Farewell . . .

A dedication to all who have ever lost someone they cared dearly for . . .

Some feelings that I have attempted to put in words.

It's my first attempt at poetry, so apologies for errors, if any.

Amidst all my anger, my guilt and my fear,

I feel I am losing everything I hold dear,

I wish everyone and everything could remain the same,

But with time has come the greatest conqueror: change.

Still love you all deep down, my dears,

But something in me has died, I fear,

Sweet memories in my heart will forever remain,

Though we can never be the same again.

Selflessness??

We all have heard this, "He/she is so selfish!!"

Nowadays, every other person we meet seems to be a selfish, stuck-up prig. Not being a very philanthropic individual myself and having heard this phrase far too many times, I started thinking. What is Selfishness? Does something called Selflessness really exist?

What I came up with is this: there is nothing called Selflessness.

We all are inherently selfish. No one's at fault. Selfishness is hard-wired into human nature. Whatever we do always has some personal interests in the background.

Even our so-called "selfless" acts are not an exception to this.

Parents expect children to take care of them in their old age, respect them and bring honour to their name. The devout worship their God in the hope that he will grant good fortune (physical or spiritual) to them.

Even our Gods are not immune to selfishness!! (Pardon my blasphemy)

They'll bestow all boons and good fortune on you . . . provided you worship them and follow all their rules and regulations.

I'm sure you all are thinking, "What nonsense is he talking about? Isn't that what is expected of us?" My reply is, "Expectations" is just another better sounding word to express what you want from others.

Now, isn't that selfish?

Selfishness is the basis of all relationships. If you doubt what I said, take any relationship you are in and ask yourself, "What is the reason I am sustaining this relationship for?"

The answers you will get will be varied and numerous. "Companionship", "Understanding", "Attraction", even "Money/similar benefits" might be some of the answers you come up with.

Many friendships are prime examples of this shallowness. We fulfil our human need for companionship through our friends. But, as soon as we get a "better" option, be it love or maybe even another friend, the previous relationship often disintegrates and slowly destroys itself, often despite the best efforts and intentions of both parties.

That is how Nature works. Whatever is necessary and beneficial is retained, everything else is purged. It's the way of evolution. Whenever you find something better, you discard the older substitute , even if it worked fine all this time.

Hence, I believe 'Selflessness' is just a delusional thought, another redundant product of the human mind. The only eternal feelings are life's most primitive instincts: survive, procreate and nurture your lineage, in that order.

Probably, the biggest folly of the human mind is in thinking that it is superior to Nature merely because it is capable of generating these apparently "superior" ideals as compared to the "primitive" instincts adopted by Nature. We have a lot to learn from Nature.

"Vanity of vanities," saith the Preacher, "Vanity of vanities! All is vanity."

- Ecclesiastes 1:2

Change

"Change is the only constant in life."

This is an oft-quoted and popular saying. This is a favourite topic for Essays, Speeches and Motivational Seminars. Yet, even though we hear it, there are very few people who can claim to have understood it and applied it in their life.
What is this quote telling us?
In simple words, there is nothing in life which is "definite" or "carved in stone" so as to say. Everything, be it friends, family, feelings, careers or anything else, is temporary and fleeting.
What is there today may not be tomorrow.

We humans have a tendency which seems to be hardwired in us.
We take certain situations and then decide "This is the way things should be" and then hope that they will stay that way forever.
None of us is immune to this behaviour.
We all have faced situations where we've thought "This is so perfect. I wish things could stay like this always." Then one day, this hope shatters and we are rudely awakened from our dreams to face cruel reality.
Change has gate-crashed the party.

Now there are two ways we can deal with it: one, we can moan, groan and try to find ways to get back to how things were before and then grumble when we realize this is not possible. This is what most of us (including me) do initially.
OR
We can accept what has happened and move on with life. Always remember the good times but, at the same time, look ahead to what awaits us in the future.
Accepted, the second part is not as easy as it sounds. It is far easier to give in to the sadness and anguish we face at the parting. To resist it seems be a sacrilege, a grave sin. We feel as if we're being unfaithful to the memories we're leaving behind, to our friends who are mere memories now.
The only question we need to ask ourselves at this point is, of what use are those memories if the only thing they bring is anguish? Aren't we showing disrespect to them by making them a source of pain both to us and those new people who come in our life?

Of one thing we can be certain, by resisting change, we can't stop it. Change is inevitable. We merely make the transition more painful for ourselves by resisting it.
For example, an adjustment which might have taken a year of sad farewells to old friends and tentative forging of new ones gets protracted into 3-4 years of bitter anguish over lost friendships and later, regret and sadness over the new bonds we could have formed, but didn't, because we couldn't move with the times.

Whatever be the way we choose, the end result is the same. Sooner or later, we accept and move on.
What changes is merely how we achieve this acceptance.

From what I've written till now, it appears as if Change is an enemy we can't fight, a cruel conqueror who knows no defeat. This is not true. Change is merely an agent that Nature employs to ensure that Life is balanced, sustained and dynamic.
Just as a stagnant body of water gets choked with weeds and unwanted rubbish and finally ends up dead and lifeless, without Change, we will get "choked" and lose meaning in life.

