Skip to main content

Journey


Meditation

I started this journey at some point in the pointless flow of eternity.  As purposelessly as the motion of a stone set rolling down a mountain by the insensate boot of a careless traveller.

Unlike the stone, I have a lot of freedom to choose my path, the mode of my travel, the diversions and digressions.  I can choose the people I want to meet, or at least my responses to them.  I can laugh or brood.  Laughter will not necessarily generate flowers on my way.  Flowers are not necessarily more desirable than brambles.

Why do I have to make this journey at all?  The May fly which has no mouth answered.  “I live just a few hours,” said the May fly which had no mouth.  “When I become an adult, I mate with another adult.  Then I die.  She lays eggs and she dies.  The eggs hatch.  More May flies are born.  Only to mate and die.”  And the May fly which had no mouth died.

I learnt that the May flies never eat any food.  They have neither a mouth nor a stomach.  Food is not required for such a short journey as a May fly’s.  Yet May flies make the journey.

What’s the point of the journey?  The point is that there is no point.

Okay, if your craving for a point is irresistible, how about this: the point is that you’ve got to go on.  You’ve been kick-started into motion like the stone on the mountain and you have no choice but roll on.  You’ve got to complete the journey.  It’s your journey and no one else can make it for you.

What will I gain in the end? I ask.  Nothing.  There’s nothing to gain.  Nothing to be lost either.  It’s a journey, not a commercial enterprise.  It’s a journey in which you are condemned to make choices.  Only the beginning and the end are not in your control.  All the rest is your choice.  The people are there around you because you’ve chosen to have them.  The places, the events – you’ve chosen them.  Of course, you had no choice but to choose.

Your choice determines the whats and whys of your life.  Call it meaning, purpose, loss or gain, what you wish. 

While making the inevitable journey,
You can choose to learn, though there is nothing to be taught.
You can choose to understand, though there is nothing to be explained.
You can choose to unfold secrets, though there is no secret.

You can choose to be wise, though in folly lies the real wisdom.

If you choose the folly of the wise, you will laugh much along your way. 


Top post on IndiBlogger.in, the community of Indian Bloggers


Comments

  1. A hard fact of life but then we all live with that idea is finding that one reason that one point because of which we are undertaking this journey. Many of us say "I cant live without you" but then life does go on so what you say is right.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The "point" is the problem, Athena. I have realised that there is no "point" at all. Your spouse is not the point, nor are your children, ultimately. Nor your job, career, earnings... Nothing matters in the end. Except, what you have discovered!

      Delete
  2. So true. It's all about our choices we make.

    P.S. I didn't know about a mayfly's life-cycle. Thanks to you, now I do :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There are so many creatures which are one day wonders, Namrota. A fact that can make us wonder about the purpose of life. But the May fly is curious because even food is not a basic need in its case. Procreation seems to be the basic purpose of life!

      Delete
  3. Just playing an anti-thesis here....no matter how much we would like to believe in "Free will" always remember the quote from the usual suspects , “the greatest trick the devil/angle ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist”. Free will is an illusion, it’s all connived already by someone. :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Free will is a double-edged game, Sachin. Have you heard of the donkey which was given the boon of free will? It could choose the hay on the right or the hay on the left. It decided to make use of free will. When it turned left, free will told him, "You have the freedom to choose what's on the right." So it turned right. And you know what the free will told him. And it went on. Until the donkey died. :)

      Delete
  4. What I hated the most is that I had "no choice but to choose" and I have long laments about being made to choose the wrong options; just the fact that there is nothing to be gained or lost is what makes me still try to make better choices :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "made to choose"? teny? Who made you choose anything? YOU choose. Don't be made to choose. Freedom is responsibility. Don't blame anybody.

      Delete
  5. Very true, Sir.
    "you had no choice but to choose."
    Not making a choice is also a choice.
    May we make the right choices & enjoy Life's journey :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I too wish that enjoyment of the journey to everybody, Anita. That's all what life is about.

