How accustomed we have become to think of ‘life’ in terms of ‘living’ or more precisely ‘making a living’! To struggle to earn our survival and to achieve a mark, to create a place for us in our community and in the minds of people around us! We have equated life to the BECOMING! We are not happy unless we have done justice to that inner urge of fulfillment, of growth and expansion of breaking our self-imposed barriers of knowledge, feelings and ability. And as we thus proceed, crossing one hurdle after another, moving forward, as beaconed by some mysterious force of destiny, what one realizes is the eternal and unending nature of this journey. Our frontiers start receding as we approach them. As soon as we overcome some seeming difficulty or achieve some lofty ideal, we see, ever before the rejoicing is over, the loftier ones already beaconing us.
The same urge that was propelling and stimulating us for achievement now turns around starts reflecting on the nature and validity of those ideals and of our efforts to attain them. We are forced to think in terms of the meaning and purpose behind this mad rush for success or excellence or distinction. We are compelled to ask as to where are we heading to? Is there an end to our progress?
And this doubt, ultimately culminated into the query, ‘is our progress real or is it an illusion created by mind to keep the play going’? Again can the rational mind give up this seeking for meaning and purposes by mere will or by understanding there hopelessness is the question that troubles our aspiring heart. Are we missing the true meaning that life wants to point to us, in our childish haste to pour meaning into our lives? For after all, if the mind could create and choose its own ideals and goals, it could invent some imaginary purposes for life and feel satisfied with their attainment also! What guarantee is there that they are the REAL purposes life wants us to attain? How can we deny so confidently that we are not being fooled by our own ambitions?
If we observe ourselves as we achieve some success, do we think we are happy and satisfied with our performance or do we feel satisfied and joyous? Doesn’t that feeling or joy transcend our thinking and our rational faculty of mind? Why do we cry in the moments of extreme joy? Why do we say that it made me emotional? Why do we shun analyzing and scrutinizing the situation into its causes and trying to understand them rationally? We will say, that ruins the beauty of the whole thing. Exactly! For beauty never lies in the rational and discursive intellect. It can not be called upon or forced into being by manipulating its causes. For intellect can never grasp its true causes. That which can be analyzed and split into cause and effect has already escaped the subtlety, delicacy and beauty that could touch and kindle the heart. We are already out of the depth of feeling that joy and treading the sandy beaches of logic and reason.
