Pushed through the envelope, pushed through Life
The envelope was empty, so was life.
or
The envelope was full of hope and faith and love and understanding and protecting, friendship, family
as life can be if you but try
(as a beautiful Butterfly flew out when I opened it.)
™™™™
It was Billy Crystal, I think in the movie called ‘CITY SLICKERS’, while riding a horse, pointed to the skies and said he knew what the secret of life was. On being asked as to what that was, he said, ’it is for you to find out’.
Thus he was of no real help. So we have to look elsewhere and see what the great ‘secret’ is. There is no doubt that it is of monumental proportions and efforts must be made to unravel the complex skein and see what it might have been meant to be.
Everyone, now and then feels like what I have said above at the start, specially the elderly people who cast their glance backwards and wonder, sometimes in awe, sometimes in disappointment, sometimes in desperation, and think- ‘IS THAT ALL THERE IS TO LIFE?’
Do you, personally, at times, look back and wonder how you might have done things differently, and also wonder, with the small amount of time that is left in the future, as to how you may correct the mistakes of the past?
As the saying goes,
When I look at the work of the masters, I see what they have done
When I look at my work, I see what I ought to have done.
?Goethe
Far be it for me a mere mortal to unravel this mystery, but I intend to try and see if we can understand it, and see if you also know the answer or even help me to unravel the greatest mystery of all, dare I say in the Universe!
According to the time traveler by H.G.WELLS, it is simple. As he sits on his wonderful machine, he notes that it is the time for all the travelers between the miracle of birth up to the time when life is no more in the one that lived at one time.
The phenomenon we call life applies to every living thing- from the smallest as per viruses, bacteria, preons, to the things that fly through the air, to the creatures that live in the water- the smallest of minnows, to the mighty shark, to the behemoth like the whales, to the creatures that take temporary residence on this air- mammals, large and small, from the smallest mice, to cats, dogs, man, elephants and so on.
Looking at man, somehow he is fortunate that his brain developed to its full capacity and passes on his knowledge by his culture rather than the slow and laborious process handed out in his genes through nature. Of course, besides the development of the brain, he has become upright, his hands have developed dexterity as well as acquiring the capacity of an appose-able thumb.
But we must not think that man is unique. The thirst even by other species to learn about man is shown by the fact that many hundreds of dolphins appear in the sea by Perth in Australia at a certain time of the year and frolic with the swimmers, or why even hundreds of whales commit suicides as they beach themselves on various seashores.
But we do not wish to see life in a narrow and confined sense in the form of mere biology. Even though all facts have to be considered, even to think as to why a cat associates with man, or why a dog will gives his loyalty to man, even to the point of giving up his life, but the higher calling that may be paramount to man, and what the challenges are, and how best he makes efforts to respond to this higher calling.
In a simple biological term, it is a time from birth to death. The mystery gets deeper as birth is not the start, but the culmination of a profound process whereby a being is formed and is injected with life. The being is formed by an asexual process, like many viruses or bacteria, though even the lowliest of these creatures are capable of learning and adapting, to some bisexual process as occurs in Ferns etc to a sexual process. In the latest that evolution injects the best of two creatures into the newer being. The process starts with some chromosomes, half of the numbers coming from each parent, add to that the X or Ys, the so called sex chromosomes and the product can be generally a male or female. This can be argues, as sex in some frogs etc can be altered even its at formation. Mixup of chromosomes, like in a trisomy, say 23, leads to disasters and the child has Mongolism or Down's syndrome.
Thus life starts at a very early stage, like in a Zygote formation, eventually leading to an embryo. The later is endowed with many qualities of its parents, who in turn had acquired by different means, into a product that will be better able to survive trials of life even better than the parents, a process of evolution as we know it. However, it is a very slow process, and takes many millions of years (someone has a lot and lot of patience!).
Compared to that, death is a simple process whereby all the body functions shut down simultaneously, and the machine is switched off.
Thus living is nothing but all the organs and other parts act in unison so that the being continues to function optimally and as long as possible. Thus the liver will continue to purify, detoxify, produce bile, and the heart will pump blood to supply oxygen and nutrients wherever necessary, the bowels will absorb the best of foods eaten, and get rid of unusable waste, the limbs will provide locomotion, the sexual organs will provide procreation and to ensure that that pleasure is added to it to ensure that on of the millions of sperms finds that elusive egg.
