What is a life?
2,365,200,000 seconds, 82,125 square meals if you're lucky, hopefully 11 years of school, 4 years of university and 1 degree. A marriage, a child or two, a cat and/or a dog. 20 years worth of mortgage to pay off and maybe that long in student loans. A casket and some flowers and a lot of teary friends and relatives if you were well liked.
That more or less sums up a lifetime for some of us. Of course it could also mean half that many seconds and meals, no school at all and a bomb or two blowing up nearby which would be the case of most of us here.
Now with the all natural threats mostly conquered, we find that we are fighting the most dangerous adversary of all; ourselves. Our greatest enemy, we now seem so adamant at killing each other over the most obscure and intangible reasons. Faith, Religion, Politics and Money. All are there to lead us out of this darkness but forever damning us to this eternal cycle of violence, hate and murder.
What is the comedy though? What is there to laugh about? The thing is, we are the comedy. We are the Great Cosmic Jest. We applaud ourselves for how good we are, how civilised, how charitable we are, at our attempts to cease all suffering and spread love and joy thoughout. We see the suffering in others and we long to set things right. The funny thing is, we are the cause of this suffering. Like a rabid dog, we maul ourselves on the pretense that we are doing good. We are doing the right thing. People will understand how right we are, eventually. Terrorism is bad, it hurts people. So lets go blow up another country, rob them blind and make them pay for the mess that we made ourselves; never mind the fact that they have no idea what you're talking about and chances are had nothing to do with the whole matter. This cycle of carnage, hate and pain revolves; the chakrawala turns though its stages of sukha and dukha; and we merely turn with it.
It seems to me that we just like watching other peoples' pain on the 6 o'clock news. The media's picked up on this a long time ago. If you're headlining story isn't a scandal, murder, a war or has a picture of some poor half-dead child from the other side of the planet; you're paper won't sell. We've used the most mundane of reasons to start war, everything from public opion to bananas. Anything, to get that octane high you get from watching another man's life ebb away, his life ruined, his tears staining the ground.
I suppose i should end this by saying we all should just get along and be happy that we're here to share this magnificent gift called life. I don't think that that would achieve anything though, do you? What I'll do is end this with a question, how do you feel about your life? Has it been good to you? What do you think of your neighbours, do you want to kill them too?
2,365,200,000 seconds, 82,125 square meals if you're lucky, hopefully 11 years of school, 4 years of university and 1 degree. A marriage, a child or two, a cat and/or a dog. 20 years worth of mortgage to pay off and maybe that long in student loans. A casket and some flowers and a lot of teary friends and relatives if you were well liked.
That more or less sums up a lifetime for some of us. Of course it could also mean half that many seconds and meals, no school at all and a bomb or two blowing up nearby which would be the case of most of us here.
"Every second, 165 people die for any number of reasons, mostly to do with war, hunger or poverty."The odds seemed stacked up against us but we always seem to persevere, to move forward. Kicking and screaming but forward never the less. We can find ourselves being at our most noble when faced with adversity. A man digs through the rubble of a bombed out shelter to save a child he doesn't even know. Mankind has struggled through the ages, with the constant threat of death and extinction just lurking in the corner of our eyes; like a leopard in the grass it waits, ready to pounce and yet we persevered by simply helping one another.
Now with the all natural threats mostly conquered, we find that we are fighting the most dangerous adversary of all; ourselves. Our greatest enemy, we now seem so adamant at killing each other over the most obscure and intangible reasons. Faith, Religion, Politics and Money. All are there to lead us out of this darkness but forever damning us to this eternal cycle of violence, hate and murder.
Faith, Religion, Politics and Money. All are there to lead us out of this darkness but forever damning us to this eternal cycle of violence, hate and murder.What is murder? When a man kills another man in cold blood; that is murder. When a man prematurely ends the life of another, forcing the othe ou of existence itself; that is murder. Now consider this, change his label, when a soldier kills another soldier, that is just status quo. When he kills a non-combatant; the aged, women, children, that is just collateral damage. That is him just following orders. Murder. It seems that life now is so cheap and so easily taken away over the most trivial reasons when it is the one and only most precious thing any individual can own.
What is the comedy though? What is there to laugh about? The thing is, we are the comedy. We are the Great Cosmic Jest. We applaud ourselves for how good we are, how civilised, how charitable we are, at our attempts to cease all suffering and spread love and joy thoughout. We see the suffering in others and we long to set things right. The funny thing is, we are the cause of this suffering. Like a rabid dog, we maul ourselves on the pretense that we are doing good. We are doing the right thing. People will understand how right we are, eventually. Terrorism is bad, it hurts people. So lets go blow up another country, rob them blind and make them pay for the mess that we made ourselves; never mind the fact that they have no idea what you're talking about and chances are had nothing to do with the whole matter. This cycle of carnage, hate and pain revolves; the chakrawala turns though its stages of sukha and dukha; and we merely turn with it.
It seems to me that we just like watching other peoples' pain on the 6 o'clock news. The media's picked up on this a long time ago. If you're headlining story isn't a scandal, murder, a war or has a picture of some poor half-dead child from the other side of the planet; you're paper won't sell. We've used the most mundane of reasons to start war, everything from public opion to bananas. Anything, to get that octane high you get from watching another man's life ebb away, his life ruined, his tears staining the ground.
I suppose i should end this by saying we all should just get along and be happy that we're here to share this magnificent gift called life. I don't think that that would achieve anything though, do you? What I'll do is end this with a question, how do you feel about your life? Has it been good to you? What do you think of your neighbours, do you want to kill them too?
"Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule."Morituri te salutant.......
Friedrich Nietzsche
*Note: I actually wrote this piece just over a year ago, after re-reading it, I just had to post it again. One of my favourites so far. I've added to it somewhat but i've tried to maintain true to its original flavour.
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