The Fish and the Boy or How to Live Happy in a Broken World
A burning spring sun left me mildly dizzy as my 4-year-old son sprinted through the gates of Leipzig Zoo. Joyous as a running dog, he dashes along the winding pathway to the nearby aquarium. I dragged my tired body along through his clouds of swirling dust.
I sit on a weathered bench next to the in-stone-walled pond of Japanese Koi. Amidst the water splashes of my son’s fists attempting to catch the passing fish, my thoughts meander to an article I’ve read in The New Yorker.
It spoke of Ram Dass’ passing a couple of years ago. A charismatic figure of the new age movement, teaching about love and the irrational fear of death we all carry burdensome on our shrugged shoulders.
In a paradoxical moment, one of his caregivers stood by Ram during his final choking breaths. Watching the man he admired most, who had comforted his fear of death for years, he couldn’t discern whether there was fear or anticipation as Ram Dass passed through the doorway of death.
If a sort of expert on the topic can’t deal with the agony of death, who else can?
Circling with ease around the attacks of my son’s attempts using his arm and hand as a rod, the golden twinkling Koi kept his temper; almost enjoying a little play.
Imagine yourself sitting at a restaurant, on the front porch, and you just enjoyed a great meal, having a digestif espresso, when some boy comes along, decides to annoy and try to grab you, play with you, and in the merit of 4-year-olds, probably kill you.
Would you light-heartedly swirl around his attacks and gently tell him to leave? Even play? I certainly wouldn’t. Fury. Just fury would be my answer.
I would call myself a nature enthusiast, although I rarely leave the sweat and dust-collecting urban climate of my hometown. I’m pro-nature. I think it’s smarter. I think it’s more sensitive to what’s going on.
A lecture I intended about the Internet of Animals, by Martin Wikelski left me speechless, as animals ought to be better detectors of catastrophic events than human technology could be. Whether wildebeest in South Asia or goats in Sicily, beasts are more attuned to nature than we — probably — ever could be.
We are disconnected — not only from ourselves but from our surroundings, just plugged into whatever Wi-Fi is nearby.
The big question is if humans are either blessed or tortured by the knowledge of their passing.
Unfortunately, I don’t know. But an Indian (to be precise Calcutta) based perspective on life and creativity provides a possible answer.
Meanwhile, my son left the Koi be strolling in the pond while he strolled towards another destination. The observer, that I am, I noticed they are quite not unlike each other. Not to say that my son is some kind of fish, but more on a meta-level. They share a monistic connection.
Rabindranath Tagore, the renowned Indian poet, philosopher, and Nobel laureate, expressed monistic ideas in his writings. In essence, Tagore’s monistic thought celebrates unity, uniqueness, and the interconnectedness of existence.
The interconnectedness showcased itself in the relation of the game my son and the fish pursued; one flees, and the other one hunts. Both enjoy the game and are in the same pond so to speak. Within the next moments, both move along just fine.
Our sharp analytical and rational characterized minds try to dissect life from its unity. My son can’t do that, the fish (probably) can’t, but adults certainly do it — all the time. It seems that fish and my young son are still close to nature and therefore, unaware of death, yet drawing to unity and free of fear.
The sun slowly sets behind the lines of straight-aligned oaks behind the African savannah, inhabited by giraffes, and zebras browsing, watched by people browsing their milkshakes. My son on my shoulders, I glide through the masses like a fish, on our way back home.
