Life is earnest life is real

In the West an ancient philosopher (Charbak) has been con­structed as having said,—eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we may die and the burnt-up body would not come back. A Hindu philosopher also counseled material enjoyment of the present since the future is uncertain and even gloomy. Others counsel escape from the realities of life, since this life is only a maya or an illusion. Against this attitude poet, Longfellow, in his well-known lines, enters a strong protest. He tells us that life is a serious business; it is something real, something that is not the mere shadow or a dream.

That life is real is a glaringly obvious fact. We cannot explain away the fact of our existence; they are only too true and tangible. We feel this reality in our consciousness, in our appetites, in our aspiration, in our joys and sorrows. Life may be pleasant or unpleasant — that depends on many factors; but we feel its tangible reality in the very fact of being alive from moment to moment with the tingle in the blood.

Once we recongnize its reality, our whole attitude to it will change. For then we have got to find a purpose and a meaning in life, and to shape our lives accordingly. We will have to act with a object and fixed purpose.

What that aim and objects are will be interpreted differently. Those who are helplessly tied to modern society with "its sick hurry and divided aim", may be inclined to look upon life as nothing better than a "long headache in a noisy street" or a -walking shadow. But those who study the actual conditions of life and the limitation that those conditions impose on us, will recognize that the supreme business of life is to change the conditions, to supersede when we find them cramping our efforts, and thus win us freedom from our limitations.

There are those who believe that since death is the end of life, "why should life all labour be"? We may occasionally need to escape from reality, but it will never do to forget that life has to be lived on its own terms, and it is not for us to dictate those terms. Indeed, every normal individual, who has common humanity in him, must feel that in the face of human sufferings and human miseries, it is his duty to do his best to improve the conditions of human life and to lessen its sufferings and miseries. Life is work, even struggle. Those who want to escape struggle turn a sannyasi or recluse. Buddha was led by the sight of these to renounce his kingdom so as to be able to devote himself more fully to the task of redressing human sufferings. Christ brought the touch of healing to an afflicted world. Karl Marx taught a practical way of life, based on reason, to do away with the problems and sufferings. It is only by such acceptance of life with a sense of mission that we can each help to make the world a better and happier place than we found it.

Hence, we must read in the works of the poet both advice and a warning. The warning is that we must not waste our life. The advice is that we have to regard life as something real and serious and live our life in this spirit. Roman poet Horace said, "he who postpones the hour of living rightly is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses."