Worldly Wishes and Vanities
I'm blogging a bit earlier today because I'm on leave and this is among the first of many activities that I'm planning for the weekend. Yesterday I had a couple of workers over at my apartment to fix the root leakage and to do some touch-up work. It was dusty and messy everywhere but luckily I still managed to go through my entire work-day relatively uninterrupted.
The material world requires a lot of maintenance but that's part and parcel of living. Every material goal we have is subject to friction and impediment. A project is simply the overcoming of all these encumbrances to put in place an idealised conception of the world.
We use up our energy in pursuit of these worldly goals and once attaining them, we expend further energy to sustain them. All such pursuits crumble in the end because continuous energy is required to keep them going. It could be a beautiful mansion in the countryside or a thriving business. Both are ideals carved out of the physical world. Their existence is owed to the individual or individuals who had a vision and sought to invest enormous amount of energy to realise them.
But human beings are mortal. When the founders are gone, whoever who have been coupled into the enterprise has to continuously pump in effort to keep the engine running. The fuel for sustenance is human time and energy. The moment that we are slack, the overbearing forces of nature reclaim them.
My apartment has been taking the brunt of nature's onslaught for the past decade--rain, heat and pests have been working continuously to enforce the Second Law of Thermodynamics. I salute them for their irrepressible determination. But I'm equally determined to stem the tide of decay, simply because I am alive and being alive comes with a certain role and responsibility.
What responsibility am I talking about? Well, we as human beings are fragile and ephemeral creatures given a short lease on this earth. Our existence itself is the product of some idealised belief in the hearts and minds of our parents. A great deal of energy goes into bringing us up to attain this ideal.
And once cast into the mortal world, we have a responsibility to see through this energetic process, this struggle, if you will, against the forces of nature, to rise to our fullest potential, before succumbing ultimately to the inevitability death.
It all seems so futile but the belief, the hope, the moments of despair and joy, of pain and ecstasy are all part of the cosmic drama of existence. We as the protagonists must play our roles to the best of our abilities. To be true to this jihad is our way of respecting this divine mission. All your worldly wishes and vanities are essential props and plot devices in the play. So embrace them whole-heartedly so that they may reveal their secrets of your being.
