Tuesday, July 24, 2007

To Be? or Not To Be?

We always suffer from the To-Be-or- Not- To-Be syndrome. This syndrome is the drawing line or a great divider between life and death, so to speak. Sometime when we have got to take some firm decision, we falter this way or that way and we act like a couch-potato becoming an inert soul of sorts. And indecision rules the roost in our mindset. We become dead and deadpan. Nothing can move us as though life has come to a screeching halt.

Actually this To-Be-or- Not- To-Be syndrome is the manifestation of our level of mind. Our life is always confronted and infested with uncertainty and unpredictibility. We are never sure about what is in store for us or what is going to happen to us in this hot and happening world. And our life is poised against all odds. This oddity leaves us simply vacant, forlorn and forsaken and sometimes disgusted with our predicament. We get immersed in a deep quagmire the depth of which further pushes us back to the wall. We just feel helpless.

The more we feel helpless the more we want to fall back on something or someone. This void creates a make-believe world for us where we want to find some solace, some breathing space for ourselves. That breathing space, as it were, is our last resort and our occult world where we pontificate our pettyfoggy ideas and we fall a prey to irrationality by way of believing in religion, God, superstition etc. And we are turned into irrational beings at least for a few moments' respite. But do we get respite at all? Does our life manage to get over the crisis of uncertainty and unpredictibility to decide what to do and what not to do or how to do and how not to do. Or, for that matter, whether or not to do?

Most probably not and never ever. Yet we live and live on. This living seems to be living in a world of purgatory far from the madding crowd. Still we never get taught. To get out of this rut, we decide to take some forthwith decision which again fails us and cannot prompt or force us on an even keel. And we are back to square one. Life has already come to a full circle. But it is already too late. Our being has lost all the power to decide what to do and what not to do or for that matter whether or not to do. And God never stands at this threshold to guide us or stands us in good stead to decide whether to be or not to be.

This is life awaiting death as though death is a great leveler or an omniscient educator. But death cannot draw the dividing line so far as our catastrophe drives us to a further wilderness. We decide but we cannot decide. We cannot decide but we have got to decide. Decision fails again, indecision takes charge.

To be or not to be?

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