“Bury
me, but leave my hands outside, so that the people would know, the man who
conquered the world, had nothing in his hands when he died!”
It
does make you contemplate on your content of your desires, when the one who
uttered such words did actually win the globe. Alexander, The Great! The world
obliged him with a glorious symbol of “the great”, and remembered him for his
victories. It then moved on, like the mighty river gives its signature to some
colossal rock in the way and flows away. Nothing is for the river to hold,
nothing is for the ocean to preserve, even that big rock would collapse
one day, even Alexander would be forgotten one day…
Doesn’t
then, any desire to be known to the world, any aspiration for fortune or fame
becomes horribly misplaced? In fact when the very changeability of time assures
each ones oblivion, no desire makes sense…except when the man wants to touch
the lives of people around him through what he does, not for fame, but just
because of the fact that he understands he is not just an individual living a
solitary life with desires not attached to anyone he knows or doesn’t know of.
He realizes his connection to the universe and everything that exists in it,
that he as an individual does not exist, although as a universe-dweller nobody
is more powerful than him. He understands his dependence on almost every living
or non-living entity, but in that dependence there is no servitude. It’s like
being dependent on the lungs to breathe; they are a part of him. It then makes
sense to desire something that would affect every being and take them towards
happiness. And here, it does not take the form of a moral dogmas, it logically
becomes the only way for fulfillment! But then, doesn’t possession lose its
importance?
Perhaps
when the child first clings to his mother, natures gives him the first lesson
on the very falsity of it! Its human to desire, to grow and satiate himself in
any way possible, he lives for that, and builds his life on the very foundation
of it, whether fulfilled or not. Is wanting wrong? No, it’s part of mans’ most
innate and primitive character, you can’t get rid of it but isn’t it the only
reason for sorrow? Think…and if it is true, should we discard it completely,
proclaim ourselves ascetics and lead a complacent, meaningless life? So should
we desire to forgo our desires?
Vivekananda
once met an accomplished scholar, a sort of person who had it all planned. An
exemplified education, work, wife and so on. “But isn’t that what animals do?
What makes you human”?, and thus asking the man, our learned leader
successfully shook quite a peaceful oblivion. True! What makes us human? Quite
a well-known difference is our ability to choose, to change what is around us,
and thus to create, destroy and create again. It’s abnormal to not desire, but
it’s equally abnormal to not recognize our true motive to be alive as humans,
and do what would really make us happy. Somehow, possessing becomes the goal,
but all that matters on your death bed is how you possessed it. Possessions, in
their raw form were never ours to take…
We
tend to link possessions to desires, that’s where we go wrong. Desire to change the world to a better place, and each being would help you in it, desire to
uplift your soul and infinite hands would support you, they will not let you
fall. But try to possess, and it will be snatched from you eventually, death
will ensure that!
I don’t want the fruit of my action,
it isn’t mine to take..but I do wish that beggar sitting in that dark corner of
that far, far land, smiles because I worked today…that joy will I take, and it
will be mine forever…
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