Pearls and Irritations

Today it is hard to believe in the spiritual power of Nature, because our social behaviour is doing so much damage to it. Being obsessed with economic success and technological achievements, we live in a permanent state of stress and ambivalence, unable to make peace with Nature and with ourselves.

 

In this age of post-modernity

we are, not surprisingly,

or with some intent maybe,

less caring of mortality.

 

So let me grasp the opportunity

to write an epitaph which we

of this earth’s vast society

can see as the epitome

of our life’s goal, gist, and philosophy –

a touch of immortality,

before death’s cruel gravity

pulls every one of us away into infinity

ending life’s unpredictability

and twisting fate into fatality.

 

It is with seasoned incredulity

that I transverse the complex circuitry

of life’s ironic sophistry

and structure-less cacophony,

searching for some security

which — beyond life’s normality

and deep irrationality —

allows our fleeting souls to flee

into another realm, where we are free

to feel as boundless as the sea

and in an unrepentant glee

love our life. What could that be?

 

A sense, I think, of individuality,

the space which every he or she

of any nation, creed, class or ethnicity

will occupy strategically

to assert, through sheer activity,

and ceaseless productivity,

their separate identity

and unique personality.

 

Yet when I think again, more seriously,

I see an altogether different key

to our life’s short finality

and inexplicable causality.

 

The more essential harmony

of everybody’s history

lies but in communality.

Work, play, love, friends and family

give rhythm to life’s disparity,

which may, so sweet and happily,

occasionally

soothe our troubled fantasy

in mutual spirituality.

 

But finally

there is a fee

to pay to the community:

until death parts us from society

all human effort, you’ll agree

demands responsibility.

 

The uppermost human faculty

our choice for failure or for liberty

lies not in wealth, success, or in technology —

the endless cause of animosity —

but in a morality

towards other humans, nature and cosmology

particularly

as we face the global anomaly

of this unsettled century.

 

The quest is not for any new discovery

or more illustrious commodity.

We’ve reached the pinnacle in the capacity

of growth. Fatigued by postindustrial voracity

we grope, subdued, for a mentality

of sharing. Here lies the hardest ever challenge for humanity.

 

I won’t reach immortality

indulging in soliloquy,

so let me end it easily

and in all confidence decree

life’s inmost secrecy:

to be or not to be

Memento Mori.

 

In 1991, two years before my 50th birthday, a colleague at the University asked me what kind of epitaph I would like to have engraved on my tombstone. I didn’t want to make it too personal, and after thinking about it for a while, came up with a general answer which would be relevant not just for myself, but for others too. Now, as I have reached the final stage of my life, I see new meaning in it.

Wordsworth’s ode Intimations of Immortality came to mind when I thought of a title. At the turn of the 19th century the romantic poet was struggling with the adverse impact of the early Industrial Revolution in Europe, especially the loss of union with Nature. Countering it, he professed his profound admiration and spiritual love for the beautiful natural environment he lived in. It still provided him with a sense of immortality.

Today it is hard to believe in the spiritual power of Nature, because our social behaviour is doing so much damage to it. Being obsessed with economic success and technological achievements, we live in a permanent state of stress and ambivalence, unable to make peace with Nature and with ourselves.

And yet, it’s not all gloom and doom. Even if we have lost any sense of immortality, there is still an important and worthwhile task for us humans: to accept responsibility for Nature, for ourselves, and for each other.