Life & Death

The biggest problem with life is, it has to be lived. Through joy, through sorrow, through the tough, through the mild, it has to be lived.

Every moment lived is a never ending battle for the continuation of existence in the next moment. And it has to be lived as if it is all for eternity. As if everything that is here, will continue to be here forever and beyond.

The palpable irony of it is, that we will ourselves to walk on, to keep fighting, knowing fully well that our minds can never be fooled by this illusion of eternity, that deep down inside, the knowledge of the futility of it exists in all of us.

And yet, superficial as the illusion is, it is our heart that so willingly embraces it. Its every beat is a cry of defiance, a sad battle waged, to prolong the illusion, to push back that which must arrive. Sooner or later.

Every moment passed by is a moment lost in time. Never will it come back again. Why then do we spend most of these moments in apparent disregard for its preciousness, for its uniqueness?

Because, disregard it is not. For, every human being on this planet, somewhere in the deepest recesses of his/her heart, yearns for that one moment of glory. One moment under the sun when the world, and sometimes the sun itself, touch the tips of their imaginary caps to acknowledge the value and beauty of the moment.

We all strive for it. Some strive harder than the others. Some strive with a passionate insanity that awes and eventually, overawes us. But the point is, we all strive.

And when that moment does arrive, all the effort, all the pain, all the moments of failure and apparent disuse, come together and erupt in a celebration of their importance to us. In that one moment, we become ‘forever’, we become immortal in death. We bask in that glory till the end arrives. And arrive, it must.

But the moment continues to live long after we have stopped.

The tragedy of death is not that we cease to exist for the world. It is that the world ceases to exist for us. That all that we loved and hated, all that we created and destroyed, all that we ever did, is taken away from us. And left in its wake, is the vast, unconquered kingdom of ‘nothingness’.

I’ve often wondered how death will feel like. Will I feel my funeral pyre when it consumes me? Will it be any different from the unconsciousness of sleep? Will I ever dream in death? Science will deny the possibility; the mind dreams and with death, the mind dies. But then, there lies the line that separates a science built on logic from a logic that is built by the unburdened optimism of the human heart.

The heart never lets go; we never let go. Till the very end. That perhaps, is the essence of life.

But we always lose. That perhaps, is nature’s ultimate manifestation of supremacy over humankind.