When we understand Change and accept it, we are like a river, bubbling with life and energy, ready to face whatever life throws at us. This knowledge fills us with the power and strength to face the trials of life.
A river may cross wastelands, mountains, even deserts on it's way to the sea but it never stops. When it encounters obstacles in it's path, it merely flows around it and moves on.

That is what we have to do. Keep "flowing" till we reach our goal.

"The one thing that will never change is that things are always changing . . ."

Balance

Today's I'd like to write about the concept of "Balance".
This little understood concept is probably the cornerstone of everything there is in this World, including us. I will attempt to explain what I feel with two seemingly contradictory examples, one being Order and Chaos, the other Life and Death.

As it is said "There is Order in Chaos and Chaos in Order."
This seemingly contradictory saying is actually expressing a great truth. Order and Chaos are symbiotic concepts. Without Order, Chaos has no meaning and vice versa. Popular literature has always portrayed Order as "Good" and Chaos as "Bad". It is thought that if there would have been no Chaos, there would be perfection. But, this is wrong. Without Chaos, Order loses meaning. A basic example of this relationship would be the creation of the Universe. This Universe, the ultimate symbol of Perfection (Order), was itself created due to a Big Bang (Chaos).

Life and Death.
From time immemorial, humans have valued and loved life and at the same time, hated and feared death. Immortality is supposed to be the greatest gift which a human can receive. But again I ask, if Death were to cease to exist, would there be any meaning or value to Life? Right now, many of the "good" things in our life, like Love, Companionship, Affection etc., are so valued because we might lose them. If they could never be lost, would they have the same value? We would be like those stone sculptures we can see in caves, timeless, immortal but utterly useless.
There is no Life without Death. And there is no Death without Life.

Every culture has tried to pass on this knowledge in some form or the other, be it the God Shiva in Hinduism doing the "Tandava", the primordial dance of destruction and preservation or the Yin-Yang concept of Taoism. It is all the same.
To grasp one side and to reject the other is foolishness. We need both to exist. Humans have a tendancy of focussing excessively on one aspect and completely neglecting the other.

When we disturb the balance of life, we go against everything Nature has set up. To correct the balance, certain changes take place which we name as "problems". We have to understand that this is just Nature's way of correcting the imbalance we are causing. The sooner we understand this, the faster those problems will disappear.

"There is no answer to any of these questions. It's a matter of time and timing, of seas and seasons, of breathing in and breathing out. It's a matter of balance."
- Life 101: Everything We Wish We Had Learned About Life in School--But Didn't (The Life 101 Series)

Some dark reflections . . . .

I'm sure many of you might have read the Johanna Spyri's famous book "Heidi". It's about a little girl who changes the lives of many people for the better with her sweet and simple ways. However, my purpose of mentioning Heidi here at this point is not for that reason. In the book, Heidi's grandpa stays in a simple little cottage at the top of the Alps, with only nature and his little granddaughter for company, living a simple life. He had no overpowering ambition to become the next business tycoon, neither did he waste his life pining for some other human. He had no such extra and unnecessary wants in life. He had no family other than his little granddaughter and he did not care. He did not bother about what others thought and how others lived.

Many a times in my life, I've envied Heidi's grandpa for his simple life and wished I could have a life like that. I've understood one thing: at the end of the day, each one works only for himself/herself. There is nothing called selflessness. It's just a useless concept, like gold for a dying man or glasses for a blind man . . . .

I'm sick and tired of all this politics of manipulation and double-dealing that goes on under the name of "human culture". In Hellboy 2, when the professor reads the story of the golden Army for Hellboy, a line goes as follows, "Man was born with a hole in his heart . . . ."
I cannot find truer words than this.

So, instead of pretending to enjoy company, we can live a solitary and happy life, away from others people's interference. For those people who can't live without taking advantage of others, find some losers whom you can leech off and spare the rest of us.

People might find my words venomous, but it's the truth nonetheless.
As a popular saying goes,
"Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them."

Fidelity in Relationships

Loyalty or Fidelity is a quality that seems to have become quite rare nowadays. These days, boyfriends & girlfriends are changed at the rate clothes are changed divorces are given at the drop of a hat, extra-marital affairs are a common story in every neighbourhood. In the midst of all this, one sits and wonders, "Is this what relationships are all about? Is this the reason teens go all out to woo someone they like, just to dump them the next week? Is this the reason people get married, just to break the spirit, and body of the bride who comes expecting to be loved, cared and to find someone to love in return?"

Nowadays, the day of 'my one true love' is gone. It's 'my many true loves' now.Greater the number of girlfriends/boyfriends you have, cooler you are. And obviously you have to sleep with every one of them. People have forgotten that betrayal gives you a wound that does not heal with time for most, and even for others, the scars are always there to remind them of the pain.

There is a Hindi song 'Ehsaan' which goes on as follows "Ehsaan itna sa kar de, mujhe phir tanha sa kar de" which mean 'Do me this one favour, make me lonely once again'. Turning the famous adage on it's head, I say
' Tis better not to have loved than to have loved and lost'.