What is life really?
- Is it a bed of roses? Or a bed of nails? Or is it something where the “roses have thorns” argument holds?
- Is it a struggle? Or is it a celebration?
- Is it a bunch of little things that manifest themselves over time? Or huge things, that with time, become memories one would chuckle and laugh about?
- Is it emotion that defines it? Or is it reason? Or is it passion that grabs it with a vice-like grip?
- Is it defined by acting on the spur of the moment? Or by long deliberation?
- Is it about getting totally involved with everything one does – laughing out loud and crying one’s eyes out? Or is it about being able to see everything from a bird’s eye and never wading through the turbid waters?
- Is it about loving someone with all one’s heart that one would be willing to give up one’s very life for them? Or is it about compartmentalizing?
- Is it about expressing oneself and letting everything out? Or is about closeting everything, digging out the skeletons in the cupboard and burying them deep in the murky marshes of one’s mind?
- Should the innocent and naïve heart be allowed to rule one’s thoughts? Or is it the more pragmatic and insensitive brain that should be allowed to take over?
- Is it about living the happiness and smiling through the tears?
- Is it what we become in life that should define us? Or the people we have turned out to be? Or a combination of both?
- Is life black? Or is it white? Or is it just a chequered landscape in multiple hues of gray on whose squares stand tall the ghosts of the past like pieces on a stone chess board? Do these hues change with time?
- Is life determined by one’s choices? Or is there something inexplicable that governs it all? Or is it the hand that Chance doles out, that makes or breaks the deal?
- Is life easy? Or is it complicated? Or is it one’s mind which makes it the way it is?
- Is it about clinging on and blowing into the glowing embers to rekindle the flame? Or is it about letting go and blowing out the candle yourself?
- Is it about cursing the rain and trying to stay dry under the futile cover of an umbrella blowing in the wind? Or is it about letting the rain soak your very soul and bringing a huge smile on your face while making you catch a cold in a matter of minutes?
- Is it about momentary pleasures and long term pain? Or momentary pain and long term pleasure? Or momentary pleasure and pain?
- Is life about the gentle musings of beauty and wonder? Or is it about aggression, passion and achievement? Is it about the green and the blue? Or the red and the black?
- Is it about the moments that tug at our heartstrings and make us cry? Or is it about the countless memories of pleasure and pain that make us sigh? Is it about the withering roses in the dry rosebed? Or is it about the tender rosebud peaking out from beneath the sepals?
- Is it about letting your hair blow in the wind and getting the dust in your eyes? Or is it about staying warm, snug and dust free inside?
- Are we masters of our destiny? Or is there a sadistic master up there pulling at the strings and ridiculing us while we tread, fall and err?
- Is life non-existent without pain? Is pain the underlying base of the dish that life is?
- Is life just determined by time and space? Or is there something else too?
- Does time heal all wounds or does it wound all heals?
- Is life ruled by randomness, a Brownian phenomenon? Or is there an underlying pattern that lies obscured to all human perception?
- Is life a mission with a purpose? Or is it just one long meaningless pursuit?
- Do our deeds live on? Or do we just crumble to dust in our tombs and blend in with the same dust that would become new life?
- Is it dancing like the wind, singing like a lark, flying like an eagle and hunting like a cheetah? Or is it going about a mundane existence like the ant or the honeybee?
- Is life music? Or is it dance? Is it even an art where colors express themselves and have an identity? Or is it a meticulous science determined by equations, precise, but also having an element of error – the delta?
- Is it about blending in or standing out? Is life like a dazzling array of colors that mix together and presume a whole new identity to paint a rainbow together? Or is it like a sculpture etched in stone, stoic and stable for all eternity?
- Is life love? Or is love, life?
- Is life or love about rainbows and butterflies and violins playing amidst the rustle of leaves and the gusty wind? Or is it about compromise and settling for something?
What really is life? I yearn for an answer…
