Those Three Words

Those three words!

Those three words! Those three words that fascinated mankind for centuries. Those three words, that humanity tried to seek an answer. Those three words that differentiates a human from an animal. Those three words, that’s an eternal enigma. What are those three words? When I asked this question - The answer I got from few married people is – I am sorry; few toastmasters answered – table topic session, and then few others mentioned –let’s get married! Few lovers said – those three words are - ‘we should talk’!

While pondering the answer for this eternal enigmatic question, a childhood incident crossed my mind. I am an ardent admirer of nature. I was fortunate to own my ‘tiny little’ garden that we cousins named as ‘suchi’s garden’. There were petite hands playing in the slush and rainy water, planting the colorful flowers that they found beautiful. The garden was their empire and workshop, everything there was their life, every plant was their baby. Months passed by thus with these little children and their suchi garden. One day, a neighbor boy ajay came and stole a beautiful plant from suchi’s garden. The very act of their neighbor boy got those little children angry, annoyed and furious. The next day, all over their fence they wrote that ‘ajay is a thief’. Well, suchi and suchi’s cousin gang stopped talking to that thief ajay. Even till date we don’t talk to each other. Today it sounds silly to me- but, once that was the right thing to do.

As I grew older, this incident intrigued my life. Why it mattered to me. It was just a plant? Was that plant part of me? Even to date, I feel he is a wrongdoer. Is it against my principle? Who taught me that? What constitutes me, what constitutes my thoughts, what constitutes my morals, Final question was – who am I? What is life? Why am I here?

These three words have sent poets to the blank page, philosophers to the agora and seekers to the oracles.

When asked, why are we here, a great philosopher said - we are here to die a heroic death for the sake of the collective, we are here to produce off-springs, we are here to prepare them for life and we are here to provide for them, is that it? Or are we our thoughts and ideas. We should be seeking immortality for our ideas and thoughts and not our physical body.

Our belief that we are here for a purpose shows that we are so engrossed in ourselves that we feel, our existence has a purpose. We are the same species that feel animals, insects, flora, fauna and everything around us is purposeless and they are here to accommodate our existence.

We are so deeply wired to find patterns that we never accept that many things are just random. A moth is so deeply wired to fly towards the light that it may never accept that the light bulb is not the moon. And we sympathize that moth. We should have the same sympathy for our faulty wiring as we do for the moth. Give us some dots and a line, and we’ll see a face. A carrot from my garden looks like god, a mere cloud formation looks like a sign. What does it mean? A black cat crossed my path. What does it mean? An old friend calls just a minute after I was thinking about them. What does it mean? What does it mean when someone likes your fb posts and pictures, and someone doesn’t? What does it mean when someone laughs at every sentence you speak? What does it mean when you get a loud applause and when you don’t?

The answer my dear friends – is Nothing! Nothing at all. Nothing has inherent meaning. Everything is only what it is and that’s it.

The great music band Talking Heads, was popular for their redolent and mysterious lyrics. Their lyrics made you wonder what they were really about. In an interview about their lyrics, they said many of their lyrics were random. They would write random phrases on pieces of paper, then throw them into a bowl, and shuffle them up. Then they’d pull them out, and put them into the song in that order. They did this because they liked how the listener creates meaning that wasn’t intended. We assume that if someone writes a song, and sings it on the stage, it must have a meaning. Nope. It was random. Any meaning you think it contains was put there by you, and it’s yours not the writers.

Let’s get back to our original question. Who am I? Why am I here? Recently I joined yoga class. At the end of each session, the instructor asks all of us to do something that was so enlightening and refreshing. Please follow me.  Kindly close your eyes. Imagine you are sitting in your favorite place with calm and quietness! Forget everything around and focus on you. Ask yourself - who am I? Why am I here? We may not find an answer, we may not have an answer, and the answer may differ to each one. But for this moment, let’s leave it there and live a life that’s meaningful to you.