By Shankhoneel Ghosh
I am conflicted. At times, I don't know what to do - I simply feel like lying down and dissolving into nothingness; my existence: erased. But I also know that I cannot give up so easily, or so soon. For, my life has not even begun yet - or so I think. I have seen so little, had so little, that it would be a tragedy if all my future possibilities were simply extinguished.
So, I have this one voice that is speaking to me in two tones - one urging me out of my misery, and the other calling me to surge ahead. But in both cases, I have realised, the journey ends in nothingness, in death.
But, the two deaths are not alike. For, in one case, which is the ‘easy way out’, all that I have to do is to touch the sweet poison of annihilation to my lips, and immediately, all my struggles, all that is me, shall be wiped out. In the other case, however, a long, protracted battle awaits me, one through which I have to carry all this weight that I have accumulated, one through which I must bravely walk to the end, my end…
If life was like the turning of a clock, i.e., beginning at the first strike of 12, and then travelling around its circular path till 12 o’clock struck again, then the first way of going out would be akin to turning back the clock - a retrograde path that takes one back to the start. That is why it is said that a dying person sees his entire life flash before his eyes. Perhaps it means that he is recounting his life’s journey one last time, sinking into a well of regret that is the cornerstone of his dying moment. But, the second way, and perhaps the better way, would be akin to maintaining the forward movement, despite all the despair that arises at the prospect of the imminent end of time.
We often hear of an analogy, which compares, rather, compresses the timeline of the universe to our annual calendar. The analogy, first made by Carl Sagan in 1977, says that if the universe was big-banged into existence on 1st January at midnight, then the first signs of life on Earth appeared in mid-September, the dinosaurs appeared on 25th December and were largely extinct by the next day, primitive human life appeared on the last day of the year about an hour and a half from midnight, agriculture happened about 30 seconds before the end of the year, and modern history, i.e., approximately the last 450-500 years, comprises only the last second of this long cosmic calendar.
In no way should this comparison serve to diminish our sense of self-being; if anything, we should feel enhanced. It is the last second that is the most difficult, in which man can become the most self-destructive - so afraid is he of meeting his destination, that he would rather prefer, as vain as he is, to go out by his own hand. I once heard an anecdote of a prisoner, who had served a long sentence, and who, on the day before his release, killed himself - so unbearable - had the tension and suspense become to him that he no longer had the courage to imagine life beyond the prison yard.
Yes, life will go on - even after us and without us. And, we shall find it in our beneficent souls that we would always prefer to have it that way - that life must go on. For, the idea and essence of life is too limitless to be limited by an ill-fitted ‘cosmic year’ constructed upon a standard calendar. The lesson is that it is us - you, I - who need to ensure that this continuity remains unimpeded, and to that end, we must contribute our parts.
Shankhoneel Ghosh
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