After closing the loop on the ever-present need for social approval, I further delved into the first chapter, Arjuna goes on to say:
“O Krishna, what satisfaction could we find in killing Dhritarashtra’s son? We could become sinners by slaying these men.”
I couldn’t help but wonder why was (and is still) killing considered to be a sin? Haven’t humans as a species survived because they killed and attacked others? Once they were crowned the winners and survival was checked off the priority list, perhaps the preciousness of life was emphasised upon due to the pain the death of a person causes his loved ones, making death the demon. Is it really that plain and simple?
I was reflecting on the meaning of life and death. While scrolling through my daily digest of news today, I read that a 36-year-old techie had committed suicide and what struck me was the note the police found in his diary which said, ‘This life has no meaning.’ I pondered upon it for a long time. Life is hard. A human being is a complex organism with all kinds of needs as defined by Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and we’re all struggling to find our balance, gaining it momentarily, losing it again and continuing on the cycle while ageing and decaying. There must be some meaning to it. I really wanted to believe in the existence of meaning because you know what’s the point?
But the truth really is that one day just like any other day, you’ll die. All your dreams and ambitions will come down to eventual nothingness. Everything that you’ve struggled for in your gruelling life will cease to mean anything. All the relationships in which you invested your heart and soul would end in a blink of an eye. All the sleepless nights filled with tears of sheer helplessness and heartbreaking frustration would mock at you in their beloved vanity. The superhuman self-control you learnt while dealing with the shrewd and the nincompoops would appear as an absolute wastage as the regret of not spewing the venom right in their faces would cause incessant exasperation. You’d have an ardent desire to excavate your heart out when you’ll have to grieve the loss of someone who is still alive. All the efforts you made to keep yourself in pink health would appear futile when you’ll be nothing but ashes causing air pollution or just food for the bacteria to feed upon.
Then what is the point of it all? This life, this circus, this endless labyrinthine of shallowness. What is the point of still existing when your reasons for living have vanished? What is the point of bearing tonnes of pain after a heartbreak? What is the point of making umpteen sacrifices and compromises to make the ends meet? What is the point of wearing the ‘I’m fine’ facade every day when you’re numb from inside? What is the point of being a fighter, a survivor or a loser? What is the point of being anything at all when all of it is doomed to end? What is the point of learning innumerable lessons and becoming all wise when eventually you’ll take them to your grave? What is the point of being in shape or feeling guilty about being fat? Is it all for the compulsive need for approval and social desirability?
You want to be rich so that ‘people’ around you approve of you. You see that approval in their eyes and you crave for more, wanting the highest form of desirability, love. Is it because of the insatiable hunger for power that pushes you on the verge of not recognising your own self? You want to be on the highest rung and rule the world. Is it because of the delusional search for exclusivity that doesn’t exist? You want to be different from the rest even when each one of you is destined to be at the same place in the end. Is this what drives you even you realise that the rich, the poor, the healthy, the unhealthy, the loved, the lovelorn, the powerful, the powerless, all meet the same fate, death? It is inevitable and it’s always lurking, making us realise its presence. Then why not commit a massive suicide? Why not meet the same fate now which you’ll obviously meet in some decades? Why wait this long? And then it hits you, it hits you hard.
Fear - fear of the unknown is what drives us to live this life that thwarts us in every possible direction so that no emotion is left unexperienced. This fear is so gargantuan that it compels us to deal with the constant state of agony even when the pain is beyond bearable. This fear is so commanding that it has made ‘suicide’ a demon. This fear is so influential that it has made everyone believe that there is a God who has given you this life and you must respect it. This fear is so transforming that it makes you believe in things like, ‘life is beautiful and that’s why I’m living it.’ This fear is so very blinding that it has made provision of adjectives like ‘God-fearing’ to validate itself positively. This fear is so very omnipotent that it has made everyone believe that ‘life after suicide’ is worse than hell.
How do you know? How does anyone know? It probably makes no difference if you kill yourself today or die naturally at the appropriate time. Probably they don’t differentiate between the two kinds of dead people. Probably there are no they to decide for your fate. Probably you’re just there, a soul, a body or nothing at all and there is no one to care about your soul or how you died or what bad deeds you did. Probably life after death is indeed better. Probably there is no life after death. Because when you die, the only thing that really goes out from your body is air. And what is air anyway? A mixture of Nitrogen, Oxygen, Carbon Dioxide and a couple of other gases. And probably all the stories about sufferers of suicide are indeed true. The crux of it all is that why don’t people say “I’m living this life because I fear the unknown, I’d rather suffer and live in a known world than commit suicide and enter the unknown world or no world at all ?” Why do they cringe when suicide or someone who committed suicide is mentioned? Why do they see him as a failure or a quitter? Why can’t they see him as someone who didn’t fear the unknown or as someone just willing to take the risk?
Perhaps, sometimes it’s better to be with the devil you know than the angel you don’t know.
So we’re here in this mess together, fearing the unknown. After running my mental horses, I decided to delve further into the taboo of suicide and the meaninglessness of life. I found out that, scientifically speaking, it requires an aberration in the mind to commit suicide. A normal person with a healthy brain can’t kill himself even when he has the most ardent desire to. The human mind that evolved over millions of years won’t let you. Imagine those hunter-gatherers struggling to survive every day, why didn’t they just decide to commit mass suicide and meet their eventual inevitable fate? The simple yet compelling answer here is that they couldn’t grapple with the results of eons of evolution: one of nature’s strongest forces of self-preservation. It is this very force that permeated into society and made killing a sin, causing Arjuna anguish and putting him in the dilemma.
While those of us without the aberration must live, we must attempt to create a meaningful life. But what really is meaning? The classic dictionary states the meaning of meaning to be the end, purpose, or significance of something. In the grand scheme of things, every action every human being performs adds to the kind of world the future generations will see just the way we inherited our present world from our ancestors. For those of us, who find it hard to zoom out or care about the future generations consciously, nature has provided us with the super-power to create meaning which can be customised for each individual and experienced in the littlest of things. For me, it’s the warm, fuzzy feeling I get when I get personal messages from readers saying, ‘It felt like they were reading their own convoluted thoughts organised categorically.’
Or when my father gives me that “I’m proud of you” smile when I do well at something or when I just see him after a lot of days. I’m always trying to identify what gives me that feeling because it keeps changing as I grow with time. Once I have it identified, I try to be better at it incrementally. That’s how I try to make my life more meaningful every day.
Hoping this newsletter adds some meaning to your life.
Until next time!
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