The Pleasure and Pain of being Human

 

The researchers on insects say that an ant has a tiny memory span of mere six 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 had to stop, sensing danger on the track. This memory born of your interference in its errand lasts just for six 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 proclivities and tendencies doing their incessant rounds in the subconscious and unconscious chambers of the brain. It instinctively keeps on taking us into the 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, 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 six 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, the unswerving focus, her ability to lift weight. Each moment in its short life is full of unwavering karma. Nature expects the same from us. What are we? We are simply bigger ants with a bit more memory. It’s never about bliss as such. In my humble opinion, the most important thing is what we create out of that which 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 deciding whether we live a joyful or miserable life. This consciousness attached to this human body of present has already crawled as ants. I, you and all of us have already enjoyed the 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 puny 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 the tag of ‘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 and 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’s not. When I say that we have to be a creator beyond the incidental balls hurled at us, I just emphasize the human faculty of conscious decision and choice making to be a better version of ourselves.

One may say that our choices have brought us almost to the brink of destruction. So the question may arise: Is our pursuit of happiness the cause of the massacre of mother  earth itself? I would like to say that happiness is never a part of what we have done so far that qualifies as ‘destructive’ in nature. Have you ever seen a happy and joyful person going out 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 primary cause of present-time chaos. No my dear readers, it’s the pursuit of misery that has brought us to the threshold of mass unhappiness. This is the fatal addiction, like an alcoholic creates 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. One can make happy choices only with a capable mind and body. 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 plane following the singsong voice of one’s inner self.

Have you ever seen fragrant jasmine blooms 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 sirs and madams, 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 misdemeanours. 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!