Three friends, whom I have known since quite a bit of time, are now sleeping with the fishes, so as to say.
All deceased in three completely unrelated accidents.
Apart from drenching me in despair and creating anathema in me towards the Public Administration system in charge of the roads, it has set me off on an intense train of thought.
What is my life, but a speck of dust in this universe?
What do I hope to live and achieve?
What does my life mean to the world?
Plenty like me die every day and still many come into this world.
What is the objective of this birth?
Plenty like me die every day and still many come into this world.
What is the objective of this birth?
No, I amn't quoting from The Gita...
The purpose of life as I see it can be broadly split into two windows, the two overlapping often.
One is survival and the other is reproduction.
As I started thinking on these lines, I realized that many of our instincts, actions and emotions are tied firmly to the two.
We feel pain when we are injured or sick. This discomfort or pain helps us realize that it may hamper our survival and help us rectify the cause.
However the average lifetime of a human is 60 years, because the reproductive systems would have been degenerated completely by that time and we would not be able to reproduce.
So, indirectly Nature has no use for us after we are past our sexual prime.
Even love/sexual feelings are maximum during the period where chances of reproduction are highest.
Attraction towards the opposite gender peaks during the age of 18-35, when the hormones manifest themselves and the odds of bearing an offspring are positive.
The joy that it is obtained during fornication induces the person to obtain that satisfaction again and again, increasing the probability of reproduction.
Coincidence? Maybe not!
On a different note, the unconditional and protective love shown by a parent on a child is caused by a desire to propagate their progeny, perhaps more than anything else.
We seek to live in groups, when we think it helps in our survival. And we would fight, when our existence is threatened.
The whole brouhaha behind higher education and earning more money and so on is to land with a good and compatible partner, so that the best possible offspring could be obtained.
The first half of our life focuses on finding the best available partner and the next half deals with making our offspring ready for the same process.
So on, most functions we perform (excluding some inexplicable perversions!) would be to help with survival or reproduction or both.
Some feelings such as hunger, lust, greed have been built into us for specific reasons.
On a broader scale, human life could have been so simpler, with just two primary functions.
But the world is now such a quagmire of emotions, complications and contraptions.
We are messing up our planet in hopes of finding a better place to live, only destroying the present en route.
The feelings are going out of control and hurting others.
But not to worry. Nature has a self-cleaning mechanism every few millennia, obviating any damage done to earth and providing an opportunity to start afresh.
A holistic and subtle understanding of the purpose we are alive, would perhaps help streamline our goals better.
And in the process, we can probably squeeze in a few more seconds, delaying the inevitable apocalypse a teeny-weeny bit.
To quote Pink Floyd
"All in all it's just another brick in the wall.
All in all you're just another brick in the wall."
6 comments:
well written.thoda mushkil tha understand karna shayad...
Thanks...
Zindagi ko samajhna shayad zyada mushkil hai ;)
first things first....neeche wala disclaimer type note mast creative laga aur pasand aaya hame:)
now some contradictions to the convictions expressed:
-Nature does need us even after we fulfil our duty of reproduction. Just as it needs us to reproduce to keep the things going....it needs us to mantain the balance by living for an average 60 years.In its balance equation it has attributed us the resources for an avg 60 yrs of life.not only for this balance, it also needs us to guide our young one to his reproductive prime.
-the sexual prime is probably designed for 18-35 so that the later part of life is devoted to the upbringing of the offspring.
-parental love is not for the progeny progression because otherwise the other animals wouldn't have loved/protected their offspring as they dont have that mature sense of thinking. Neither is parental love in anticipation of old age support because otherwise the parents in countries like US, UK etc. wouldnt love their kids as they dont depend on them in that stage of life.
-if all motivation behind loads of work was for a best possible offspring then i guess those with sexual inadequacy would have lost any motivation of survival.But it isnt so, rather we may find many famous souls without kids.There is some other trick behind this lots of work.The way i see is that most of people want one, two or all 3 of power, money and fame.And those who understand the riddle of life slightly more than them are the ones who are happily satisfied.
Is the only purpose of our life is the nature's balance....???
"it also needs us to guide our young one to his reproductive prime."
Precisely my point when I said "and the next half deals with making our offspring ready for the same process."
As of animals, the basic instincts are hard-coded into their/our brains and just like many other reflexes do not need any maturity or emotional intelligence. But the love borders more on protective behavior.
"Neither is parental love in anticipation of old age support"
Yes, but that's why I did not stress on reciprocation!
"if all motivation behind loads of work..."
Valid. But maybe they are following society laid norms, but I am not the best judge on this issue!
Thanks a lot for the comment and the ensuing brain-storming mate...
:)
probably there is more to it than the 2 main responsibilities described.....
earlier when people used to live upto an age of 100 years, they divided it into 4 very popular sections of 25 each..bramcharya, grihast, vanaprasth and sanyas.....practically now-a-days most of us cant do the last two.....but may be the real understanding of our role here lies in them....
"probably there is more to it than the 2..."
There is of course more to life than the two mentioned, the realization of why we are here, and what eternal purpose our life serves. Whether we are just meant to be mere pages in history or whether we have a higher calling is what was to be discovered, perhaps for each person to himself, in the latter two phases you have mentioned.
Another interesting point is in our curtailed life cycles, once we commit ourselves to Grihasta Dharma, we are no longer eligible to graduate to Vanaprastha or Sanyas without fulfilling our responsibilities in entirety. So instead of a path that would contain a series of stages, we are now forced to choose between two branches of a forked path.
Ah,mate...but this is too much of a rambling, even by my pitiful standards!
Post a Comment