wrote this assignment long back

Life is beautiful

Life’s but a walking shadow, a
Poor player
That struts and frets his hour
Upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it
Is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound
And fury,
Signifying nothing.”
-Shakespeare: Macbeth

These words by Shakespeare seem so much apt for what life has become today. There is total sense of chaos. You take up your morning paper & it is as good as reading an obituary column- “Father rapes daughter”, “Nature strikes back: kills thousands”, “Iraq bombed”, “Student commits suicide”, “Mumbai on red alert”. Everything seems to be dying-people, morals, sensitivities, empathy, spirit & of course, love. With everything going upside down, it is almost impossible to think straight. Indeed, something is gravely wrong somewhere. But the deeper questions here are: what & where? It seems as if we know all the questions but no clue as to whom to turn for answers.

Well, to know the answers to all the questions, one needs to be a greater soul. But to live without the answers, to strive in the present for a future unknown, is probably what life is all about. No matter how hard life seems or how severely it hits us, the fact remains that we still want to live. We all fear death & fight actively against it. Have you ever wondered, what is it that keeps life going? What is it that makes us choose life over death? Is it simply because of the survival instinct, which is a natural attribute of our species? If we deeply analyze our responses to these questions, we will realize that there is something more to our will to live than just survival instinct. For some people it could be the impermanence of life that makes them hold on to it while for others it could be the sheer charm of living. For a lot of people, it is the thrill of exploring the unknown that keeps them going. Life’s unpredictability has been aptly expressed in this famous line from the movie Forrest Gump: “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you are gonna get!” The fact that we don’t know where life is going to take us next motivates us to keep unraveling it. But for most of us, it’s the love around us that makes this life worth living. The bonds that we share with the people around us, makes this world a better place for us to live in. As the old saying goes- “love makes the world go round”.

To most of us, life seems partly ugly, partly beautiful, partly wonderful, and partly dull. There is sunshine in it but there are clouds too. It’s not always easy to see that clouds have silver linings too. For example, it’s very difficult for a father who has just lost a son, to see the beauty of life. But, what we need to remind ourselves is the fact that opposite values in life are always complimentary. Psychologist Carl Jung tells us, “There are as many nights as days & the one is just as long as the other in the year’s course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, & the word ‘happy’ would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness”. Likewise, you can praise the beauty of life only when you have been through all that makes it hideous- poverty, disease, sadness etc .The way spiritual leader Sri Sri Ravi Shankar puts it, “Diametrically opposite values exist in this world & they are complimentary. Like in a circle two points are opposite-only because they exist, the circle can be complete”. Only when you’ve realized this fact, you will be able to appreciate the beauty of the fine day amid dingy weather, the beauty of unselfish action amid selfishness, the beauty of friendship amidst indifference. You cannot go through life without experiencing all these.

Life does not begin with birth & end with death. It begins when ‘you’ start living it & ends when you begin to merely exist. Existance is not what our life is all about. To live life to the fullest you need to have a purpose. A purpose serves as a principle around which we organize our lives. In our quest to achieve our desired purpose, we fight against the negativities & focus on our goal. This helps in building a strong will power that in turn helps us to overcome various obstacles. As Tennyson reminds us in his long philosophical poem ‘In Memoriam’, “nothing walks with aimless feet”. The determination & perseverance that we acquire by having a purpose in our mina helps us to discover our full potentials.

When we grow older or as our circumstances change, our priorities do too & with it changes our purpose. For example- a poor man’s purpose would be different from a person who is lonely. Likewise, the needs of a two-year-old child cannot be similar to that of a forty-year-old adult. But in the end one realizes that all that we do in life is to gain happiness. Be it an insect walking on six legs or a human being on four, they all want to be happy. All their acts become means to achieve this end. Happiness does not always depend on having the best or the grandest of things. It comes more from having the contentment to be satisfied with what one has. As John Stuart Mills puts it, “I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them”. When even the little things in life fill you up with joy & wonder, you can’t help but notice how beautiful life is.

Alfred Polage in his following quote shows us the beauty of the little miracles in life that we fail to notice. He says, “It would be a miracle, for example, if I dropped a stone & it rose upwards. But is it no miracle that it falls to the ground?” Isn’t it amazing how little things in life can fill you up with wonder and joy? Moments like calling up an old friend, an unknown person returning your smile, looking at a sleeping baby, listening to your favorite song; make us forget how hard life can be. It’s these simple things in life that make the journey of life worth taking again & again. They make us realize that beauty is manifested wherever life is manifested. All you need to do is open your eyes and see!