      Delete
  6. Nicely put...most of us are happy to go about living our lives until something really hits us bad... and we are like...why? And that is when we wish to search for answers to our existence. Understanding the game of life takes a little time to dawn on us! Just like the "big bang theory" our life is full of uncertainty and there is hardly any pattern, it is all random. Might as well enjoy the game while it lasts.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. By the time we learn to play the game really well, our time is almost over :) Perhaps, life is all about that precisely: learning... the journey itself is the game.

      Delete
  7. Your observation that reproduction appears to be the only purpose is exactly the scientific view. 'You are only a vehicle for the survival of your genes', but such an answer satisfies no one, not even the scientist. There has to be some meaning in all this, otherwise why not stop this absurd journey here and now?
    -Shajan

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The journey is absurd, Shajan. But why not stop it now? is the most philosophical question, according to Camus (The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays). I'm offering my answer here. The answer is purely mine, and it satisfies me.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

Florentino’s Many Loves

Florentino Ariza has had 622 serious relationships (combo pack with sex) apart from numerous fleeting liaisons before he is able to embrace the only woman whom he loved with all his heart and soul. And that embrace happens “after a long and troubled love affair” that lasted 51 years, 9 months, and 4 days. Florentino is in his late 70s when he is able to behold, and hold as well, the very body of his beloved Fermina, who is just a few years younger than him. She now stands before him with her wrinkled shoulders, sagged breasts, and flabby skin that is as pale and cold as a frog’s. It is the culmination of a long, very long, wait as far as Florentino is concerned, the end of his passionate quest for his holy grail. “I’ve remained a virgin for you,” he says. All those 622 and more women whose details filled the 25 diaries that he kept writing with meticulous devotion have now vanished into thin air. They mean nothing now that he has reached where he longed to reach all his life. The

Country without a national language

India has no national language because the country has too many languages. Apart from the officially recognised 22 languages are the hundreds of regional languages and dialects. It would be preposterous to imagine one particular language as the national language in such a situation. That is why the visionary leaders of Independent India decided upon a three-language policy for most purposes: Hindi, English, and the local language. The other day two pranksters from the Hindi belt landed in Bengaluru airport wearing T-shirts declaring Hindi as the national language. They posted a picture on X and it evoked angry responses from a lot of Indians who don’t speak Hindi.  The worthiness of Hindi to be India’s national language was debated umpteen times and there is nothing new to add to all that verbiage. Yet it seems a reminder is in good place now for the likes of the above puerile young men. Language is a power-tool . One of the first things done by colonisers and conquerors is to

Diwali, Gifts, and Promises

Diwali gifts for me! This is the first time in my 52 years of existence that I received so many gifts in the name of Diwali.  In Kerala, where I was born and brought up, Diwali was not celebrated at all in those days, the days of my childhood.  Even now the festival is not celebrated in the villages of Kerala as I found out from my friends there.  It is celebrated in the cities (and some villages) where people from North Indian states live.  When I settled down in Delhi in 2001 Diwali was a shock to me.  I was sitting in the balcony of a relative of mine who resided in Sadiq Nagar.  I was amazed to see the fireworks that lit up the city sky and polluted the entire atmosphere in the city.  There was a medical store nearby from which I could buy Otrivin nasal drops to open up those little holes in my nose (which have been examined by many physicians and given up as, perhaps, a hopeless case) which were blocked because of the Diwali smoke.  The festivals of North India

Unromantic Men

Romance is a tenderness of the heart. That is disappearing even from the movies. Tenderness of heart is not a virtue anymore; it is a weakness. Who is an ideal man in today’s world? Shakespeare’s Romeo and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Devdas would be considered as fools in today’s world in which the wealthiest individuals appear on elite lists, ‘strong’ leaders are hailed as nationalist heroes, and success is equated with anything other than traditional virtues. The protagonist of Colleen McCullough’s 1977 novel, The Thorn Birds [which sold more than 33 million copies], is torn between his idealism and his natural weaknesses as a human being. Ralph de Bricassart is a young Catholic priest who is sent on a kind of punishment-appointment to a remote rural area of Australia where the Cleary family arrives from New Zealand in 1921 to take care of the enormous estate of Mary Carson who is Paddy Cleary’s own sister. Meggy Cleary is the only daughter of Paddy and Fiona who have eight so