The Quicksand

Mix the thirst of a lifetime with an eternal anguish and sieve it through pitch dark blindness. Add the cocaine of hopelessness and the despair of a quadriplegic to this concoction and what you get is what ails human life in general.

The pain is relative and perhaps so is happiness. The child of a homeless, mentally challenged beggar is kidnapped from her lap while a woman throws away a half eaten cup of gelato from her BMW on the same road. The life moves on without batting an eyelid to either’s discourse.  If you have exclaimed about nature being cruel while surfing through the animal planet, watching a mountain cat rip open an antler, perhaps you have had it too easy.

The urban jungle is full of similar tales and sadly we all feel that it is an acceptable part of life. Your next door neighbor tortures his wife and rapes her on a daily basis in front of their only child and will do it again tomorrow. Your maid submits to her many masters to rake in extra cash for her daughter’s wedding. The child who lives with his grandmother two houses away will forever be scared of a maternal uncle. The man you meet at the club will continue to advise his daughter to ‘adjust and compromise’ as no one ever had a divorce  in their family. The 15 year old teen who was bullied in the class will try and slit her wrist again this evening. The elderly woman from across the road will never cease to have nightmares about how her son threw her out of her own house – all this and several thousand more stories will pass you by as you sit in your cocoon lamenting the miseries that make your life unbearable.

Human life has always been miserable. From the dark ages to the genocides and the vagaries of world wars and disease to the new found religious fundamentalism, mankind has always been busy building itself new toys for self-destruction. Maybe someday a crazy man will set off a nuclear super bomb and we will all be relieved of this misery at the same time.

I don’t know what worries me more – the inability to see through this thick pall of life’s distractions or the fear and hesitation to pursue this quest and dive deeper. The quicksand will eventually engulf my being and it is just a matter of time before the sand fills my nostrils and chokes me. The inconspicuous and brazen tales that life tells us every day will remain unheard.

This struggle to move burns me slowly and while the innards char, I get off my seat, pick up my phone and look up for reservations for a New Year’s bash to indulge my mortal body for a night of binge drinking and gluttony.