The Pleasure and Pain of being Human!

 You may say that an ant has a tiny memory span of mere 6 seconds. After this brief interval, it reclaims its natural impulse of seeking food. It forgets that you had put a finger across its path and in reaction it stopped sensing danger. But this memory lasts just for 6 seconds after that it has a new start. In comparison, the Homo sapiens possess a memory span of not just this lifetime but massive pools of memories from our previous births in the form of subconscious and unconscious chambers. It instinctively keeps on taking us into past, thus depriving us of the present time’s bliss that the so called lesser species seem to enjoy. One may wonder, is such forgetfulness, the kind enjoyed by an ant and other species, is the real bliss.

Well, of course they have more fulfilling lives. They have the existential limits; we have the possibilities beyond the world of mind-born miseries. They face physical threats to their survival. We have the great faculty of still feeling insecure despite all the securities around. We but can't compare life at various hierarchies of evolution. An ant's karma is bound around 6 seconds of memories. Ours is a bit more. There is just quantitative difference. But there is hardly any difference qualitatively. Look at her passion for life, unswerving focus, her ability to lift weight. Its short, life's each moment is full of unwavering karma. Nature expects the same from us. What are we? We are simply bigger ants with a bit bigger memory. It's never about bliss as such. According to me, what matters is what we create out of that has been given to us by the accidents of birth, this body, our family, our circumstances. Beyond compulsions, if we evolve to a level of living by choice, this according to me serves a big role in whether we live a joyful or miserable life. We have already crawled as ants in the form of consciousness attached to this human body of present. I, you and all of us have already enjoyed ant bliss in previous births, don't worry dear readers. This cosmos has a tendency for moving to complexity. So our individual consciousness is also moving from the simplest body forms to a complex human body. And the journey continues. Journey well you all!

Please don’t get dismayed at my calling our birth an accident, merely a chance event in the cosmos. Beyond the loopy tales of inflated egos, all of us are mere mortals in the scheme of mother existence. We are mere drops for her overall existence, like the drops in the sea effectuate the universality through their individuality. Nobody has a claim over 'more evolved' or 'less evolved' soul. We are mere work in progress. Now, coming to your 'dismay' about our birth as mere accident. There is a lot of difference between 'letter' and 'spirit'. Yes, our individual consciousness has had a specific journey, across various body forms in different births, whose momentum has carried us to the present coordinates of mind, body, soul, circumstances. With that kind of cause and effect linearity, we cannot say our birth is a mere accident. But, ironically we hardly remember anything of our past births, so given this human frailty, in laymen terms, birth appears accidental because we don't know the causes of past karmas as such. We just know the effect, this birth and its circumstances. That's why our birth appears accidental. It appears so, but it is not. When I say that we have to be a creator beyond the incidental throws at us, I just emphasize the human faculty of conscious decision and choice making to be a better version of ourselves.

Is our pursuit of happiness the cause of massacre of earth itself? I would like to say that happiness is never a part of what we have done so far. Have you ever seen a happy and joyful person going on to kill fellow human beings? A happy and joyful soul will be driven by 'needs' not greed. You may say that most of the people in their blind pursuits, whose ill effects are written large over mother earth, are under the impression that they are doing something that they like and love. So it's basically their pursuit of happiness that is the basic cause of present time chaos. No my dear sir, it's the pursuit of misery that has brought us to the threshold of mass misery. This is the fatal addiction, like an alcoholic spells physical and psychological doom under the impression that what he does is driven by his liking, and hence happiness, for alcohol. But would you term it as a happy choice just because someone likes alcohol. This is not choice. This is compulsion and helplessness. Only with a capable mind and body one can make happy choices. It's the helpless, compulsive pursuit that breeds disaster, not choice-driven attempts. With choice driven persona, one becomes a creator, a responsible citizen who knows the ill effects of his/her likes and dislikes. Whatever we like, do or intend to do is never strictly in the bracket of likes and dislikes. Most of the things that we do compulsively are mere escape routes from the agonizing bitter truth driven by guilt, fear, anger, hate and jealousy. There is a difference between what your soul craves you to do and what we end up doing under the primal compulsive instincts of anger, hate, jealousy, etc. My idea of happiness is only about following the inner voice of one's soul, not the outer compulsion driven pursuits most of us end up getting trapped into. The real happiness and joy is proportional to how much we create on the manifest plain following the sing-song voice of one's inner self.

Have you ever seen fragrant jasmine flowers flowering from a prickly acacia? All these prickly fruits of pollution, wars and diseases are the fruits of what we have sown. Their seed isn't pursuit of happiness. Their seed is pursuit of misery. The great mirage of our existence that presents misery as pleasure! We are unfortunately following mirages in deserts.

You may wonder that little animals and insects follow a code of conduct in keeping ecological balance, while we rampantly flout all norms. Is that all it means to be a human being? Is it only about winning over nature and destroy it in the effort? Don't worry ma’am, this creation isn't human centric. Ecological balances at the level of the so called less evolved species may appear a nice code game. In our cases, if you find Homo sapiens outstretching the natural balance, forces beyond earth will counterbalance our misdemeanors. This termite mole-hill that we call human civilization may pop out far earlier than we think, like it has happened many times earlier. So till then let's have a life of joy and purpose. Enjoy your journey!