Tuesday, October 2, 2012

The phenomenon of your birth was not your choice?

how strange is the phenomenon of birth. we don't have a say in it. where and when we are born is the most important step of our whole existence, and we don't get to make a choice. it shapes us, makes us and eventually breaks us. all the while we are alive, we torture ourselves over petty choices ; what to eat, what to wear, where to study, who to marry, how many kids to have, bla bla. and we don't remember that the most important decision of our lives was totally inconsiderate of our desire and choice. what if i could choose the time and place of my birth. would i choose the royal bedrooms of the Mughal era? hmm.. well i am not sure. there was too much sickness, no TV, no internet, no airplanes, and no pizzas.there weren't too many books either. on top of that there were lots of wars and royalty often died for just being royalty. Ok so perhaps i sould have liked to be born in Venice during the renaissance period. maybe i had a chance to meet Da Vinci and all those mega minds... No i would have like to be there perhaps during Ice Age, or the time of Prophets... Nah. the more i think about it the more i realize that in the whole of this amazing history of mankind, now is the best time to be an human being. we have ruinced the environment, sucked on earth's resources, teared the Ozone, killed millions of humans and other species, but to be born in any time of human history, this is the best. well what is there not to like? Readily available food without hunting? being vaccinated in childhood to be protected against horrible diseases? education of all sorts available? communication with people far far away instantly?a blast of knowledge, entertainment and choices? to sum up all that mankind has been working towards through last million years or so, has almost come true. with of course its pros and cons.
now imagine if you had another choice. To be born at all! now i dont know what that would mean. i read somewhere that "you dont have a soul. you are one". so perhaps i could go on living as a soul? floating in the universe (or MULTIVERSE as Michio Kaku puts it.). or in heaven? none of us have a memory from the times when we were not born. we dont know if we existed in any kind of form before that ( are you also thinking about post death existance now?) well, there are lost of way to think about this phenomenon, religiously, spiritually, scientifically etc. but how i want to see it , is as a blessing. i see the world created for me. i see myself having a special place in it and i feel that i have a right to enjoy it, feel it, live it. the beuty and significance of life is beyond words , only if you see it . yet the hum drum of daily existence, survival and intellectual masterbation fogs our vision to "look beyond what you see" (as Rafiqi puts it in Lion King).
"Before my birth there was infinite time, and after my death, inexhaustible time. i never thought of it before: i'd been living luminously between two eternities of darkness."  from the first chapter ("I Am A Corpse" ) of the book My Name Is Red, by Orhan Pamuk.

so live and let live :)

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