When Abraham Lincoln said, “the best thing about the future is, it comes one day at a time”, I don’t think he realized that it is exaclty the sad part also. One of my friend went through a tough time with his parent. His dad was an alcoholic who’d get drunk, get hurt, get hospitalised (often in critical condition – either by accident or seizures), get discharged and drink again. This cycle repeated for seven years before his father passed away. My friend shudders even today whenever he recounts this horrid episode. It left him a changed person. A habit which his father cultivated day after day, ruined my friend’s life one day at a time. The worst part, he said, ‘it came slowly, one day at a time’.
Legacy
I’m haunted by thoughts of what I’ll leave behind, and I don’t mean in the biological sense of offspring: after all, anyone can do that. Nor do I mean the fond remembrances of family members, which have a limited radius and fade quickly once a generation passes. What troubles me is a compulsion to contribute something enduring, that can speak of me when I’m not there.
- Matt Gemmell
This is why I write. ‘Couldn’t have said it better.
Peace Vs. Violence
We watched a movie the other day – ‘The Attacks of 26/11’ at midnight. I couldn’t sleep for a long time after that. I do know it’s a dramatized version of what happened on that day in Mumbai and that RGV has a flair for violence, but, the chilling truth that 168 people were killed and more than 200 were injured was inescapable. As that ad which (runs on TV) shows a young man sharing photos of all his trips suddenly dies in a bomb blast, terrorism can happen anywhere. No place is safe – be it the streets of Britain, the markets of Karachi, 5 star hotels of India or the mountains of Afghanistan. But, it hit close to home when two bombs went off in Hyderabad a few months back, at a bus stop killing commuters right at the place I used to stand waiting for bus.
Embracing Sadness
There are two types of people in this world – one whose basic disposition is ‘joy’ and is occasionally ‘sad’ and those whose basic disposition is ‘sorrow’ and is occasionally ‘happy’. I’m that of the latter. I am a sad soul. I know that in my heart. No matter how happy I am in a day, I know sadness will find me. I’ve been trying to fight it for years, but of no avail. Initially, I thought of these bouts of melancholy was a part of growing-up compounded by my existential stand towards life, but, now I’ve realized that it’s an inescapable & irremediable part of who I am. The thought that, I may be suffering from depression did occur to me, but, this profound sense of sadness was far more mentally incapacitating than depression (which can clinically be administered upon) engulfing my entire self. And, many a times, I’ve felt that I’ve fallen so deep down that I feared I was beyond redemption, but all these times, I knew something in me would rise up to pull me out of the darkest pits of my heart, before it was too late.
Who Determines the Value of your Life?
Should we be valued for who we are? Or for what we do? Should we do good to be valued? For legacy yes, but in general, should groups like ‘family’, ‘friends’, ‘society’ value us for being a part of them or for what we contributed to them? Should we be valued for being or doing? Is man an isolated creature? Or is his value always determined in relation to others?
What exactly is ‘being’? Is it absence of action? Or doing what is most natural to us? So what if we do things we see as natural to us, but are of no value to others? Does it make us less ‘valuable’?