fiogf49gjkf0d
Namaskaar
Poets and philosophers from days gone by have tried to find
an answer to the question “Is life worth living ?” However, with the
examinations mercifully more than four months away and Bombay’s less warm
season, (Bombay never has a winter), just about to make its bow, one would
really be a cynic to answer it in the negative.
Particularly when this question is put to college students
the answer cannot but be in the affirmative, for life with its vast uncharted
vistas full of adventures and the joy of accomplishment is still before us. Each
one of us has his ambitions to be a Fleming, an Edison, a Lincoln, a Marshall,
Hall and surely the mere opportunity of being able to put in an effort to bring
to fruition our dreams, makes life worth living.
By saying that life is worth living, I do not mean that there
are no hardships to be endured, nor does it signify the absence of pain and
sorrow, nor even of death; thought it so often strikes most cruelly and
unexpectedly. As a matter of fact it is these disappointments, it is this
challenge full of uncertainties and vicissitudes which life offers, the suspense
that it holds, adds zest to living. In the type of Brave New World envisaged by
Aldous Huxley, life would indeed be physically comfortable, but there we would
merely be existing and not living. We on the other hand want a world where a man
by facing his troubles can prove his manhood. May this world always have
something to be solved, patched, or mended ! But above all, may it never be a
soft place for soft people with soft heads. This world of ours with dreams for
us to dream, really deserves a vote of confidence, for, with its dirt and
cleanness, its ups and downs and its total unexpectedness, it has given, through
variety, more pleasure than pain. As the poet says :
“This world that we are living in,
Is mighty hard to beat
There is a thorn on every rose
But ain’t the roses sweet ?”
If, of course one wants to sit whimpering in a corner pitying
oneself for the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, then undoubtedly one
will not find life worth living for the simple reason that one is determined not
to find it so. Surely one lacks some essential human quality if one does not
find life worth living when a former President of the United States who could
not walk without being supported, an English poet who was blind, a German
composer who was deaf, an American lady, still happily with us, who for the
major portion of her life has been unable to see or hear or speak have all
unequivocally declared that life has given them great satisfaction and they
would not like to change anything if they were to re-live it.
The inventions of modern science have placed so much in the
hands of so many for so little, that today there is no reason for anyone to find
life not worth living. No longer do we have to regulate our work by the sun, no
longer does it take months to communicate information from one place to another,
no longer are optimism and a faith in God the main foundations of medical
science.
There is no excuse today to feel bored with life. We have the
cinemas, the theatres, the art galleries —to mention but a few of our modern
amenities. It may of course be stated that all this costs money and it is only
for the ‘haves’ that life is worth living. But let us not delude ourselves. The
best things in life are free. One does not need a large bank balance to watch
the sun reluctantly merging in the sea, sending forth a last ray in salutation
and leaving, as it departs, its footprints on the clouds of the sky amidst a
beautiful colour scheme. What more satisfying experience can one have than to
watch the sea on a full-moon night, the waves shimmering in the moonlight as
they dash, to no avail, against the rocks and then roll back. Here indeed is a
form of rock and roll more ancient and certainly more graceful than its human
variant.
One may ask next : “What is the secret which makes life worth
living ?” It is to remember to remain contented always — to thank God, it is not
worse. A small verse comes to mind :
“From the day that we were born
Till we ride the hearse
Nothing ever happens
That couldn’t have been worse.”
One should also not forget that when we point an accusing
finger at another, three are pointing towards ourselves and that it is far
better to trust and be cheated than never trust at all.
Life is not necessarily made worth living merely by
accomplishing great things. A Tom Thompson can find life as enjoyable as a
Winston Churchill. It is the little things which count. The smile received when
a frown was deserved, the first time one saw one’s name in print, that glorious
cover drive off the back foot by Wally Hammond, the memorable occasion when one
entered the Quarter-finals of the District Championships, the joy one obtained
in reading that book by P. G. Wodehouse, lying curled up in bed with the rain
beating outside and at a time when one really should have been in college, the
wonderful sense of achievement one felt when one successfully placed a mouse in
that nasty mathematics-teacher’s drawer, the sheer bliss of that first kiss —
these are the things which make life worth living.
I am not unaware of the fact that poets and sages throughout
the ages have stated that Life is not worth living. As Shelley said in his “Ode
to a Skylark”.
“We look before and after,
And pine for what is not.
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught,
Our sweetest songs are those that
tell of saddest thought.”
But as one rambles through the woods with a clear blue sky
above, with one’s pet dog trotting a few paces behind, with the trees in full
bloom and the birds giving vocal expression to the joy which one feels in one’s heart – the joy just to be alive at a time like this to be able to repeat such divine poetry does not that in itself make life worth living?
