The other day, I came across a music company that went by this name, and it got me thinking. Whose show were they talking about? Is it the individual’s or the team’s? Or, did they mean the show will go on, no matter what happens to the individual/team? The more I think of it, the more convinced I am that it’s the latter; no matter what happens, the show always goes on.
We have actually traveled a year away from the dreadful events around the tsunami and earthquake that shattered normal life in Japan. Despite such a catastrophe, life simply goes on, without any compunction to stop for the dead, the injured, the shattered, the depressed, or the immobilized. Most of the times, when one negotiates such crises, it almost seems like the unseen hand of fate moves mysteriously and sometimes even with accurate precision to corner a single person and cause irreversible damage. I guess, it is in such instances that the oppressed/broken soul seeks help from equally mysteriously (most often spurious) sources, such as astrologers or gods. After all, materialism and atheism have become the luxury of the affordable classes, and of course it is completely another matter that god men and religious idiosyncrasies abound among the rich.
I have been wondering what it is about humans that we continue to go on without ever stopping or dropping anchor in the sea of life? Is it because we have no anchors or is it because the only way to stop would be to completely abdicate all claim to life the way we know it?
I still remember the early morning phone call I had with a close friend immediately after my dad’s funeral. Though I don’t remember most of what we spoke, I clearly remember seeing that the color of the sky was still blue, the rising sun was still crimson, the leaves on the trees were green, and the morning breeze was still cool and soothing. None of these had changed just because something fundamentally had gone missing in my life and that my grief had immobilized me. It seemed at that time that one was on a dark, dark road with nothing to hold, nothing to feel, and nothing to see.
Of course time, the other component of this mysterious life, went by, and I found a way to deal with the grief and go on; after all the show does go on and whether we want it or not, we will be part of the bandwagon, and it’s a choice that we make whether to ‘enjoy’ the various sights and whoop for joy or let everything whiz past us while we wallow in misery and sorrow.
I still remember the early morning phone call I had with a close friend immediately after my dad’s funeral. Though I don’t remember most of what we spoke, I clearly remember seeing that the color of the sky was still blue, the rising sun was still crimson, the leaves on the trees were green, and the morning breeze was still cool and soothing. None of these had changed just because something fundamentally had gone missing in my life and that my grief had immobilized me. It seemed at that time that one was on a dark, dark road with nothing to hold, nothing to feel, and nothing to see.
Of course time, the other component of this mysterious life, went by, and I found a way to deal with the grief and go on; after all the show does go on and whether we want it or not, we will be part of the bandwagon, and it’s a choice that we make whether to ‘enjoy’ the various sights and whoop for joy or let everything whiz past us while we wallow in misery and sorrow.
So, are we to assume that there’s anyway no choice at all, but to completely submit oneself to what fate brings to our life next? Can we or is it possible to influence one’s life events? I remember a long lost friend who used to say things like it’s in my horoscope that I will face ‘bad’ luck for the next one year! Whoa! And it was only my bad luck that I had to even share the planet with such people! I am sure such people will have the most idiotic questions, like for instance, they might ask, how could you have influenced and stopped the tsunami! Well, we may not be able to stop the tsunami, but we could definitely have stopped having built the nuclear power plant, if we ever bothered about nature and humans in the real sense.
Ps: People, please be generous and not scathing with your comments because I have written this great difficulty, hoping against hope that I can restart my blog and fish out my old vigor and passion.
Picture Courtesy: 1. Photograph from Mainichi Shimbun/Reuters
A tsunami wave crashes over a street in Miyako City, Iwate Prefecture, in northeastern Japan on March 11. 2. A photograph of a rose flower in a plant that I have nurtured for over a year now.
