Life is intriguing, yet most go through it without casting a second glance. Many amongst us spend a lifetime content enough eking out an existence, dying many a daily death. Rich or poor, few dare to look beyond livelihoods and wealth accumulation. When one dares to ask questions to oneself about oneself, the quest begins. Quest gives meaning to life and questions that arise, on their own slowly reach their answers.
A persistent question, the ‘why’ of people’s behaviour came up in a late evening discussion with two
friends, a young couple both achievers, located in San Francisco. The cause and
effect notion of life, means with which it gains currency and its short lived utility
found home in that discussion. Weeks later
by sheer coincidence, another persistent one ‘purpose
of life’ came up for discussion with, a spiritually evolved, material minimalists
and unbelievably large hearted couple, our hosts in Tustin, California. It was in
one of many such discussions about programming and reprogramming ourselves the
‘secret of the woods’ became clear to me. Let me share that with you.
Most of us are led by narratives fed to us right from our
childhood. Slowly, over time as we grow, we absorb these as day-to-day
requisites and internalise them as a program that we all become well accustomed to. In
effect, we voluntarily live a life
dictated and programmed by others. These countless lines of internal coding that
covers almost all areas of our life dictate how we think, perceive and even
decide between right and wrong. In fact, it governs everything we do. We seldom
dare to deviate.
The ‘secret of the woods’, I learnt was like that. But something
else was revealed that day. It was not
revealed to me during any meditation
session. It was not passed on to me by
any teacher. I just stumbled up on my own version of the secret in one of these discussions.
A favourite of statesmen like Pt. JL Nehru and Nelson
Mandela and very often used for recitation competition, the poem ‘Stopping by
the woods on a snowy evening' by Robert
Frost, is a captivating read. The last of the four stanzas, is widely quoted by
teachers and elders alike to drill in the need to set goals for life and focus on
them as destinations, as we travel forward in life.
“The woods are lovely, dark and deep
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.”
The wise use these four lines to egg us on to ignore the
beautiful deep woods in front of us and get on with life’s goals. In this
widely accepted taught and propagated explanation, a sense of immorality and guilt,
in the act of watching snow fill up the woods that doesn’t belong to you seems
to be inherent. Even the horse seems to sense something "queer" with the poet stopping
near the woods on the darkest evening to see the beauty of nature. Such explanations make, mutually exclusive binary choices, the norm,
compelling readers to denounce one in favour of the other. That is how we have
been programmed.
Is that the only explanation? May be there could be others too.
Poets like other artists tend to be driven by the heart more
and less by arithmetic equations. Best of poems come out from intense emotions of love, won or lost, beauty or passions.
Look at those lines bit more closely.
Isn’t the poet portraying immense inner conflict between the urge to stay on watching the beautiful woods and the diktats of society asking him to set and pursue goals? Does the Poet say that he ditched the lovely woods for the ‘promises’ that lie miles away? He leaves us at the cross roads to decide!
Somehow we are programmed to choose the 'miles ahead' dumping the spectacular show nature has put on for us. We also forget that the
beauty being unravelled is fleeting.
While falling snow and the beautiful woods , according to
many, are mere temptations that distract us from real goals that lay far ahead, isn't the poet telling us that it is such beauties, though fleeting, in life that make the journey beautiful and despite compulsions, one must stop
by.
Sadly, most of us are wired such that we easily immerse ourselves in pursuit of destinations of the journey, given in to compulsions of an uncertain future casting away the beauty of living in the present. Our actions are often investments for future little realizing that the road ahead ends only at the pyre or in a casket. The most powerful, resourceful, richest and wisest have all had to shed their power, fortunes and intelligence behind as they were carried out on the final journey.
Life, is all about experiences rather than material accruals.
Somehow we seem to hold the two mutually exclusive though they can comfortably
coexist. We need things to live and comforts too. But dying to get that
forgetting to live?
We are on an one way street with no chance to retrace our
steps. Not one man has found a way. Every possible scriptures says so, yet
believers and non believers alike have drowned themselves in futile pursuit dumping
the beautiful present.
To me the secret has been unravelled.
Would you like to take a relook?
