We use
pots and pans as ashtrays because we cannot afford food, when this soul wants
something harsher, something deeper. We live in snares of happy delusions and
in smiled disappointments.
Tolstoy said,
“The only true knowledge a man can have is that life is meaningless.” And
Tolstoy got that one right. If you look scientifically, life is just a chemical
accident, a grand result of evolution, all our feelings that we hold so dear
are nothing but a few chemicals interacting in particular areas of our brain. And
in the most reductionist of ways life is nothing but A, C, T, G, U (the base
pairs of DNA and RNA). If Carbon was not the most fertile element of the
periodic table, we would not be carbon based organisms. If evolution took a
different course, we would look different and react differently to different
stimuli. So the question that takes away our sleep arises, ‘what is the purpose
of this chemical accident we are thrown into?’. And we all ask ourselves this questions,
sometimes we just don’t know we are asking this question. This question makes
people addicts or delusionary or depressed or cynical, hollow and dark.It haunts
us when we are alone , at night when the trivialties of the world are done,
when the neon lights have died ot when the blue computer lights of your virtual
life has gone into slumber. Everyone wants to do something meaningful with our
lives, but rarely do we find any. You could save a life, but that does not make
a man immortal. Fact is our biology betrays us here, and as Camus would say, “Lucid
reasoning knows its reasoning.” Or as Blake would say that if only our doors of
perception were cleansed.
This
absolute lack of meaning causes in us what the existentialists call angst. Or what
Camus called the Absurd. The conflict that arises when we look for meaning in a
meaningless life. Isn’t that the mistake we all make? And is that not why we
want something more from life , no matter how much we get? We humans are indeed
a curious lot. We spend our life looking for something that isn’t there. And then
we become sad and bitter. Some drown themselves into oceans of vices , and some
into the depths of their minds.
This is
where Camus’s ‘ The Myth of Sisyphus’ fits perfectly. Sisyphus stole death from
the gods and as a punishment he had to carry a stone up a mountain top. When he
reached the top , the stone would be pushed down and he would have to continue
the end of time. And yes, Sisyphus is the ultimate existentialist hero. We are
all in Sisyphus’s juxtaposition.We live our lives , study our books , do our
jobs , grow old and die , and then someone else takes our place , and then even
our substitutions get substituted. But
then Camus ends Sisyphus with perhaps the most important lines ever written.”
The struggle itself is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus
happy.”
Here is
what I think it means. Even the saddest of us have had some beautiful and happy
moments in our lives. Something that makes you feel a bit wry in our most
vulnerable moments. Maybe the summers you spent as a child playing with your
friends, or nocturnal winter walks of solitude. Maybe it was your mother’s
smile when you were just a kid, and if you are lucky enough you found it
another person (lucky you!). So life, does not have meaning. So we are not
truly free. As Sartre said,” Man is condemned to be free , because once thrown
into the world , he is responsible for his actions.” But we humans have one
quality that perhaps stops many recluses from becoming misanthropic. And that
is beauty. Beauty in whatever you find it in. Some see it in art, some in
writing, some in science , some in saving lives, some in the joy of finding
things out. In chaos or order , beauty is beauty . It is not a disease to be
classified. To quote Thoreau,” Let every man march to the music he hears.” You
cannot make a dying man immortal, but you cannot deny the joy of a birth or the
beauty in alleviating suffering. And that is enough to fill an man’s heart.
They are like the summer of life in an otherwise cold winter. And yes porcupine
tree got it succinitly right….’ Always the summers are slipping away. Find me a
way to make it stay…’ You will slip into the winters , but summer shall come
and you will feel that intense innocence of childhood summers even if your
tongue has been burnt off to taste.
So ultimately,
the only real thing in our lives is the beauty wherever we see it. Objectively
, there is no meaning to life and the universe. Most people move around in
groups of three or five and think the universe is concentrated in their groups.
And these people will probably be the real living manifestations of Sisyphus. But
you are not one of them. Otherwise you wouldn’t stumble upon this rambling in
this corner of the internet. We just have to accept that we never will beat the
absurd , but we cannot let it prevent us from experiencing the one singular
beauty we find amongst so much angst. We are but grains of sand in a
meaningless shore, but that does not deny us the right to experience the calm
of the sea. Or as the greatest of troubadours should say,” Then take me disappearin' through the smoke rings of my mind .Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen
leaves,The haunted, frightened trees,
out to the windy beach .Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow .Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free .Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands .With all memory and fate
driven deep beneath the waves .Let me forget about today until tomorrow.”
**
For some reason I don’t
know why,
Everyone is born with
a hole in the centre of the chest.
Everyone tries to
fill it with something.
Some with religion,
some with other people.
But I let it be
Because I know if you
run against the wind ,
At the right angle it
makes the most beautiful of whistles.
No comments:
Post a Comment