There is God! Indeed there is God, the poor man sighs in relief or in hopelessness, his soul lost in the emptiness and vagueness of life. His aspirations shadowy glooms, absent meaning. He wails holding persistent vigils of hope chanting prayers of breakthrough. His thoughts set high in expectation, if only, if only, things were better, I would not be here. He is lost, lost in the travails of life.
Each day light dawns on the earth and meaning takes hold, men to pursue and to plunder the depths of existence for meaning. Everyman to the path of pursuit, to the path of meaning to toil the soil in search of the fruits of labour. Hard work, Hard work, that is the key, the key to success but yet he is still poor. Those words resonate each day, fuelling the courage to push on and on he goes with his bag of expectation listening to the sounds of hope rising from the men he holds high. The patient dog, the persevering worker, the hopeless hoping man, he has walked the path and understands suffering not in thought or words but in substance. He has felt its claws and its ruthlessness and all he wants is a chance at peace. Tough times don’t last, tough people do, his words of comfort, his mirage of relief. His clichés or empty words of repetition absent the depth of meaning. He is asleep, slumbering to emptiness with hope as his companion.
Time! The only witness of his plight not men. Time paints the perfect illusion of meaning. Time and Chance! Hmm… Interesting! So the poor man is just unfortunate, a victim of time and chance. His life not of will and yet he is born to the enslavement of reality and taunted by opportunity. Eventually hope breaks the bounds of reason and meaning seeks vengeance in act and then life becomes a question of unfairness and in that moment a new man is born, born to ill or good will.
Life is unfair! Newsflash! Deal with it. To the task of meaning and to the light of pursuit, life’s circumstances persist and opportunity lingering in them. Everyman to the charge, to do or not to, to linger in life’s circumstances or to pave a new path, the thought persists. He sinks deeper in thought until he reaches the last point of reasoning, survival! He is in survival mode and the pain of suffering is his motivation. He realises he owes life meaning and must carve out that meaning by any means. He doesn’t want to just exist, he wants to live, live life and enjoy its pleasures. He wants to create meaning out of the depth of emptiness and the hopelessness he feels. He is not cautioned by morality but by the will to survive. He wants to matter to people, and to the world. And for a while it seems like he has ambition but truly he doesn’t. He fails to realize he is not ill-fated because of God or because of any workings of the universe but simply because he has no ambition, he has a thought, a desire but no ambition.
Hard work! His mind preys on the thought we all work hard but we are not as rich as we want to. Pray! We all hold silent vigils in our hearts pouring out the depths of our souls. Believe! We all believe. Hope! We are all victims of hope. Persevere! We are all persevering and it’s become synonymous to suffering. But still in all these, life never seems to be breaking the shackles off his feet. Why? Nothing changes because of his approach and approach is a function of mindset and mindset changes everything. There is no amount of prayer or wishful thinking that will put money in his pocket except he puts hands to diligent work. If you give him all the money in the world and he keeps thinking like a poor man, he would not become rich. The problem is not money but mindset.
And so my dear poor man stands on the cliff of life gazing into emptiness, sights of possibility miles away, the wind of hope blowing smoothly feeling the depths of reason and there the thought lingers to jump or no to.
Comments