The lungs will keep working to get that oxygen into the system.
But the meaning and purpose of life is what we need to ponder on, as it is a mystery to us, and will always remain so.
Thus the beginning and end are clear. It starts at the sunrise, when the skies are blue and all kinds of challenges are encountered. Then the process of living starts. It is a process of good and evil, of life nad survival, one species at times at the expense of another. Even mankind, with a thinking mind plays the same game, right from the beginnings in Africa, to the development of Cromagnons, destroyed by the neanderthals, who later are destroyed or assimilated by HomoSapiens. He keeps his numbers down by waging wars, by some pretext or another. Even now, we note that Jews hate Palestinians, and vice versa, Iranians hate people of Israel, The people of Sudan erect the huge edifice of Dar-fur with a havoc in that part of the world- and rape, murder, starvation are common place. Even in the Americas, the inhabitants in the United States started by destroying the inhabitants, while the Spaniards, in their quest for Gold and Silver, annihilated the inhabitants of those lands. Then starts the Nazis against the many countries, the Russians with people of the free world, and the story goes on and on. Did you know that Ivan the Terrible had his own son murdered!
In light of the above, you may wonder if there is any hope. The answer is yes, for order emerges out of chaos, as atoms, molecules, etc seem to be acting at random, but the skein of this chaos is unraveled slowly, but often brought to light by man like Einstein, Gandhi, Newton, Faraday, Tagore, Mandela, Carter, M.L.King, Pasteur, Koch, Salk, Lister, Newton, Shakespeare, Tennyson, Thoreau, Tolstoy, Bronte, Bell , Christ, Krishna, Mohamed, Plato, Socrates. Aristotle, A. Van Luewenhoek, Copernicus, Franklin, Cook, Jawaharlal Nehru, Beethoven, Mozart, C and many such great and unselfish human beings. (The list in fact can be large and exhaustive), Of course, the list is incomplete, and forms only one part of a bright star studded galaxy.
We may try to cross over a mystery that is termed life, as we see it on this earth, to even a greater one, and that is- Is there a purpose to life for the living being, or is it just meaningless? Philosophers, religious people and many more have pondered over it and seem to have reached a conclusion, but it is a personal one and impossible to verify it. Thus reincarnation, a promise of heaven if you are good, paying for your misdeed in the next life, or forgiven by an entity if sins are all declared, when a heaven is promised- where life must be wonderful but probably very boring. Some sects will even ask for sacrifices, minor ones in the Hindu religion- fasting, certain festivities to get a good husband, household, child etc, to the extreme whereby martyrdom is promised if one is to sacrifice one's life, in which case, they were met by virgins and live in heavenly enjoyment, presumably for ever. When you really think about it, it is a load of poppycock, but many sincerely believe in in it, and will even quote their holy books and say it was the word of God. Poor God, he sure gets praise and blame for everything, although a lot of the miseries are caused by men to men and other beings.
After birth, one way to look at life proceeding through a dark alley. It is going to the alley where the light is showing further ahead, but the path can veer off to some even darker alleys if one is not careful.
Thus life is hard to explain, but the purpose of life, or better yet, living can be a quagmire that has to be crossed. It s like plunging into a swimming pool but knowing and learning some fundamentals as one goes along, or, otherwise there is drowning and death.
Thus 'purpose' is greater enlightenment in the future, more then it is now, but it will have no end, as the unraveling of one will lead to further problem, which in itself will reveal later on. However, one must not steep oneself into a morass of confusion and wonder what the ending is, but enjoy the journey and see nature unraveling itself slowly, by many means- physics, metaphysics, chemistry, organic chemistry, and a myriad other ways and means as man seeks and unravels the skein slowly, thoroughly as it increases his understanding.
(more to come later)
I like to think of the beautiful and nimble, but strong, water maidens in India. They go to collect water from the nearby river, with large gourd or gourds on their heads or holding one on the side. (Paniharis, as they are called). As they gossip, they dip the gourd in the water, or even use a metal glass and immerse it in water. The clean water is taken and poured into the gourd.
Transpose that to our scenario.
The water taken in is pure- truth, beauty, love, caring, hope etc etc. But the water is also reminders of unwanted and deadly sins, like jealousy, hate etc etc. All the senses are used in their absolute truth and glorification of nature and of course of the maker that surrounds us and guides us.