On Human Struggle

Humanity

Life is the name of a constantly evolving and never-ending struggle, a struggle to fight with odds and make one’s way through adversities. To some it is struggle for survival alone, for others it is for worldly ambitions and personal goals. For some a struggle on daily basis for clean water or a piece of bread and for others an endless avarice to snatch all the treasures in the world for a finite span of life, even if at the cost of many human lives. For the noble souls, the chosen ones, it is to strive to return to The Being, whom they belong to, with sublimation, which is the true idea of success to them, even if giving their life for it in serving fellow creatures and saving innocent lives. Human lives go through metamorphoses from the time one opens his eyes on this planet, all the way till the last breath he takes. Although at every corner of life a person is met by challenges, a struggle goes on endlessly in some form or the other. Life becomes a long tortuous struggle with all kinds of impediments and paucity of resources, which is only made possible with faith, hope, and courage. Losses, injustices, prejudice, misfortune, setbacks, emotional hurts, conundrums, and debacles make up a significant part of the life struggle. It is a struggle to accept and let go of misfortunes, injustice and tormenting past, instead of snatching or taking revenge and setting the record straight. It is also a struggle to stop and help fellow human beings struggle with misery and pain instead of walking away with indifference. To many of us, most of our life is a struggle for perfection. At times endeavoring to reach perfection at one’s work and at other times trying to become a better human being. The best of people are those who choose to reach perfection and strike balance at both of these arenas. Their lives are a formidable struggle, but the end result is truly beautiful. They are our real life heroes. In its true essence, life is a struggle to become human from the homo sapiens form made of flesh and blood. The struggle to raise oneself from the millions of years old reptilian instincts and traits deeply ingrained in the hindbrain and to become a human is an on-going war with one’s own inner self. This is the ancient war humankind has faced eternally in making peace between the heart and the mind. Heart which is the mirror of the soul, the seat of conscience which never lies, versus mind, the house of logic, desires and resident evil, the devil in details, and a complex mirage made out of the brain’s neural circuitry and trillions of impulses running through it every second, making up the so-called consciousness. It is not easy to subdue the natural animal instincts our brain was built with since its creation. To satiate every desire, to get what one wants at every cost, to attack, to punish, to snatch, to cheat, to plunder, to judge, to disgrace, to abuse, to backbite, to exploit, to destroy, and even kill the fellow creations just for ego, jealousy or fury. Even if it is to avenge broken pride or merely to stand on the top to feel supreme and look down at others with a false sense of ego. All this is an innate part of the mind to some extent, no one can claim immunity from all of these traits, the level just depends on one’s upbringing, values, education, circumstances, physiological condition, the strength of the character, the environment and company one keeps. But this war has to be fought. This struggle must go on to keep all the animal traits buried forever under the cushion of the highly-evolved and God-gifted cerebral cortex (which only humans are endowed with) and to become a better human being. A struggle not only to become a successful person in life with perfection at one’s work, but even more importantly, to do it with dignity, balance, morality and honesty till one attains the level of becoming a useful human being for other lives, with empathy, sacrifice, affection, honesty, fairness, forbearance, selflessness, modesty, magnanimity and many such ethereal virtues. Just as practice makes one perfect, when you keep practicing it all consistently, the light replaces all the dark caches in your brain and you become a true human being, breaking free from the mammalian template you were formed upon. This is the noblest goal of one’s life. In addition to carefully watching ourselves every day, we must articulately and adequately ingrain these virtues and values in our children as well, in a hope that the world could become a better place tomorrow if it is not today. As for life and the struggle it is, one must keep going and never give up, fighting the odds with courage, hope, and perseverance.