on being alive. part 1

What makes us alive? Or, to be more precise, what keeps us alive? Is it the heart beating or the timeless flow ever since time immemorial of the dark fluid, or the soul that we spurn out? What makes us alive? No, I am not talking about science or the philosophy of life? Rather the motivation of this meager existence. It is different- the reason I mean. It is different for each and every one of us. If you ask yourself what keeps you alive, for what you live and why, the answers, if they are found within themselves will be quite different from what you obtain from a pedestrian down the road, or the motorist parked next to you in a traffic jam. If you ask me why I live, the answer is that I do not know why- not yet at least! Then again, the purpose of this life, what is it? To carry out our carefully planned duties, chalked out in the eternal wheel of life? Look around, we are all different. The white and the black, the slim and the fat, the world full of contradictions and opposites, and yet somehow we merge. We merge into this cosmic balance as a single entity called Homo sapiens and if a rather broader perspective be taken, as life. Weird, isn’t it? Yes, weird. And to some degree, truly magnificent.

I always thought the purpose of life, was life itself, to live that is. Until of course, the time came, when I couldn’t differentiate between life and no life, or accurately speaking, to pinpoint the meaning of life. Then again, somewhere along the nuances of the day, I found out that, it is not life that matters in the end, but, what kept us alive. True, the world sees how we lived. But, the senses perceive only what we want to perceive, sifting out the entire rubbish, that doesn’t concern our questions or our self. So naturally, there should be something that drives us on, something that makes us get every dawn, put on this laborious design of routine, have the social functioning that we designed ourselves to have, and at the end of the day, to look back and weigh the odds and ends, solve all the tricky dilemmas, go to sleep, awaiting the next dawn. Yes, of course, there are times, when we revolt at the idea of tomorrow, the shallow fear of future hanging along a thread. And yet, we do get through time, again and again, sometimes crawling painfully, sometimes humming the happy tunes, and sometimes reaching out towards hope. Is it love? Perhaps! Yes, perhaps it is love that winds the key of this poor jack in the box game. Is it love? Is it? It is love. Love for something, not hatred, hatred is love, love for the rival of what we hate.