What reading Anton Chekhov’s work taught me about Life.
I don’t know how this happened, Did reading Chekhov’s work over the past few weeks do it, or rather it just invoked a thought which i had been dwelling upon for some good weeks now by getting thrown the same themes, same questions, same circumstances, same human tendencies along my way. But, whatever happened it took a role of a Butterfly effect being as another stepping stone acting on a large grand scheme of things called Life.
Why giving ourselves away to a cause, people, to some purpose even greater than our own existence is the ultimate salvation to us, our hyper aware, self- conscious life. As, with greater power and greater capability comes greater responsibility which can be fulfilled by having some meaning in this life of ours, which would have a worth of our whole being, our actuality. That’s why people like Nietzsche came up with some higher purpose, our purpose towards our successors, our posterity, our children, which has been taken too seriously by the predecessors making it hard for that spark to come out of everyone, but also there shouldn’t be any responsibility or obligation on the Posterity to fulfill the purpose sown by our ancestors deep into our roots. Yes, we should work towards that Ubermensch ideal, that’s it. He made us believe in another entity, another GOD(higher power) which is Superman, as when all courage fails, we don’t have anyone to look upon, we are just left with ourselves and a thing inside us which isn’t ours, which is shared by everyone, all the animals, insects, birds, humans, everyone, which i would call the ‘Spirit’. The Spirit which cannot be touched by anything, which remains pure, yes corruption can hide and submerge it deep inside us, but if we look inside us and believe in the purity of that thing, it would come up as our savior. Its pure as it doesn’t think like us, there are no biases and prejudices attached with it, it doesn’t have an ego oozing out of it, as it isn’t ‘Self’. It is our shared belief, our courage, our determination, our instinct, which doesn’t think but acts. But, as it doesn’t think and comes as our true savior. So, we should remain by its side against the machinations of this world, as it can lose heart, too, a will to show up.
But, with moving time, with more innovations and inventions, with our life being more easy, in turn making us and our coming generations more insecure due to lack of meaning and loads of time at our disposal but to no avail, making some of us dive into the never ending realm of Work and Hustle in the name of Higher Purpose and harnessing better resources for the posterity, to be ahead of our own fellow beings just to be written down in the History Books as the Sole proprietor of some thing. But, would it matter after we are gone from this blissful yet insufferable life that we once had, moments we once cherished, relationships we made over the years of our life, in turn adding a solid weight to our meaning of our life. I am by no means saying that we shouldn’t work, or work less. As in my own life too, i am a huge proponent of Work being a segment of our meaning. But, that is it, it is just a segment, not our whole existence, which doesn’t define our whole existence.
Art is that purpose which provides vividness and a dimension to the meaning of our life, makes us understand our world in turn ourselves, allows us to be open to new ideas and experiences. It is the highest form of self-expression where there is no competition or comparison with people, unless people want to do it themselves, as Art is subjective talking about some abstract, objective ideas. It is something which we can lose ourselves into without thinking about the outcome, for once!
