Saturday 28 December 2002

Pic of the day: Two candles, shining in the dark. One in purpose, standing together, yet forever separate.

As days go by

I guess I wouldn't mind living like this, but it was a day with hardly any claim to be remembered. There was some discussions, and not angry ones either, about religion and politics. But in both these cases, ordinary humans choose not by reason but by the society in which they feel at home. You can swallow the wildest fantasies or inhuman cruelty if you feel accepted in your local group. It is a sad, sad thing.

It has been a good week, and it has been good years. I doubt I shall be here next Christmas, though. All good things have to come to an end. I may not have those big bushy social antennae, but I can feel the weakening of the ties that bound us. It is time to let it go. It is time to let her go. Another illusion to shed. Enlightenment is not as painful as you may believe; for when the illusion is known as illusion, it can be shrugged off. If you want to remove an illusion while it is still in power, you have to flay it off like the skin itself, and the pain is excruciating. Enlightenment always should precede change, if possible.

Naked do we come into this life, and it is obvious that we cannot bring anything with us when we leave.

***

There are those who call religion a crutch, and there may be something in that. But yet it is better to hobble forward with a crutch than to lie still without one. And are there not many other things on which we lean? Houses, cars and other material possessions, whose role in our mind far exceeds the simple needs they fulfill. Titles and ranks, as well as less formal signs of status in our little pack, at work or in other social settings. And above all, we lean on those we profess to love. In all but the fewest of cases, to love is also to need. Even a child, who can do no work for you and offer you no payment, still it fills a deep place and the emptiness of losing it is like an amputation. Or so they say. Certainly something similar is the case with love between equals.

It is said that love lasts forever. I believe so too. But not the love called Eros, only the one called Agape. The deep connectedness, the willingness to serve other's needs, the delight in growth and unfolding, the freedom from pettiness and from being curled up in oneself. Not an external crutch, but the very bones of our soul.