Sunday, February 13, 2005

Is life that superb?

What do I treasure? What is it that will evoke feelings of happiness, admiration, excitement? What is it that activates my neurons and pushes my soul one notch higher in expectation? What is it that shows the world in a better light every day and every night to keep the life force pumping?

Whatever it is, has taken a short stroll out today. Oft neglected and criticized, I have been wanting it to come back so that I can go to sleep with a content heart. Today being a Valentine's day, I almost sound like a wistful lover, Ha! But its no girl I seek but a deeper truth that transcends all of it (if one exists, that is!)

Is life merely a chemical process? Many wise men, philosophers and scientists have pondered over this unmitigable of questions and yet have come to no certain conclusions. It is a rather sad commentary on the intelligence of mankind, I suppose! So are we merely like a colony of fungi - starts from nothing, procreates under generous availability of food, grows into a competing colony, the weeker ones are weeded out slowly while the composition of the colony is biased more and more towards stronger fungi and finally, a resource crunch wipes them all out. The analogy seems fairly consistent with what happens in the babboon world (i have been reading robert sapolsky's 'a primates memoir', of course!) and taking another giant leap, with that of the human world.

So where goes my lofty ideals of sanctity of labor, passion, dedication, love for you and me, scientific curiosity, artistic beauty, intellectual stimulation? Aren't they merely figments in the chemical process of carbon bipeds accumulating mass and finally dying? Ah, this thought is killing me.

I suppose I should go now, catch some sleep thinking about some nice pastures grazed by fat, happy spotted cows, think about the lives of great scientists, wonder about the happy times with the best of friends (am i being superflous here?!), imagine lying on my mothers lap, quarelling with my dad, going fishing with friends, wonder about the warm spring in chennai, deftly spent flying kites... the morning comes, a new week starts and the grind begins again until the resource crunch hits hard.

I am reminded of an Ernest Hemingway quote I came across last week

"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know"

I suppose quoting it does not show my modesty in any good light but I suppose I can safely replace "intelligent" with "thinking", include myself in it and avoid raising any brow.

- yet another statistic

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

wat u have forgotten is that the fungi actually develops into a better species and withstands all the crushing challenges!

"tommorow is yet another day"

nice effort

6:38 AM  
Blogger littlecow said...

yes.. this upgrade would definitely happen. but of what consequence is it to a single fungus in the midst of it who suddenly stops fighting and take a breather to think. no change is going to happen within its lifetime- so why bother?

4:14 PM  

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