THE INSATIABLY DESIROUS “I”
“Like The Flowing River” by “Paulo Coelho”, read the cover page of the book ,that I picked up from the bookshelf to kill time on a gloomy Saturday morning, as I was too fed up of continuing with my humdrum routine. As read the lines on the first page of the book:
“Be like the flowing river, Silent in the night. Be not afraid of the dark. If there are stars in the sky, reflect them back If there are clouds in the sky, Remember ,clouds, like river, are water, So, gladly reflect them too, In your tranquil depths.”
The Research paper on The River Motif in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
... Jim- and the road itself, the River Mississippi. “As Pascal says ‘rivers are roads that move’, […] the road ... both physical and both phychological- happen on the river, it has a kind of fate- determiner role. ... have reached freedom; it is the River that separates them …the River that reunites them, …” (Eliot ... politically directed human world but on the river, among the woods, where he was never ...
– Manuel Bandeira
That was it, written on the first page prior to the preface. The rest of the page was blank, as if spellbound in the environ of these inspiring lines, by Manuel Bandeira-a Brazilian poet, which Paulo Coelho had quoted on the starting page of his book.
I read these lines once and I liked them; I read them twice and I loved them.
As if held by some force, I didn’t turn the next page for my eyes got stuck on this opening page of the book..
…like the flowing river…not afraid of the dark…Stars..Reflect them… Clouds..Reflect them too…tranquil depths.
I closed my eyes for a moment and took a deep breath of contemplation.
Sometimes we all feel that the weight of the world is on our weak shoulders. Burden, Burden, Burden.
“I- want-to-be-the first” feeling has dragged us to a cross road, where we struggle and strive to breathe every moment, where we fight every moment. Each tick of the clock reminds us of our unaccomplished goals with dreams to accomplish them in our sleepless eyes, eyes of a warrior.
They say “survival of the fittest” and in this battle we know nothing but to accomplish the unaccomplished.
Scorching sun or chilling cold, eyes taken over by insomnia, reflecting the gleam of a fanatic, the unending hours of toil and labour continue despite all odds, for we have the desire, that burning desire that keeps us going.
Then one fine day, the sweat of our brow, hard work and efforts bears fruit−“Yes! I have done it”.
But soon we realize that this was not enough. The desire dies out. A momentary satisfaction and then all the same. Even without relishing the victory, we go out to search for more goals, more targets to satiate our hunger, to quench our thirst.
Restlessness, apprehensiveness and insecurity hold sway. We feel hollow and empty-an ever widening void inside us. The “I-want-to-be-the-first” devil within us wakes up again.
And then follows the same tale of woe: Robotic life, monotony; Restless days and sleepless nights; Unaccomplished tasks; Hard work and insomnia; Goals accomplished. Alas! No contentment, no serenity; and then desire for more, search for more. Pearls that we achieve, pearls for what once we craved for, become worthless pebbles for us and we hunt for more.
The Essay on Life In The Eyes Of Chris McCandless
In this day and age it is very rare to hear of somebody giving all of their hard earned belongings away and setting out on extreme adventure with nothing but a back pack. As we all know everybody is different. We all have different obsessions, things we like, places we like to be, and people we like to hang out with. Chris McCandless was a young man that grew up around the mountains. He loved ...
And in this marathon we fail to understand the essence of life. With the baggage of the past and worry for the future, we kill the moment called Now!
Love , peace, tranquillity, honesty, sincerity, harmony, happiness, bliss. And then if a blow, equivalent to even a tiny speck, we are nowhere to be found, we plunge into the dark waters of hatred, aggression, greed, violence, envy..
‘I am tired’, ‘Can’t take it anymore’, ‘Why me always?’, ‘Time is the best healer, Forget it! Time deepens the wounds’..
These pessimistic remarks often describe our states of mind and this way we shatter our own spirits and fortitude.
We run away from our problems, we run away from ourselves.
Inside us, parallel to the insatiably desirous, active “I”, is a passive “I”, who wants nothing but love, who wants nothing but peace, who wants a sound and a refreshing sleep in the night and in the morning wants to welcome the beautiful sun with wide open arms. This helpless inert “I” always is battling and longing to rise up from the ditch it lies in. But get trampled. It always moans and rebels but silently. In return, the voracious “I” feeds it up by the potion of violence, aggression, deceit, duplicity, and envy. Thus the voracious“ I” triumphs and the passive “I” , in a deep slumber.
We all have a purpose – a reason for existence. “The purpose of life is a life of purpose”. Moreover, we live only once, then why not work for that sole purpose, which transcends the barriers of “I-want-to-be-the-first”;which is not an obsession; the purpose, which will not hamper us to breathe freely; which is not a food to our insatiably desirous, “I”; which doesn’t widen the void inside us and which teaches us the real essence of life and that will be the real victory, the victory that will satiate all desires and we will be satisfied; the victory that will give us an eternal bliss.
The Essay on Life – Purpose
Life is a gift. It is an honor, a spark, an excitement. We all have a world of our own. Albert Camus, once said, “You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life” (Camus, 1946). Life is about living to your fullest abilities. Why waste our time looking for the meaning of each breath we take? Each ...
Let’s not forget that after the dark follows the light. Let’s not forget that every cloud has a silver lining and yes, there is an oasis in the desert. We may fall many times but what counts is that how many times we rise up.
We are always into shooing away the dark clouds from our lives and this way we also neglect the silver lining around them.
In search for the big stars, we neglect the small twinkling stars in our lives that guide our ways through the course of life.
We live with so many paradoxes. We work day and night to achieve what we don’t relish later. We make ourselves ill and worn out earning money and then spend all the money to be well again. We live as if we are never going to die and we die as if we have never lived. We are really funny. We keep fretting about the past, knowing that it has gone by. We are always so caught up in the swirls and twirls of future that we neglect the present. This way we neither enjoy our present nor the future. The loss, entirely ours!
How long do we continue like “living dead” ?
Let’s discover the real purpose of our lives and be like the flowing river- flow, flow, and flow along the curves, over the stones and past the boulders; gladly reflect back the stars-big and small; joyfully reflect the clouds too and still flow with a rhythm, an eternal rhythm.
Let our heart’s guiding force be prayers for prayers have the healing powers and they offer a solace to our bruised hearts.
Let us thank the Almighty for all the blessings bestowed on us and let us praise the Lord for all His qualities.
“ Let us ask God for the serenity to accept the things we can’t change, courage to change the things we can change and wisdom to know the difference”..
I was still lost in my thoughts when I was wakened up by the call of the muezzin for Zuhar prayers. I opened my eyes. The lines by Manuel Banderia had amazingly answered my many unanswered questions. The gloomy Saturday morning turned out to be a blessing in disguise. I kept the book back gladly.
The Essay on Napster Stare And Live The Nightmare
For many years the record companies have fixed record prices to avoid competing with each other and to maximize their profits. Currently, the record companies are collaborating in order to force Napster to shut down. The record companies are claiming that Napster is breaking copyright laws. Napster is a peace of software available for free on the Internet, which allows you to download almost any ...
Be like the flowing river and reflect upon it fearlessly..
