Of life and death

I’ve been thinking, is there a fixed number of smiles and tears that are spread and shed in this world? Or is there such a fixed number for each life? Is it that for every hour that you spend smiling and being truly happy, there’s another hour in the offing that has to be spent being angry or perhaps regretting, even crying?

P.B. Shelley did write “If winter comes, can spring be far behind?” His purpose may have been to give heart and hope to those who needed it but I have come to know from experience, that the opposite is equally true. After every bright, sunny day, the cold, dark night is but moments away. Happiness and melancholy seem to be alternating… Even as many like to believe that leading a happy life has a lot to do with destiny and one’s karma , I can’t shrug off the feeling that maybe, just maybe, there’s a pattern to this randomness. It is not simply about luck, people’s behaviour and outlook towards life but something more. Something none of us have been able to put a finger on.

I know it’s a pretty surreal, almost obscure thought, but it seems to be leading somewhere…I don’t know where. It seems to be one of those life’s unsolvable mysteries, another one of which is what happens after death. Is there life on the other side? Is it a better life? Philosophers, religious leaders, saints and sadhus all have their own version but how does one know the real one? One can’t.

I guess that’s what life is: inscrutable, indecipherable and ever-changing. And I believe it’s best left that way. The more one prods, broods, questions things that clearly aren’t meant to be known, and not even that important, the unhappier one is. Ignorance is bliss after all, and some knowledge/power is just not worth it. Yes, I’m thinking of Dr. Faustus too.