Tuesday, August 10, 2004

The answer to life

Wrote this poem inspired by my own story but i thought that the story was incomplete in conveying what i had to say, so i had to write the poem. and here it is, in two parts. gave this poem for the notice board in my coll today. teachers c and m brightened up as soon as i entered the room and someone called u who is the philosophy teacher in degree coll wants to meet me. more on that later, gotta go now as momma wants to go to the dentist.


The answer to life
Ok, at least the correct question

Part I: against entropy

And just before the universe was born
A very sacred law lay destroyed
Something disturbed nothingness into infinity
Something forced existence into a void

And this is the untamed energy called god
A rowdy entity from an unknown infinite
Is god the bringer of light in the darkness?
Or the bringer of darkness in the light?

For the rate of degradation of the universe
Is this thing that the scientist call entropy
Because as a rule everything in the system
Tends to return to equal and neutral energy

And every excited system gains equilibrium
And nothing internal can disturb it again
Some external unbalanced force must act
And that’s why our life is so hard to explain

The question of life is one of basic existence
Because nothingness was a neutral sea
And someone from outside churned out a storm
What a wonderful realm this outside would be

Where everything can be spontaneously dynamic
Where there are no limiting laws like entropy
In simpler terms, the perpetual motion machine
Instead of an eternal dream is an everyday reality

And so the search for the perpetual motion machine
The search for a realm that our sciences defy
Is in effect the search for the meaning of life
A search for the answer to the eternal ‘why?’








Part II: the troubled mind

The teacher dared to ask a question
A question that had only troubled all
But he even dared to seek an answer
But he only found his own downfall

He ran away from his comfortable home
He left his work, his wife, and his kids behind
Searching for the answer with his body and soul
And getting nothing of what he expected to find

He roamed the streets as a begging sage
Weighing the possibilities in his own mind
And not a thousand thoughts gave a solution
And life as always remained undefined

Life isn’t easy for a begging sanysi
And sometimes he didn’t get enough food
But his mind feasted on a thousand thoughts
And his body’s hunger was thus subdued

And the wind chilled his aged body
And the harsh sun tried to torture him
Like the gods were trying to keep it secret
And he grew haggard, and weak, and thin

And on his last beautiful monsoon
His body was chilled by the biting rain
He let it fall; after all, it fell only on his body
But the deadly fever even reached his brain

But deeper still he dwelt on his thoughts
And the truth suddenly burst into his head
And he died just as he was enlightened
But it was only his body that was dead

-Aditya MJ

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