Sunday, August 29, 2010

Strings Attached

They gave him his lines, told him what to say, yet, it was the parts where he never spoke, that got to you. He sees their laughter, their joy, something that was always theirs but never his. He sees how they look at him. They try to hide their faces behind his turned back, but sometimes, that isn’t good enough. Some pity what he’s become, a waste of human resource. Some say they fear for him, because they only see what he could’ve become.

Nobody sees the other as a human being – a body built on and from alchemy and science. They don’t see, why, being mortal, any reason is a reason and just as valid.

He made false promises, for them to leave him alone, but now, he finds himself lonely. Why is it wrong to not know what he wants? Will he ever find purpose in what people so readily hold dear?

The most painful, was being judged by those restricted and lesser minded beings, fitting their frame of beliefs around him, wondering how to judge him. He is, to some of them, one who lost his path. “Why don’t they get that their progress doesn’t make sense to me?” . The one life they hold dear, he finds meaningless. They ridicule his disinterest, but he knows – they’re afraid he’s gone too far. He hates the advice they dispense, when all he’s looking for is empathy and an answer.

Saturday, August 21, 2010

Ethics and Morality

What is ethical, is often right. The definition of something that is ‘right’ is that it be most apt for the situation. So what is morally right, is what is most ‘apt’. The problem with this arrangement, is that it breaks down with the question “what is apt and from who’s perspective?”. Since perspectives differ, and one can stand to lose, or win from an outcome – what is the ‘truly’ moral thing to do?

As the Zeitgiest changes and evolves, so does what is moral and right. There are a greater number of people now, who see that discriminating homosexuality is outrageous, than say two decades ago. Eventually it will be “morally right” to treat them as normal individuals, while currently opposing their freedom happens to be “morally right” .
Ethics and morality then , seem to be absolutely relative. Is there a possible reference that people could use (other than the book), to discover absolute and timeless morality?

It makes rational sense, to link morality induced altruism to selfishness. Self preservation and self benifit. There is nothing that is absolutely right or wrong- just measures of apt-ness.

Astounding evidence that morality is relative, is the change in paradigm that accompanies development. Humans are designed to survive. ( like any other organism). We will live with our past, with the greatest errors, and justify them. Any preconceived notion about the ethical nature of an action , is bound to change after the action has been performed. We stand apart and preach righteousness, feel superior, and when we fall, we manage to justify it morally.

Ethic, has the power to make cynics or idealists of people.

People will be kind and considerate, completely giving and altruistic when it doesn’t cost them to be so. On the phone, we extend support, compassion and care, often failing when it comes to the actual act. It costs lesser to be nice on the phone (and hope that the person doesn’t need your support after all), than to actually go do something nice.

Humans are, on the face of it, animals, and are subjects of predictable, pre-constructed behaviour. If realized that all of nature has a primitive driving force of self preservation behind it, human complexity, can be deconstructed to simple acts of selfishness.

Friday, August 13, 2010

Happiness and it's Pursuit

All conversations regarding the nature and meaning of life, and it’s purposefulness , seem to end with the question of happiness.

” I believe life has meaning and purpose, and I help and love, to make others happy. All cynicism can do is to make people desperate and cold. ”

How do you identify with the emotion of happiness without the presence of it’s opposite?Could it be that the level of happiness that we are able to perceive depends solely on the depth of sorrow we have experienced?Could it be that happiness is fleeting, not eternal and infinite, for then it would lose it’s meaning? A crest is defined by a trough. Similarly is happiness defined by its opposite?

It is rightly so, that cynicism has no place in the betterment of life, and whether life be devoid of purpose or otherwise, the search for happiness provides it with pseudo-meaning , enriching life. Perhaps cynics loose the desire for happiness , for their melancholy is now their joy, but the shallowest of pursuits finds a place of great depth in the living.

This pursuit of happiness, manifests, into animals, the contentment from intercourse, food, territory . But, among us, humans, it has driven our lives further, making it, in some ways higher and separate from this arbitrary world.



Monday, August 9, 2010

Falling

He stares out through the open window. The rain blown in, by defiant winds, wetting him with it’s spray. It’s dark, the sun drowned out by the rain, and his hunched frame silhouetted against the dull light through the window.

I’m cold. I’d like a some hot chai to warm myself with. We would go out for chai on rainy afternoons , I miss you. I’d sit out with you on the balcony, the rain was always special to me. Maybe it was because I was inside, with you, I was safe and warm. The world cold outside, drenched with countless tears.

He looks down at his old wrinkled hands.

You've been gone long, your memory , an inheritance.
You would’ve told me to close the windows, because the rain would come in. There’s just me now, I don’t care much about the rain coming in. It reminds me of you.

We’d talk about school, I don’t remember a single exact conversation ; I regret not cherishing our last one. When was the last one? I don’t remember. With every rain, you're always there, waiting. The chai’s getting cold, you tell me.

Now that I’m old and alone, I’ve grown closer to your memories. With the smell of wet mud , I feel sorrow mingled with the sense of awaiting happiness, with no future to be weary of. When I see you again, you’ll be there, with the sound of rain, on a lonely balcony atop the world.

Sunday, August 8, 2010

*sigh*

Were you not in my past ? All those faded moments from which I have stolen memories, of you. I cannot be certain if you ever were. I see you now though, you question me, and I you. What can be said of the flame, but that it burns? Did it burn in the past , will it burn in the future, to come? Or, is the flame born every instant, and yet seem to us, to be one that lives forever?
Perhaps you never were. A delusion that I suffer from. But then, who am I without you?