The Alamo

 

 

 

The Alamo

The experience of a shrine

 

 

 

 

Author's Note:

 

The experience of a shrine is a new one for many thinking individuals. In sharing the same phonetic sound as ' shine,' it denotes a power over all else,  in the way that it comes to be viewed.

 

One is accustomed to provide worship to a personality ideal that is drawn from an antiquated historical experience, where much may be hidden of its details. In doing so, we are preserving ourselves from acknowledging a greater power and bringing to the perceptions a statement of equality of all that is in the realm of creation.

 

The Alamo brought an experience to thinking people all over the world of the nature of such powers as they are applied to the universal needs of man. In retrospect, the event, comes on the heels of the new millennium, ushering an age in which it seems to declare that it is just the start.

 

 

 

There are few things that come close to the personal nature of death. One dies alone. We are not therefore provided the comfort of dieing with our friends, which, in a strange and curious way, we entertain as an entitlement. This may go on to prove the notion that we are far more afraid of being alone than dieing.

 

Where one views the act of facing one's death as courage, then every person and living thing in the world must be viewed as courageous. This would include women and children, in relation to which, a man might say ' we are all equal.'

 

As much as this thought plays with our thinking, a great many foolish men have given away all that they own in the name of equality. A man would tactfully avoid offending a woman for a meaningless remark, he would treat a child with some amount of feigned ignorance, save a dog who has fallen into freezing waters and forgo his own life for a cause and country.

 

Greek writings have traditionally treated heroes with some tragic reference to their personality, as if it was a flaw. In general, they personify the hero as the lead in a play of life, in which, the values of the strong helping the weak comes into strong prominence as a life affirming principle.

 

What does it affirm? Not the vanity of the dying individual but the security of our collective experience to continue the course of life. Perhaps this is why, we have, in recent years frowned upon the attitudes of the ' me generation,' and feared for our collective will to survive.

 

The Battle of Britain is remarkable for the fact that few fought against so many and won. A similar situation at the Alamo brought a new appeal to the notion of heroism. It may simply have said ' do your duty.'

 

Such duties that we face daily in our lives these days are very compelling. From the experiences of losing a girlfriend to the competition, then the farm and an iconic image or two, combined with the social imperative of being courteous always and to keep trying, are such statements as to duty that, it is a wonder our shirts don't fly off our backs in the wind.

 

In such a grinder, we continue to ask if we are doing enough. Samson, in finding that his duties have brought him to a situation of being chained to the pillars, brought down the house and his detractors with him. This, would be categorically different from the mailman who brought a gun to work or the schoolboy who did the same. The difference lies in our ability to summon greater strength and to finish what we began in our idealism of youth.

 

In what one scientific study originally revealed as 'adaptation to survival,' the human species finds more things than what the animals are being subject to in such a task. We are tasked with understanding the nature of our actions, create choices and make the hard decisions in what must surely be referred to as the ' courteous way of adaptation.'

 

Such is the way of man and one comes across reports of incidences daily where a woman, child or male individual from around the globe, demonstrated such concerns in the way of life they practiced.  Such reports sometimes comes to us just when we think we had enough. Then we think again.

 

Indian tradition insists upon its members that a shrine of some such importance is an inheritance in all our lives and we are bound by duty to honor the memory of such persons whose singular act of courage made it possible to move on from positions of difficulty in our past lives. It is a collective responsibility.

 

Today, we have learnt to relate to such achievements by others because we subscribe to the same principles. The search for answers that includes the appeal that we ought to get a break, ignores the fact that it is us, who invent such breaks. Those, in that way with an honorary assignment, to push others for more effort, would serve themselves well to look to the collective will of duty and understand its special nature.

 

Our death, when that comes, will be softly persuasive and will refer to oneself and oneself alone. It would be nice to go with a smile on our lips.