What exactly am I missing by running away?
It was in Drass, Kashmir. I was staying in a government guest house. Sick with Altitude sickness, I didn’t bother to come out of the room. I knew I had to sleep this over. The headache was too much to bear.
In the dead of night, a guy barged in the room. The old caretaker chacha was with him. He was a police constable, and after checking my ID he asked me to follow him. His officer needed to see me.
So we two followed him to the police station next door. The officer asked me numerous questions. And in between he utters a sentence that bewildered me. "Have you ran from your home?, why have you come here leaving you job?". That forced me think what exactly was his mindset, What exactly is the mindset of our society.
We pride ourselves as the most intelligent creation of nature or God. But yet we are no nearer to the basic question of life, about our existence than an ant is.
What is the purpose of our lives?
Is it to reproduce endlessly? Are we then so different from an ant. Most intelligently reproducing ants, perhaps?
Our societies now resemble a giant hive now. Each ant assigned a role and sticking to it forever. A form of forced slavery, but since we are now intelligent life, we cant really be slaving around. So, we toil now to earn the tickets that let us live. How noble. There are enough checks in the system to either bring back the strays or annihilate them all together. Those who don’t perform shall perish.
No longer you can afford to stray from the boundaries set by the society/tribe. No longer you can choose to tread your own path. All forests, hills, mountains, everything not owned by someone is owned by the society and you cannot enter them without permission. Everything is owned by the tribe and if you choose not be a part of it, then be damned.
But what exactly is the purpose of this toil? Are we toiling so that our future generations can have a better life? Did our ancestors toiled so that we can have this "better" life? Are our lives now richer than those of our ancestors? We have become a bunch of glorified slaves working to build modern day equivalent of pyramids, the glory of nations. Each nation competing with the other, showing off their coffers filled with precious pieces of paper. Sleek roads, homes filled with costly junk and people working in fancy environments. Working, nonetheless. Not free, but in golden cages. Whatever happened to the happiness index of Bhutan? Guess no one bought that idea.
What was the outcome of the toil of our ancestors? Do we have more free time on our hands now? More time to spend with our children? Are we happy? Or is it just an illusion of happiness. We couldn’t find any purpose of our lives, so now we measure it in terms of money we earned. How much we can spend on our food, how much on our clothes, or how much on our coffins. The more you earn, the more you show off, the more fulfilling life you had. So one must strive for it. Find purpose in it.
If not? We are working for our future generations perhaps. Now we toil, so that our childrens can have happy meaningful lives maybe. They can conquer the cosmos. Chase their dreams and not work anymore. The age of plenty. Isn’t that was promised by the age of industrialisation? 200 years and half a dozen or so generations past, are we close to it?
We are brain washed now, by ourselves. Curious. We have built systems so that no one strays from a set path. There is an illusion of choice, but you can’t work on anything your heart desires. I want to be a doctor, oh you cant dear, you need a degree in medicine and it would take years. I want to be an engineer, oh dear, but you need to get a license for that.
Well I would do something simple then, how about I guide people on mountains, oh you need some permission for that too. And yet you’re free. Hmm, I’ll do something else, oh you won’t be productive enough.
The words echoed, why did you ran from your job? You should go back and wear those invisible chains and toil, how else are we going to beat China in GDP?
Is the purpose of my life is to enrich some numbers? Are we so different from the tiny ants? Are we really intelligent?
Maybe the ants too boast about their way of life. Dumb humans, they collect useless piece of paper instead of food.
Where are we headed now?
