Musings of a Confused Soul

MUSINGS OF A CONFUSED SOUL

1.                  What is the ultimate truth; or, is there one at all? We all, beings with a sense of ‘being’, have a mind, a ‘consciousness’; & all that is associated with it – joys  & sorrows, anger & love, cruelty & compassion, attachment & detachment; all of which gives us the identity as “living beings”.  All living beings, including us – humans, trying to make a sense of all that is around us. This is what makes us evolve.

2.                  “History is always written by victors”. Being the most dominant species on earth, the success of evolution is measured by parameters of humans. Let me, then, talk about in terms of humans only, at least for the time being. For us, progress is measured by what we think is good, correct & right. Ironically, this itself is a function of time & space. Otherwise, how do we explain so much of strife from the inception of human civilization, which continues till the present day. We all see ourselves as part of one or another ‘identity’ – language, caste, creed, race, religion, et el. Those who do not conform to our ‘identity’, need to be opposed sometimes, coaxed & cajoled at other times, & should be fought with – even with fatal consequences – at some other times. Isn’t this the way of our biological evolution & societal progress, the vicious circle phenomena of our very existence?

3.                  For the atheists, the natural history of earth is testimony to the fact that life has been wiped off from the face of earth by various natural forces, umpteen numbers of times. For theists, this is the work of God. Be that as it may, for people on both extremes of the faith continuum, destruction & creation, however, remains a reality, a truth. Few people try to make sense of it by cold logic, few others purely by mythology, while most of us use both these in various proportions. There is space for all types of ideas, which is what makes conflict among them inevitable.

4.                  Generations of preachers & multitude of faith systems have tried to propose the ‘correct’ way of doing things, the strict adherence of which has brought order & peace to otherwise chaotic existence of humans – thus the resultant progress. Ironically, it is the unchanging & unchallenging adherence of the same, which has also been the cause of distress to humanity. This implies that there is no perfect “one-size-fits-all” model for all of us. But does it mean that we should stick more unflinchingly to our faiths or should we discard them altogether? Here also there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution.

5.                  We are what we are – just riding along, sailing through. We will keep finding unity in diversity & vice versa. We will keep arguing, loving & fighting each other. The journey of life itself being the destination & change being the only constant. Destruction & creation are the sides of the same coin, simultaneously sharing a symbiotic & antagonistic relation with each other.