I work all day, and get half-drunk at night. Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light. Till then I see what’s really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now, Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die. Arid interrogation: yet the dread Of dying,
and being dead, Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse —The good not done, the love not given,
time Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever, The sure extinction that we travel to And shall be
lost in always. Not to be here, Not to be anywhere, And soon; nothing more
terrible, nothing more true. This is a special way of being afraid No trick
dispels. Religion used to try, That vast moth-eaten musical brocade Created to pretend we never
die, And specious stuff that says No rational being Can fear a thing it will not feel, not
seeing That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with, The anaesthetic from which none come round.
And so it stays just on the edge of vision, A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision. Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good: It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave. Death is no different whined at than withstood.
Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know, Have always known, know that we can’t escape,
Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go. Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready
to ring In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse. The sky is white as clay, with no sun. Work has
to be done. Postmen like doctors go from house to house.
This is a poem called Aubade by Philip Larkin.
It was a clear sunny day in the tropics. I was in some remote island, swimming in the
turquoise waters. What a beautiful life. Everything was peaceful, stable. That’s when I felt
this sting on my foot. Something bit me underwater. I thought nothing of it at first. But then
this fear crept in. What if it’s something poisounous, a deadly fish, snake, crab, something
unknown? Will I die?
Of course, it was just a passing thought. I am still alive, months
later, toiling away in front of my computer. But the fear gave rise to an interesting question,
which I’ve been exploring ever since. How fragile is life?
A small bite from a tiny insect can kill you. You can die while climbing a staircase, while
walking on the road, while driving, while working, while hiking, during picnic, during
your vaccation, the possibilities are simply endless. Yet, day in and day out, we make plans for
the future. Somehow death is not the primary occupant in our minds. It boggles my mind
that we, as humanity, are not constantly obsessing over this inevitable mystery.
When I say death, I don’t just mean the expiry of life. I am also thinking about the irreversible changes
that happen every single day. Actually the world right now is a perfect illustration
of this. Late last year, I planned my vacation, booked a ticket, the day of departure arrived,
I checked the stoves, turned all the lights off, locked my apartment, and happily travelled.
Then COVID happened. I couldn’t enter China.
That’s where my life is. I thought I was leaving my apartment for 20 days. It is almost
a year now. I am working remotely somewhere far away from my apartment. When I think about
the chain of events, I realize how powerless we really are, as species. Almost everything
is out of our control. We are but a leaf caught in the mighty river. We have countless stories
like this, just this year alone.
But think about all the major events in the history. Predictable and routine life could
change permanently in a blink of an eye.
In her book, 999: The Unforgettable True Story of the first Women in Auswitcz, author Heather
Dune McAdam, describes the struggles of a young woman, Edith Grosman, an Auswitcz survivor.
It all began when Edith Grosman and 900 young Slovak women, many of them teenagers, boarded
the first official Jewish transport to Auswitcz in 1942.
“One morning we wake up,” Edith recollects “and we saw outside on the street glued
on the sides of the houses an announcement that all the Jewish girls, unmarried girls,
from 16 up have to come to the school the 20th of March 1942 for work.”
At the school, their names were taken down. A doctor orders them to strip for medical
exam. Parents had gathered outside the school. They wondered what was taking so long on this
Friday, when the town was preparing for the Jewish Sabbath. Then they noticed that the
guards had sneaked the girls out the back exit and were herding them towards the train
station. The girls were loaded into the train without a chance to even kiss their parents
goodbye.
This is an incredibly painful story of how some of the first prisoners of Auswitcz were
transported there, without any indication, that their life is going to irreversibly change,
for the worse.
The feeling of this instability cropped up again when I was watching this fantastic HBO
show called Chernobyl. It is based on the true story of one of the worst nuclear disasters
in the history of mankind. Pripyat was a young town, just 2 kilometers away from the Chernobyl plant
it was home to happy families and thriving population. It is a quiet and peaceful town. A day before
the explosion, some weddings were being planned in the town, people were planning for the
weekend, for vaccation. Life was beautifully normal. The explosion at the 4th reactor unit
of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant occurred on the night of April 26, 1986. Once again,
millions of lives were gravely impacted, without even so much of a hint.
Of course these are major events that shaped our world. But millions of uncontrollable,
unexpected life changing events happen every day throughout the world on a personal level.
Now more than ever this pandemic is proving once again, that our ideas of the future and
plans mean nothing. The gears that turn behind the curtains are indifferent to our plans
and desires.
So, what does one do when faced with this fragile reality? What are our options? How
do we cope with this? I have been thinking about this for quite sometime, and the only
answer I always come up with is, simply LIVING. Nothing else can be done.
Just really doing whatever it is you are doing at any given moment. There is nothing else
to do. We don’t posses any power against this fragile life. When I meet with some friends
at a pub, I am really there. Right now, I am in a country wide lockdown, and I haven’t
left my home in about 6 months. This got me
thinking, how lucky I was to be able to meet some friends at a pub. How lucky I was to
go to a job and complain about how boring it is. How incredibly beautiful it is to go
to a supermarket and do groceries. What I once took for granted is now a previliage.
Sitting near a pond and watching the ducks, working on our presentaitons, writing our
exams, take the bus, preparing dinners, watching TV, these are the only things we can do when
faced with this incredibly fragile reality. I feel lucky to have lived a predictable life.
Predictable is boring, and boring is precious. Because at any moment, life as we know it,
can transform into something unrecognizable. Until then, simply living is a revolutionary act!
Ok, here’s a question for you. How did COVID affect your life and the place you live? What
are you doing differently now, as opposed to say, last year. Leave a comment below and
let’s get through this together.
Check out my channel for more videos like this, and here’s a link to one of my recent
videos on Stanley Kubrick’s existential space epic 2001: A Space Odyssey. As always
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and see you in the next video!