover it leaf by leaf, one may often wander, in a bewilderness, the whole dazzle of umpteen unknowns giving a joy! Joy even in sorrow! Joy of feeling! The whole universe is an abyss, or is it an elevation!!! Is it full or empty!!!
Yet to quote that comment: Akashbhora Surjyo tara, Visvabhora pran,Tahari Majhkhane ami peychi mor sthan, Bismaye, tai jage amar gaan!!! … … …
… Janar majhe ajanare korechi sandhan, Bismaye tai jage amar gaan
This song of soul, of a ransacking search for realizations, these wonders and surprises are the mesmerizing overwhelming bliss that keeps us keen to wander and lose ourselves and then gather our selves bit by bit again, to include something more each time, to make us a new ‘we’ each time!!! Is it not reason enough to be happy?!!!
Is it not reason enough not to grudge for what we are!!! Does it not bring peace and happiness to accept our own nature?!
If we enjoy complications then why think over and over again that why people are happy without complications!!! In the same world there are so many diversities… there are so many types of trees, there are cats and there are foxes, there are tigers and there are leeches, … do we consider why leeches crawl while tigers run? We take them as varieties and sometimes enjoy certain nuances!!! You may say that those were introspections!!! Well, can’t we then keep it that way? Introspections are needed for self evolution and for ascertaining our own category in this whole wide world. But then what? What I have felt is that if we really want to do something, if something is pushing us, paining us, haunting us, making us restless and agonized, then these introspections can be steps to analyze the situations that exist and accept that THINGS ARE THIS WAY and this ACCEPTANCE is a big positive push from abyss to elevation that will help us decide which step to follow to do what we have been anxiously dreaming to do.
Lastly, to our first anonymous friend…
I am not sure what she/he meant by “The fact that we exist in this world is fascinating enough to keep people engaged in the "present":”If it indicates that everything just fascinates and that is why people are happy and narcissistically self-approving of their achievements, than I doubt it. Present is a transient proposition. I don’t think RabiThakur wrote it to be fascinated by ones own “fame, position, stature, natural ease, ambition,…”. Criticism is a natural outcome that HAS to come. We can’t afford to be fascinated by everything but we are fascinated by the fact that we see, wander, feel and try to realize…realize what we detest and what we like
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