SILENCE…
The one phenomenon that assures peace.
You can silence things, you can silence animals and you can silence people. Whether you do it through coercion or force, it does not really matter.
What matters is, “Can you silence yourself?”
The very few times I have been able to attain just that, I have been at peace, almost like a trance... like as if absolutely nothing could affect me.
Today was one of those exceptional times that I could achieve that serenity. In that frame of mind, a singular question resonated in my mind...
All of us at some point in our lives question the raison d'être. The causes usually vary from family and friends, career goals, vengeance, many a times it’s just for the love of life and discovery of the new.
All these reasons create a desire, a strong sense of wanting, that ties us firmly to life as we know it.
So we live on…
For someone who has little or no care for those things, the question in my mind repeats itself. Why life? what doth ye desire?
It resonates in me, like the echo of bells even after they have stopped ringing. It unsettles my mind and I sense it flinch.
Desires… I seem to have run out of those.
When I see a lone bird across the sweltering skies, the blades of grass decorated with the summer’s dew, a doggy wagging its tail at me even when it knows that all I can afford is a pat or a rub, it gladdens my heart. There are several things that are capable of making my mind smile, be content, and rejoice in those little joys that fill my existence with warmth and hope.
But these are not what humans define as desires, desires are those that lead you on, desperately… keep you going even in the toughest of times and fill you with the hope and the fantasy of achievement even before you have partially accomplished your task to fulfill a desire.
Yes, I do have my share of family and friends and they do care for me. I had a set of goals for myself—to get into a good college, to excel in at least one extra-curricular activity, to graduate with distinction, to become a journalist and then an editor. I have scored successfully on each of these tasks. I have also been in love, once in my life… it was beautiful indeed! I have shared my life with the person I thought I could not live without, and yet here I am pretty complete even without her. And no, I am not bitter towards love or for that matter the very person I loved. It seems pretty much like been there done that sort of a thing. Yet, I shall not say that I have done all that one may in a lifetime. However existence does not excite me.
I do care for my loved ones, and my work. But that desire, I feel is not strong enough to keep me tethered to life.
And again I come back to the same question— what doth ye desire?
I visited my granny yesterday; she asked me what I wanted as a birthday gift. I replied, ‘nothing’. She continued, “I have received that answer from many, and yet I know that in the heart of their hearts, most desire something and a few desire someone. Yet, I find you actually meaning what you speak and this I understand through my years of experience.”
She went on to add, “You seem to care for nothing you own, like life would be just the same without those things, and even with people the emotion is repeated. You care for them in your own little ways that sometimes even go unnoticed.
What exactly appeals to you? Why do you behave like a bairaagi (hermit)?—
What doth ye desire?”
Hmm… and there again I come to my central idea, my difficulty with existence which questions my very raison d'être.
And now I am unable to silence myself.
One word describes me best—the one word that has been ruling my life since the time that my realisations exist—STOIC.
Such uncountless things consume my thoughts,
