I have such an interesting relationship with life. I say things and it talks back to me constantly. I know this is not just a figment of my imagination. This is how it actually is. I love this reality of my being more than any other. I have constant questions and it has answers for me.
This post is about us as humans, our humanity. I ventured out to catch a movie which I had already seen. A friend asked me to come with her, so I decided to watch it again. It was a compelling and impacting story so I wasn't bothered about the re-run. However, owing to a few suggestions (very unconscious) from me and other discussions of the day (which I shall not elaborate on) I found myself watching a completely different movie. An experience which was bound to have me smiling away at life. It decided to pamper me again, like it always does.
Defiance, that is what the movie was supposed to say to us. The director intended an act of defiance to mean something. More than the act, the idea of defiance and how the human spirit treats itself to defiance to assert its existence. How it knows no other way to say out loud that it is alive, very alive. It is breathing and the only respect there is for it, is the right to live, to survive as a human being. As life intended it to be. In all of this, there is the inherent element of struggle. This is so for the simple reason that if fighting for ones survival becomes the bed rock of ones effort in the world, there is a denial of that freedom to do so. There is a lack of that environment which would allow the free evolution of human beings. And thus the struggle. The constant effort to find that dignity not for anything, or anyone, just the mere basic right to survive.
In the movie I saw sequences from a very important chapter of twentieth century human history. I was reflecting on that specific event just previously today with another friend. I looked at the events that were a mere glimpse of what had really gone on. I didn't find it in the least bit different from how we have existed as people for thousands of years. Even today, that military strength is the essence of development. Our existence and our status in the twenty first century of being a developing, progressing community of people, exists with a complete lack of faith, trust. There is little humanity to show for. Why do we need boundaries, why do we need armies and billions of dollars worth of arms? Why is it that we don't seem to move on with our so called progress? What has changed in our hatred of each other, distrust of the other that hasn't existed in the hundreds of years that have gone by? Nothing. Its the same. The names have changed, the places and faces have changed. But we as a community of people seem to be the same. We hate each other, have walls between each other and still call ourselves a community of people. I don't know where do we find the defiance to live, to exist and to even think that there is hope? Our actions suggest the complete opposite.
I ask, why is it not possible that a community of human beings is brought into existence in the real sense? There is little that can be done of the days that are past. There is little that can be changed, but for the future should there be no hope? Any text on the state of humanity and us as people is seen as wasteful sentimentality. We see people who indulge in this as some sort of intellectuals, or even poets or artists who are affected by the 'state of man'. And these sentiments seem to do nothing to the larger thought process in all of us. There is little movement to suggest that freedom and community living will exist in the true sense.
My utter sense of apathy and possible pessimism stems from one and only one facet of human beings. The resiliance we show in surmounting all odds, all difficult situations. There is never a thing that is not overcome through constant human effort. No wonder we continue to survive after so many centuries on centuries of distrust and hatred for each other. This resilance to get through and emerge stronger. This spirit of oneness in times of need is what inspires yet suffocates, when the opposite nature of complete selfishness confronts me in my face. Where does the spirit of overcoming all difficulties get lost when we decide to hold guns to each other's faces? When one or a few men tell us to just harbor hatred and nothing else in our hearts and minds, do we stop to think what we are doing? Do we not look at ourselves in the mirror and ask who we are and why we are?
There are questions and there a few answers, but in all the commotion that surrounds us there is one underlying thread that connects us all. It is our humanity. Some call it defiance. Some call it a struggle to survive, to just be able to breathe. I term it our humanity. I don't see it as defiance, for we are meant to live. We are meant to weather the storms that we encounter and continue. That is what connects us, our strength as human beings. Our humanity is our greatest strength.
We must hold on to that humanity and not let anything stop us, or snatch that away from us. Whenever we think of anything outside the scope of that humanity our struggle should be directed to get back to that humanity. We must cling to it, hold on to it as if it were the last straw that could keep us alive, prevent us from extinction. If we look at ourselves through that prism the only shining thing we have about us, our humanity, will shine through.
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