Life is not a bed of roses is something we have been accustomed to all through. First through hearsay and later when we ourselves get through life and into adulting and stuff, through a stark realisation that we never conceived could have dawned on us. Nowhere do we chance upon the vision that life is perfect because it is not, specifically when it is our own to live. Except for of course those fleeting moments of love and happiness and those profoundly rare instances of contentment and bliss wherein life seems like the loveliest thing in the world. Irony it is indeed that despite the fact that without our life we are nothing, we still only seldom bask in its rosiness.
Which brings us to some rather obtrusive manifestations in and of life. In spite of our constant disappointments with life and despite the fact that we are only momentarily contented with it, that is to say till some need and want and desire does not quite conveniently morph into another one after it has been fulfilled, we still do not refute the intrinsic value of life. Intrinsic we say because it is only the innate essence of life, that is life by and in itself, that is of any value and that hoards all other values. Because we won’t be taking our name and fame and money with us to the grave, the value of all things cease to be when it is life itself that abandons us in all our riches.
And yet in our realisation of its innate importance we still hanker for such things that hold the potential to make life worthwhile. Of course we also do covet the arts and the like that feeds our soul in a way even the most lavish of meals never can. In fact our art at least follows us through life and into death which makes their coveting all the more dignified. But coveting the riches in at least a similar intensity does not really warrant anything. Not of the fulfilment only life holds the power to give us, and certainly not life itself.
All said and done however, the converse however is as true as what we are forever professing. In all our fetish for life, of course not without the riches, we acknowledge its being as the one that sustains all. And as we set about to count our many blessings and explore the many wonders that life continually wows us with, we return to the beauty of life exclaiming in no uncertain terms that life is underrated. We profess the beauty of life, we rave about its meaning, we speak discourses of what is to be made of it and all through we intend to celebrate life. Isn’t it surprising then that despite our constant unfulfillings in life, we still preach so much about its worth and value? Is it then that we preach and profess in altogether different voices when lauding the life we are so disappointed with?
Does such dichotomy of voices and notions do not therefore bring us to stark but logical explanations that can lead us to infer that life instead tends to be overrated at times? If all life is to make of us is death despite all our toil and strivings, is it fair to us that life does not always strive to be its rosy prominence with us? What do we do with all our pursuits if we do not exist the very next moment we make it all, what of the trouble and turbulations we went through to make it matter only to find that it does not really matter?
Source: YourQuote
Frankly, the uncertain and fleeting nature of life makes it privy that nothing really matters. The one thing you would be so hell bent on achieving at a certain point of time holds no charm just a few years later. Should life not make allowances for the purgatory of souls much like death does in the afterlife?
To believe that death can be more genial an entity than life, is perhaps not as much an exercise in glorifying death as it is one in ridiculing life. For, if life has to come to nothing at all in the end, why the umpteen promises and many hopes that it lets stem should hold any substance? The pursuit of life in all its riches, and we mean not just the material, repudiates its innate nature itself, that of existence.
In striving to build the life of our dreams for some future point in time, we cease living every day of it. Which would be perfectly well and fine if we live indeed to see the day we want to live up to. But what if in its stupefying unpredictability life leads us to nothingness in the days when we already are dwelling in misery? As bearers of that all powerful life, do we not really deserve a fair chance at survival at least, let alone life itself?
Perhaps what lets life to be overrated is not its basic nature itself as it is as much owing to our expectations of it. Life is but a leisurely amble through such times that can be exerting but nevertheless hold as much surety of its passing. The problem arises when we become too much demanding of it. Time sure will pass, but it will pass in its own pace. So too life too will lead us to death, in its own flow of existence. To that extent, life and death should not even be concerns of us mortals who are brought in this earth to live through their days and in their means, not out of them.
Disturbing though it is that seldom is life embraced in its fore of alluding to death rather than being elusive to it. The very fact that we are mere mortal humans can mean only one thing- we all die invariably. The pursuit though should be a life that is eternal even in its passing- through such actions and deeds and emotions that hold the potential of stemming uniquely from each one of us.
It though can be repulsive indeed a thought to live through life unaffected by all its vagaries, especially when you have been through them in the most unexpected of ways. Be it the grief of losing a loved one at a crucial juncture in life or the loneliness creeping in with your extended experiences at solitary leaning, to ponder over the meaningless of life comes easy to all. But to find substance in its sufferings as at least a mechanism to tide over them all, if not for anything else is what life essentially should lead us to.
Also, it is easier to see why life is underrated than to come to terms with explaining its overrated premises. In the myriad of ways in which life lives through in the world, it is inevitable that there will be as many notions of life as there are lives itself. With so much to occupy ourselves in our many concerns and troubles, we perhaps would be better off if we chose not to sonder about the many confounding truths life is capable of encompassing in its larger than life essence.
Life anyway is the culmination of a dream, both in its beginning and its end. For such an entity that is possible of such dual naturalisations all at once, deliberating on which extreme of the spectrum it needs to be rated is only an exercise in futility- as futile as our lives will be if we dwell only in this aspect of its being. Trudging through life should not be a choice when we have the option to live along with it, not limited by such musings that will lead us nowhere even in all their bothering. Life anyway is too short to while your days away in such pursuits as ‘rating’ it. Live instead through its every moment and life will reveal to you as an experience unparalleled and unprecedented.
