How to spot shooting stars?
Holding onto something that doesn’t even belong to us in the first place—happiness or sadness or ennui — is what makes us human at last. No other living being exhibit such an excruciatingly self-destructive pattern. When there’s a property issue, somebody in the mix can turn meta on the crowd and ask how can we ever claim a piece of land to ourselves. None of us brought it by birth; it was here before we arrived and it will be here after we depart. So, how can it ever belong to anyone? Ludicrous.
One can even drop down arguments and just shrug away the most intrinsic element of our existence: the desire to own. This behavior is seen in babies as soon as they are introduced to the concept of toys. They want everything, not because they understand the logic behind ‘yours’ and ‘mine’ but because they are mighty amused. Just like adults are while scrolling through Amazon or Flipkart to satiate their incurable disease of novelty.
Strange but not exactly ironic. Besides, our generation is fast forgetting the line that separates irony from hypocrisy.
In our era, everything—well, almost everything — is alright as long as we are alright with it. And amid this conundrum, a lot of us are too distracted to ask why we behave the way we do. Deep conversations aren’t allowed at the table. Let’s talk about a silly Page 3 controversy instead. Better still, let’s discuss the inane political dramas that were orchestrated to stop us from focusing on pertinent issues. Just about anything to not touch the existential queries staring at us since we understood what separates us from non-human creatures. Can’t we just let it go? If live and let live is too much to ask for, why not simply leave and let leave? When the chips are falling, why keep count?
So many questions, leading to many more questions, leading to very few answers.
Why is it so important for us to be important in the room? How long before we fully realize that our so-called impact on the world is negligible in the grand scheme of things? When do we get the official memo on our sheer irrelevance in the food chain? What are we really waiting for to happen? Which road is the least traveled so as to deliver us to the unbeknownst conclusion? Who matters anymore? Where do we finally stop?
Yes, life is meant to be meaningful but with changing times, meaning alters to a given set of realities. Greed enters the scene as a desperate measure to maintain a tally of who’s having what. The day we manage to escape this dark side of arithmetic, we might be able to absorb the lightness of nothingness. Until then, we are meant to keep our heads down and chase each other in a mad rush to reach somewhere we aren’t sure of yet.
