With its many unexpected twists and turns, the only thing certain in life is that, it’s uncertain
FED UP with the daily rut that life throws up; she had for long been planning a fun party for her family. The night before, she laid the table, set the scented candles waiting to be sparked and chilled the wine ready-to-drink. Rushing back from Manhattan mid-afternoon to throw the pot pie in the oven, Sybil stood at the edge of the Staten Island ferry hasty to jump board the minute it docked.
Titanic-style, the 6000 passenger carrier suddenly crashed, cutting asunder Sybil still clutching the red roses she wanted centre-pieced for her dinner table.
A rendezvous with death — to put it clinically. How else to talk of the hour that arrives unannounced? Did Sybil, desperately seeking a reprieve from the rat race and her loneliness and equally excited about the family affair, think she’d never make it back home that gusty morning when she set off to work?
Most of us don’t.
The thought of death is the last thing at daybreak. Even the pilot of the slammed ferry didn’t intuit he’d kill ten and maim many before the day was over. Richard Smith deserted his post after the accident and was later found locked inside his bathroom trying to take his own life.
Why do people hurtle towards suicide?
In sum: we humans crave our waking hours crammed with action that thrills; with good cheer that fills full our cup of happiness; with company that lightens the spirit and fires the heart; with a present that celebrates life and us simultaneously.
No, that’s not possible. The rat race has dragged on too long, permanently leaving us drugged if not brain dead. When life really rocks, (don’t we all know how) the weakest among us opt to go six feet under. Last week, a commuter train’s horn ripped through the quietness of the night as residents wondered who could it be this time. Ending life on the train tracks is gaining ground.
A Morristown man, a survivor of sexual abuse by his priests as a kid, killed himself on the rails. Instrumental in spearheading a survivors network for New Jersey residents who too had been victims of sexual abuse by the parish, outwardly jovial Jim Kelly, 37, would tell his audiences: “We have gone through life in such darkness and shame and silence.”
“Midlife is a tough time. We also know that life is a matrix, and we don’t know what triggered his death,” was the simple explanation of the priest — a fierce critic of his fellow priests charged with pedophilia — conducting Kelly’s funeral. What else could the poor priest have said?
Strangely, science, until now, failed to shine light on how the human brain gets busted by a snub or a hurt that leaves behind damaging debris. Have we not all been slapped by a sick feeling in the stomach when we feel hurt or after our heart is broken or how rotten a rejection feels? Now we’re officially told that our brain like our heart and stomach too feels the visceral pain...that deep in the gut sort of anguish when people are socially snubbed or deeply hurt. (Any moron could have figured this out without research).
Using MRI scanners, the researchers say they are able to see which part of our brain lights up when we get snubbed. Believe it or not — but a part of our grey matter instantly changes colour (now this is news)! However, the ‘protective’ right area of the brain steps in and also lights up its territory to try and soothe us: ‘listen, it’s not that bad, relax a little bit, it will be okay’.
This is getting better all the time — the two sides of the brain engaging each other!
On a serious note, the above primordial reflexes only reinforce how desperate humans are to be accepted by the circle they inhabit. Man is a social animal — to use a hackneyed clichi, but then how else to describe our hunger for being a groupie. Don’t get me wrong, I mean to be an enthusiast of life, not a celebrity-chaser, someone who gives his/her body and soul to the star, just to be included in the circuit.
In Hawaii’s island, Honolulu — made famous by Elvis Presley’s (he had many groupies in tow!) film Blue Hawaii, the main road leading from the hotel where I was staying got blocked in the afternoon. “There’s a block party tonight”, said the excited clerk at the concierge, “people will put up their stalls — there will be lots of singing and dancing and shopping!”
Aloha!
What’s with ‘Aloha’? Well it means love, good cheer, happiness and blessings.
I saw plenty of ‘Aloha’ that night on the street that stretched out for miles crammed with gangs of gaiety.
Is happiness put on? You bet! The best of us like to fake it, most of the time when we are with others. Why?
“Man staggers through life yapped at by his reason, pulled and shoved by his appetites, whispered to by fears, beckoned by hopes. Small wonder that what he craves most is self-forgetting.” Eric Hoffer, the philosopher has capped it beautifully. By being in a crowd, we lose ourselves momentarily only to get real when we are alone again.
No great surprise then, religion too is now energized by happiness and fueled by outward expression of individual euphoria. Pentacostalism — a new denomination born out of Christianity only a century ago by blacks, whites and Hispanics at an abandoned church in Los Angeles, preaches a direct link with God. “Its boisterous, unmediated style of worship” has captured the imagination of people around the world “where the precariousness of ordinary living — blackouts, robbery, disease, corruption — makes rich and poor alike turn to divine intervention.”
In Nigeria, a small group of Muslim professionals have started a Pentacostal-style movement called Nasfat. “If you have belief, if you have courage that it is Allah that grants everyone’s desire, then within a short time of coming here, your prayer will be answered...we’re pace-setting, we don’t want to do it the old way,” says the group leader. The Holy Quran is translated into English and Nigerian language. “These Muslims do not sit and listen to an imam preach in a language they do not understand.”
Yet, the Christian missionaries in Nigeria are actively luring Muslims. Showcasing Christianity, the missionaries assure the gullible Muslim converts that it’s not the Holy Quran but the Bible that can “solve” all their problems. “They poison them”, says Nasfat’s spokesman.
Philosophy, religion, liberalism, hedonism or existentialism — whatever — life’s clichis and tedium coupled with the “futility of most human communication” as the inventor of Theatre of the Absurd, Eugen Ionescu, thinks, “there is no religion in which everyday life is not considered a prison; there is no philosophy or ideology that does not think that we live in alienation.”
Meanwhile, back to our rat race with more tangy stuff like being cooped up in soulless office cubicles and long commutes. Reuters reports that around 440,000 Britons under 35, plan a “lifestyle change within the next three years”.
“However, swapping the inner city flat for a rose-covered country cottage is not all plain sailing. Another survey last month found some Britons who swap urban stress for a quiet house in the country risk depression... a ‘leisure sickness’ where people feel ill because they have little to do.”
Man, I guess will forever remain restless, whatever the configuration!
With its many unexpected twists and turns, the only thing certain in life is that, it’s uncertain 
