Live Life

If thou art rich thou'rt poor,

For like an ass whose back with ingots bows

Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey

And death unloads thee.

So tells the Duke to Claudio while preparing the latter to face death, in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure.

The great philosophical truth of the futility of accumulating riches was, no doubt, understood well by Shakespeare and exquisitely expressed by him in the above words. But a few facts of his life speak otherwise. The greatest legend of English Literature left his family in Stratford-Upon-Avon in order to join a company of actors as a playwright and performer in London. Do you think that it was solely done to earn a living? Had it nothing to do with fame and riches? He bought the New Place, one of Stratford's most prominent homes, when he was just seven years old in his literary career. Why? Couldn't he have lived in a humble abode? Wouldn't this "prominent home" of his be unloaded by death? Was his praise for King James I in King Henry VIII born only out of his love for the King?

"Wherever the bright sun of heaven shall shine,
His honour and the greatness of his name
Shall be, and make new nations: he shall flourish,
And, like a mountain cedar, reach his branches
To all the plains about him: — our children's children
Shall see this, and bless heaven."

Didn't his Macbeth partly serve the political purpose of catering to the beliefs of the reigning monarch? Was there not a conjugation of greed with love? Couldn't it have been greed alone?

Yes. I do feel that Shakespeare, like most of us (all of us?), was an ass who bore his heavy riches in the journey of life; whom death ultimately unloaded! Yes, he was one among us all who devotedly worshipped Mammon, the God of wealth and greed.

All of us humans understand that death makes us leave the world just the way we were initially brought into it - with nothing that can truly be called ours. We know that there is nothing to be gained. At least nothing material. We have resigned ourselves to the inevitability of death unloading all of us at one point of time or another.

Yet, we fear death. We actually fear the state of being unburdened!
We work, day and night, all our life, to earn that man-created devil called money!
We lust after power and fame which we believe can be bought once enough moolah is in hand.
We disregard love, friendship, kindness, gratitude, respect and tolerance.

Who needs all this when a bundle of smiling Gandhis can buy you anything and everything that's good in life? But what is it that is good? Don't you know? 

What else but more money, more power and more fame?! 

And then? 

Just more, and more, and a lot, lot more.

And it is for all this that we toil hard and we slave.
We compete and we cheat.
We kill and we destroy!



Many people argue that they do it for their children. To secure the lives of their future generations!
Okay, the predecessors sacrifice their life for the sake of their descendants. Agreed. But do the descendants live the life gifted to them by their parents and grandparents and their great grandparents?!..Hell, NO!!...They in turn sacrifice their lives for their future generations!! All of us, in fact, don't live, we exist! A haze of materialism and excessive pragmatism clouds our view. We live a life, blind, deaf and dumb, that is controlled by everybody except ourselves!
Just think!

Why waste a precious life living it the way some blockhead(s) ordered it to be lived?
Who is he to decide what's good for You?
It's YOUR life for heaven's sake!!

Reader, I confess that I don't live my life to its fullest. I don't drink life to the lees. But I find solace in the fact that I'm a person who at least thinks! Rather, I'm  one who does not fear from thinking!
For instance, I did realize some time ago, a very fatal (fatal to the soul) shortcoming in me which is equally applicable to my fellow beings in general. This was my observation:

God has made such a beautiful world, but there have been only fleeting moments of admiration and wonder from my side. In my obsession to live life the way the majority live it, I've forgotten to "pause" and look around...This is not "living". It is more like "dying" little by little everyday and one day, finally surrendering. But I'm scared that, one day, when I do find the time to appreciate the artist and his creation,will there be anything left? Or will everything succumb to the most important human endeavour - "self-destruction"?
 

I'm not strong enough to 'act'. Yet. But I know ( I hope) that there ARE people who think and can convert their thoughts into action. It is they who can save mankind from self-destruction! They are our messiahs. And maybe...someday...we'll all wake up to the crisis and metamorphose ourselves from foolish donkeys to intelligent, sensitive and passionate humans!

(The images DO NOT belong to me. They have been taken from Google images.)