Life, a Game of Plus
and Minus
By Mukesh Sharma
With the birth of a baby, so many people are added to its life – mother and father, brother and sisters, uncles and aunties, granny and grandpa – all near and distant relatives. Man comes on the earth with relative relationship.
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| Life, a Game of Plus and Minus |
As the child grows up, addition continues with the inclusion of buddies and pals. When one reaches the youth, the circle is further widened with the beginning of a new family – wife and kids, and all the relatives of wife’s side.
While revolving around the relatives, friends and circumstances, ever rising and falling wants, emotions and desires come to the fore in the life of the worldly man.
Bare necessities for life constitute wants – food, clothes and house. Food is indispensable. Clothes are imperative to cover up the nakedness in human society. And house, what a castle is to a king, a house is to a man. Except a few rich heirs/heiresses and of course some blessed one, majority of people continues to live in wants till the bitter end. Man is responsible for the woes of teeming millions. The hell is man’s own creation. However, the fortunate ones are able to add up, by sheer luck, some succeed to live on borderline. But the majority of the unblessed people slip into the abyss of subtraction. Downhill gravity, plummets them to bottom where they are lost without trace.
Destiny has its own queer ways. Some rise by gravity and some fall by levity. Rules of game differ from person to person.
Each man has its own world; he lives and dies in his own world. There are seas of emotions; there is jungle of thoughts; there are mountains of ego; there are rivers of selfishness; there is endless space of ignorance. Material body keeps floating freely towards unseen unknown destination till the last breath.
Sea of emotions witnesses endless surge of ebbing and flowing waves – anger, disgust, fear, happiness and sadness – breaking at the beach. Depending on circumstances, rise and fall goes on. Man is essentially a humble creature of circumstances; he is born in circumstances, lives in circumstances and dies in circumstances. Even the God-incarnate Lord Rama and Lord Krishna couldn’t go beyond their live circumstances. The sun stirs the world, circumstances move life.
Jungle of thoughts is dense and deep. Man keeps wandering in it for the whole life. With the blessings of God a few are able to spot trees bearing fruits and also find their way out of the jungle like Buddha. Otherwise, the most of the people are lost in the jungle of thoughts with no footprints.
Mountains of ego stand tall. Moneyed and mighty are proud of their dizzy heights. They enjoy standing atop and feel that even God is within their reach. Like a frog of well, illusion lives in its own world. Mountain of ego is transient. Sooner or later it melts away like a glacier. Even the ego of demon king Ravana couldn’t last long.
River of selfishness originates from self; it flows along the life right from celebratory birth of self to crematory death of self. Self can’t survive without selfishness.
Space of ignorance is vast and boundless. Knowledge increases ignorance. What one knows is negligible in comparison to what one doesn’t know. Man is born unconsciously. Day of his death is not known to him. And he doesn’t know how to live. He remains blissfully ignorant of himself life-long.
Man is a bundle of desires. Opportunity gives rise to thoughts, and thoughts give rise to desires. Circumstantial desires cease to exist with the end of circumstances. Born in idle time, placatory desires have no basis, but a sole purpose to entertain the self - hallucination hype. Such desires have short life – born every moment and dies the next – come and go continues.
Thus the game of plus and minus goes on and on in a spontaneous process. What cajoling life gives, callous time takes away one by one – childhood, youth, relatives, friends, old age, and finally man reaches the deathbed where the death stakes its claim on the mortal body. Journey of life starts from zero and ends in zero from aloofness to aloofness. Through all additions and subtractions, life comes to naught. Life is a game of plus and minus.
