"Everything takes care of itself."
It's been quite a downer day so far but i think it will start looking up because its amusing, the sheer play of it all. For one, i can't really afford to mull and wallow because there's a lot of work to be done. On the other hand, this work happens to be studying absurd theatre with all it's notions of existential angst and pointlessness and the sense of being cheated into life and living and all that, which is exactly what i feel like mulling over and wallowing in. Everything takes care of itself.
Then there is Grapes Of Wrath to read and Grapes of Wrath is an impossibly commie book but it's also impossibly idealistic and that is the world i want to live in just now. I'm not being terribly intelligent about this i know, but the heart wants what it wants (which is an excuse i allow myself to use not very often) and what the hell, i'm gonna play along with Steinbeck because he carries me into that world and i know its a world that can't really work but i'm happy while im in it or while it lasts, whichever happens first. Heh. Sounds familiar.
Besides, in a selfish way, reading about the Joad family and their struggles for the most basic things puts things in perspective for me. Especially today. When you read about folks who have to pick peach all day to earn 2 dollars and then feed a whole family with it, you kinda feel foolish about moping over the meaning of life and all that, You feel grateful. Maybe thats why reading Grapes of Wrath always makes me feel hungry, and then guilty about doing something about that hunger. Coz i can. And still iv found a way to go and worry about something. And realising that (for the millionth, the zillionth time) , i feel better. Everything takes care of itself.
And i discussed it with Achintya in vague terms and he reiterated that joy and pain cannot but lead to each other, and it's such commonsense, but once again i'd overlooked it, and i came away braver, because i figured that i can choose to fear the joy coz it'll lead me to the pain leading to the joy leading to the pain, or i can choose to welcome the pain coz it'll lead me to the joy leading to the pain leading to the joy. And it was so simple. And it reminded me of the time i came across another simple line that had to be thrown into my face one time under similar circumstances, when Dick Diver says in Tender is the Night that a single failure mustn't be mistaken for a final defeat.
Everything takes care of itself. It was a line Netra had doodled at the bottom of a rough sheet that happened to come away with me when we were working together on the LoveStudy. I'd grinned when i'd noticed it then, but it keeps coming back to me today as i realise each of the aforementioned things. And it really does take care of everything.
3 Comments:
like i said, very coelho-esque. well his was more "u want something u get it" rather than "everything works out" bt i guess same undercurrents flow thru both. in vague terms, as it were :P.
i really enjoyed the discussion. it really is a lot of fun talkin w/ u whn we're in those moods. makes me think. thanks :)
Guze, someday you're going to learn that I'm the eternal fountain of wisdom...:P
And that btw, is my philosophy in life, and things if we leave them be, really do take care of themeselves.
~N
'Everything takes care of itself' - i can't convince myself this would be true under all situations.
If you are talking about discussing with friends about the best way of spending an evening amongst innumerable options you have or which movie to watch amid scores of them saved on your laptop or maybe what food to order from the lengthy menu, it could be true. At these points, this sentence could be a way to stay away from the trap of falling into an endless discussion only trying to optimize the particular pleasure.
But think of a poor farmer woman in a poor village of Bangladesh, who has to feed her children. The only job she knows is to twist on a stack of paddy from morning to evening to separate rice grains from the hay so that she can be paid 2 taka at the end of it. Will everything take care of itself if she doesn't go and actually do it?
I believe this particular philosophy is for people who have options and mess their lives too much thinking of which option would be the best without realizing that there might actually be so little difference that it will not be worth it.
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